 |
|||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
||
|
|
No new articles. |
|
Ben Swann
'Ben Swann Full Disclosure' is asking the questions the rest of the
media is ignoring. Even by the overreaching standards of the Patriot
Act, Ben Swann demonstrates how the NSA's Prism program is clearly
illegal.benswann.com 2013-06-21 11:25:00
|
|
|
| Puppet Masters |
|
Glenn Greenwald
Guardian 2013-06-20 10:01:00
Fisa court submissions show broad scope of procedures governing NSA's surveillance of Americans' communication - Document one: procedures used by NSA to target non-US persons - Document two: procedures used by NSA to minimise data collected from US persons Top secret documents submitted to the court that oversees surveillance by US intelligence agencies show the judges have signed off on broad orders which allow the NSA to make use of information "inadvertently" collected from domestic US communications without a warrant. The Guardian is publishing in full two documents submitted to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (known as the Fisa court), signed by Attorney General Eric Holder and stamped 29 July 2009. They detail the procedures the NSA is required to follow to target "non-US persons" under its foreign intelligence powers and what the agency does to minimize data collected on US citizens and residents in the course of that surveillance. The documents show that even under authorities governing the collection of foreign intelligence from foreign targets, US communications can still be collected, retained and used. The procedures cover only part of the NSA's surveillance of domestic US communications. The bulk collection of domestic call records, as first revealed by the Guardian earlier this month, takes place under rolling court orders issued on the basis of a legal interpretation of a different authority, section 215 of the Patriot Act. |
|
|
|
|
Andrew Harris
Bloomberg 2006-06-30 09:57:00
The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed June 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court. The allegation is part of a court filing adding AT&T, the nation's largest telephone company, as a defendant in a breach of privacy case filed earlier this month on behalf of Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. customers. The suit alleges that the three carriers, the NSA and President George W. Bush violated the Telecommunications Act of 1934 and the U.S. Constitution, and seeks money damages. ''The Bush Administration asserted this became necessary after 9/11,'' plaintiff's lawyer Carl Mayer said in a telephone interview. ''This undermines that assertion.'' The lawsuit is related to an alleged NSA program to record and store data on calls placed by subscribers. More than 30 suits have been filed over claims that the carriers, the three biggest U.S. telephone companies, violated the privacy rights of their customers by cooperating with the NSA in an effort to track alleged terrorists. |
|
|
|
|
Peter Eisler and Susan Page
USA Today 2013-06-16 09:43:00
In a roundtable discussion, a trio of former National Security Agency whistle-blowers tell USA TODAY that Edward Snowden succeeded where they failed. When a National Security Agency contractor revealed top-secret details this month on the government's collection of Americans' phone and Internet records, one select group of intelligence veterans breathed a sigh of relief. Thomas Drake, William Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe belong to a select fraternity: the NSA officials who paved the way. For years, the three whistle-blowers had told anyone who would listen that the NSA collects huge swaths of communications data from U.S. citizens. They had spent decades in the top ranks of the agency, designing and managing the very data-collection systems they say have been turned against Americans. When they became convinced that fundamental constitutional rights were being violated, they complained first to their superiors, then to federal investigators, congressional oversight committees and, finally, to the news media. To the intelligence community, the trio are villains who compromised what the government classifies as some of its most secret, crucial and successful initiatives. They have been investigated as criminals and forced to give up careers, reputations and friendships built over a lifetime. Today, they feel vindicated. |
|
|
|
|
Mark Hosenball
Reuters 2013-06-12 09:38:00
U.S. government investigators began an urgent search for Edward Snowden several days before the first media reports were published on the government's secret surveillance programs, people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday. Snowden, who has admitted to providing details of the top-secret programs, had worked on assignment at a Hawaii facility run by the National Security Agency for about four weeks before he said he was ill and requested leave without pay, according to the sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. When Snowden failed to return, that prompted a hunt for the contractor, first by his employer Booz Allen Hamilton and then by the U.S. government, they said. Snowden, 29, was known among colleagues as a very gifted "geek," according to one of the sources, who added, "This guy's really good with his fingers on the keyboard. He's really good." |
|
|
|
|
Irin Carmon
Salon 2013-06-10 09:28:00
Exclusive: Laura Poitras tells Salon about getting contacted by Edward Snowden, and reveals more footage is coming Shortly after Salon's biographical sketch on Laura Poitras went live, the award-winning documentary filmmaker agreed to a phone interview, her first since she helped reveal the scope of the National Security Agency's digital surveillance. "I feel a certain need to be cautious about not wanting to do the work for the government," she told Salon, but agreed to clarify some parts of her role in the story. Poitras is still in Hong Kong, where she is filming the story behind the story - including her co-author on the Guardian story and former Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald - for her forthcoming documentary on whistle-blowers and leaks. In a wide-ranging interview, she explained how she first made contact with Snowden, her reaction to the possible future investigation into his leaks, and why Snowden didn't go to the New York Times. What follows is a lightly edited transcript. So how did this all begin? I was originally contacted in January, anonymously. By Edward Snowden? Well, I didn't know who it was. What was the format? Via email. It said, I want to get your encryption key and let's get on a secure channel. And he didn't say what it was about? He just said - that was the first, and the second was, I have some information in the intelligence community, and it won't be a waste of your time. Do you get a lot of those kinds of requests? No, I don't. |
|
|
|
|
Paul B. Farrell
Market Watch 2013-06-06 09:24:00
In "Stocks for the Long Run," economist Jeremy Siegel researched all the "big market moves" between 1801 and 2001. Bottom line: 75% of the time, there is no rationale for "big moves." No one can predict them. Maybe technicians and traders can pick short-term moves the next second. Maybe tomorrow. But the long-term "big market moves?" No way. Now why predict an "87%" chance of another meltdown in 2013? Because in the real world of statistical probabilities, historical facts and expert opinions danger signals are flashing wild. In mid-2008 we summarized the predictions of 20 experts over several years. Predicted a meltdown in a few years - markets crashed two months later. Fast. In retrospect, it was inevitable, thanks in part to the hype, arrogance and incompetence of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson who failed to prepare America. The warnings are again accelerating. And so is the happy talk from Wall Street casino insiders, about rallies, housing recoveries, perpetual cheap money. Don't listen. The next crash will happen by year-end. Yes, there's a 13% chance the next Fed chairman will keep printing cheap money into 2014. But on New Years Eve our aging bull will be 4½ years old, well past Bill O'Neill's "average" 3.75 years for putting this bull out to pasture. So unless you're shorting, all bets on Wall Street casinos for 2014 are megarisk, like 2008. Like a Stephen King horror film, you feel it coming. Could happen anytime, even tomorrow, says Siegel's research, or the unpredictable logic in Nassim Taleb's "Black Swan." - |
|
|
|
|
foxnews.com
2013-06-18 09:06:00
President Obama's trip this month to Africa, with the first family tagging along, is projected to cost taxpayers as much as $100 million, sparking criticism as the federal government scrimps along during sequester-related budget cuts. Among the related costs will be fighter jets; hundreds of Secret Service agents; a Navy ship with a full trauma center; and military cargo planes to bring 56 vehicles including 14 limousines and three trucks loaded with sheets of bulletproof glass to cover the windows of the hotels where the first family will stay. The details were reported by The Washington Post, based on a confidential planning document. The trip to sub-Sahara Africa runs from June 26 to July 3. The president and first lady have cancelled plans to go on a safari that would have included the additional expense of a sharp-shooting team, responsible for putting down a cheetah, lion or any other wild animal that became a threat. Figuring out the exact cost of the overall trip is difficult because the information is classified for the purpose of national security. However, a Government Accountability Office report shows President Clinton's 1998 trip to six African nations cost at least $42.7 million - not including Secret Service expenses. Obama's trip could cost the federal government $60 million to $100 million based on the costs of similar African trips in recent years, a person familiar with the Obama journey but not authorized to speak for attribution told The Post. The trip comes as agencies across the federal government try to find cost-saving measures to deal with the massive, across-the-board budget cuts known as sequester, which kicked in this year after Washington lawmakers failed to agree on a more measured approach. The Secret Service, for example, pushed to cancel public White House tours to save thousands in weekly overtime expenses. "For the cost of this trip to Africa, you could have 1,350 weeks of White House tours," Rep. George Holding, a North Carolina Republican, said last week. "It is no secret that we need to rein in government spending, and the Obama administration has regularly and repeatedly shown a lack of judgment for when and where to make cuts. ... The American people have had enough of the frivolous and careless spending." The White House had defended the trip cost saying the Secret Service plan determines the security cost and that first family's trip will result in long-term goodwill. "The infrastructure that accompanies the president's travels is beyond our control," said Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser for strategic communications. "When you travel to regions like Africa that don't get a lot of presidential attention, you tend to have very long-standing and long-running impact from the visit." |
|
|
|
|
Stefan Steinberg
In a document released at the end of May, the American banking and investment giant JP
Morgan Chase calls for the overturning of the bourgeois democratic
constitutions established in a series of European countries after the
Second World War and the installation of authoritarian regimes.RINF 2013-06-17 08:56:00 The 16-page document was produced by the Europe Economic Research group of JP Morgan and titled "The Euro Area Adjustment - About Half-Way There." The document begins by noting that the crisis in the euro zone has two dimensions.
First, the paper argues, financial measures are necessary to ensure that major investment houses such as JP Morgan can continue to reap huge profits from their speculative activities in Europe. Second, the authors maintain, it is necessary to impose "political reforms" aimed at suppressing opposition to the massively unpopular austerity measures being carried out at the behest of the banks. The report expresses satisfaction with the implementation of a number of financial mechanisms by the European Union to secure banking interests. In this respect, the study maintains, reform of the euro area is about halfway there. The report does, however, call for more action by the European Central Bank (ECB). | |
|
Comment:
"Political systems around the periphery typically display several of the following features: weak executives; weak central states relative to regions; constitutional protection of labour rights; consensus-building systems which foster political clientalism; and the right to protest if unwelcome changes are made to the political status quo. The shortcomings of this political legacy have been revealed by the crisis. "Unbelievable! So, according to JP Morgan, the problem is not that they have the power to destroy the economies of the world in order to enrich the already obscenely rich members of the financial elite. The problem, you see, is that the masses still have a few rights here and there to protest the theft. Thus is the thinking of psychopaths. We wonder what this 'Let them eat cake' attitude will bring to the likes of JP Morgan. If history serves as an indicator, it might not be pretty. Then again, it is perhaps their fear of Madame Guillotine that encourages them to seek absolute power over the rest of us. |
|
|
|
|
BBC
Stand-up comedian, columnist and actor Russell Brand on the BBC's Question Time debate, June 2013.2013-06-21 07:35:00
|
|
|
|
|
WND
2013-06-21 06:43:00
Seventeen years after the Paris-bound TWA Flight 800 blew up off the coast of Long Island, producers Tom Stalcup and Kristina Borjesson have released a new documentary - simply titled "TWA Flight 800" - that has the very real potential to re-open the investigation into the plane's destruction. Kudos, in particular, to Stalcup. A Ph.D. physicist by background, he has dedicated the last 16 years of his life to exposing what is arguably the most flagrant government cover-up in American peacetime history. Borjesson has likewise been involved from the beginning. As a producer at CBS in 1996 when TWA 800 was destroyed, she sacrificed her future at CBS to get at the truth. Together, they have produced a documentary that is compelling, convincing and, finally, deeply moving. Jack Cashill and James Sanders exposed the corrupt TWA 800 investigation in their book "First Strike" - get it now at WND's Superstore The producers made two strategic moves to force the media to look seriously at their conclusions. One was to rely heavily on the testimony of a half-dozen highly credible whistleblowers from within the investigation. The second was to avoid politics. When James Sanders and I produced the video documentary "Silenced" on this subject 12 years ago and the book "First Strike" two years after that, we made the marketing mistake of identifying the logic of the cover-up. That logic led to the White House. Sixteen years ago, in the home stretch of a difficult re-election campaign, Bill Clinton faced a problem very similar to one that Barack Obama would face in 2012. This is something the media did not want to know, let alone share. An event took place that threatened the "peace and prosperity" theme of his campaign - specifically, the shoot-down of this doomed airliner with 230 people on board 12 minutes out of JFK. Although the word was not used back then, the Clinton White House, with the help of a complicit media, rewrote the event's "narrative" to assure re-election. Again, as with Benghazi, that narrative was clumsily improvised almost on a daily basis. Knowing the media had his back, Clinton responded much as Obama did: deny, obfuscate and kick the investigatory can down the road until after the election. One central figure appeared in each drama: Hillary Clinton. She stood by Obama's side in the Rose Garden on Sept. 12 as he spun reality into confection. Throughout that long night of July 17, 1996, she holed up with Bill and Sandy Berger in the White House family quarters, assessing their narrative options much as Obama did on Sept. 11, 2012. By removing politics from the equation, Stalcup, who appeared in "Silenced," and Borjesson have attracted a fair share of major media attention. In their well-researched recreation of the plane's final minutes, they wisely refrain from saying who pulled the trigger. But the evidence that someone fired missiles at the plane overwhelms the dispassionate observer. | |
|
Comment: Cassiopaean session 23rh Nov. 1996
Q: (T) About Flight 800. Pierre Salinger claims that the info floating around on the internet is accurate. He says that the Navy downed the flight. A: Close. Pierre Salinger is an impeccable journalist and not one to "fly off the handle." Q: (T) Very true. And that is why I am amazed that the rest of the journalism community is attacking him. A: Why should you be amazed? They are "bought and paid for." Q: (T) What did happen to flight 800? A: This was the result of an experiment gone awry. So was KAL "007" in 1983. Q: (L) What was the nature of the experiment? A: Testing of secret impulse guidance system using civilian airliner as an arbitrary "bounce" guidance target. Instead, it became the "homing" target, and a different aircraft became the bouncer. This was because the programmers did not anticipate the lower than expected altitude of the 747. Warning: this must stay in this room for the present!!!!!!!!!! The facts will eventually be discussed by others. At that time, the danger is lifted. Now, about KAL 007... that one is not dangerous to know. The plane was deliberately instructed to fly off course in order to trigger the Soviet's Pacific air defense system, to "see what they were made of" in that area. The plane was lost, but the experiment worked. They did not expect them to shoot down a civilian airliner. Now, all moving targets create electronic impuses. These can be "read" by the proper extremely high tech equipment. Older radar guided systems are subject to malfunctions in weather conditions that are severe, as one example. Also, the impulse system is an offshoot of the electromagnetic pulse experiments being carried out at Montauk, Brookings and elsewhere as part of the HAARP project! In connection with Pentagon missile tests, HAARP has many interesting tie-ins, not the least of which is your cell phone towers. Now, the homing target can be any moving object. It can be whatever is entered on the computer. It can be a squirrel in a tree, a jogger on the beach, a building, whatever you want. The system looks for any moving target in order to establish recognition to the computer, in order to establish recognition of match pattern of pulse. TWA 800 was flying at the exact same altitude that was supposed to be designated for the "drone" craft. The drone plane was fartehr out at sea. The "bounce" target was to be any moving object in the air within 400 square miles. Q: (L) So, TWA 800, through a series of problems, happened to find itself at the right altitude, a restricted altitude, within the parameters of the experiment. Anything further on this? A: Not for now. |
|
|
|
|
Paul Craig Roberts
In the 21st century the two hundred year-old propaganda that the
American people control their government has been completely shattered.
Both the Bush and Obama regimes have made it unmistakenly clear that the
American people don't even influence, much less control, the
government. As far as Washington is concerned, the people are nothing
but chaff in the wind.Institute for Political Economy 2013-06-17 22:19:00 Polls demonstrate that 65% of the US population opposes US intervention in Syria. Despite this clear indication of the people's will, the Obama regime is ramping up a propaganda case for more arming of Washington's mercenaries sent to overthrow the secular Syrian government and for a "no-fly zone" over Syria, which, if Libya is the example, means US or NATO aircraft attacking the Syrian army on the ground, thus serving as the air force of Washington's imported mercenaries, euphemistically called "the Syrian rebels." Washington declared some time ago that the "red line" that would bring Syria under Washington's military attack was the Assad government's use of chemical weapons of mass destruction against Washington's mercenaries. Once this announcement was made, everyone with a brain immediately knew that Washington would fabricate false intelligence that Assad had used chemical weapons, just as Washington presented to the United Nations the intentional lie via Secretary of State Colin Powell that Saddam Hussein in Iraq had dangerous weapons of mass destruction. Remember National Security Advisor Condi Rice's image of a "mushroom cloud over American cities?" Propagandistic lies were Washington's orders of the day. And they still are. Now Washington has fabricated the false intelligence, and president obama has announced it with a straight face, that Syria's Assad has used sarin gas on several occasions and that between 100 and 150 "of his own people," a euphemism for the US supplied foreign mercenaries, have been killed by the weapon of mass destruction. Think about that for a minute. As unfortunate as is any death from war, is 100-150 deaths "mass destruction?" According to low-ball estimates, the US-sponsored foreign mercenary invasion of Syria has cost 93,000 lives, of which 150 deaths amounts to 0.0016 or sixteen hundredths of one percent. In other words, 92,850 of the deaths did not cross the "red line." But 150 did, allegedly. Yes, I know. Washington's position makes no sense. But when has it ever made any sense? |
|
|
|
RT
2013-06-20 22:02:00
It's standard operating procedure for the FBI to conduct an internal investigation when an agent shoots a suspect. Questions are being raised, though, after a report found that every single intentional shooting in the past 20 years was deemed 'justified.' Between 1993 and early 2011 FBI agents fatally shot 70 people and wounded approximately 80 others. In no incident, including one that led to a $1.3 million payout for a victim wrongfully identified as a bank robber, was an agent wrong to fire their weapon. The records were obtained by The New York Times through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. "The FBI takes very seriously any shooting incidents involving our agents, and as such we have an effective, time-tested process for addressing them internally," an FBI spokesman said, adding that there have been no improper intentional shootings since 2011. The FBI investigation into the death of Ibragim Todashev a Chechen man connected to Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, is still ongoing. Todashev was fatally shot during an interview with FBI agents. Since the May 22 incident, unnamed agents have told media outlets Todashev threatened them with a knife, broomstick or metal pipe before the bureau admitted he was unarmed after all. Tim Murphy, a former deputy director of the FBI, told the Times that agents are generally older with more experience than the average police officer. He said officials plan to go into a situation with an "overwhelming presence," which may help cut down on the number of shots fired. |
|
|
|
|
RT.com
2013-06-19 20:24:00
An alternative search engine DuckDuckGo has enjoyed a record surge in traffic as NSA scandals spark fears and frighten away Internet users from the more popular Google or Yahoo!. Over the previous week DuckDuckGo, a private search engine, which claims not to collect users' searches or create any personal user profile, has increased its traffic by 26 per cent and passed 3.1 million of direct queries. | |
|
Comment: In spite of the so-called anonymous search
engines, there is really no such thing as anonymity on the Internet. For
an in-depth discussion on NSA PRISM, listen to Sott Talk Radio's latest
show: NSA PRISM: Neither Privacy Nor Security
|
|
|
|
| Society's Child |
|
haaretz.com
New UN human rights agency report claims Israeli forces arbitrarily
arrest Palestinian children in Gaza and West Bank, subject them to
degrading treatment, exploit them to scope out potentially dangerous
buildings and use them as shields to deter stone throwers.2013-06-21 14:26:00 A United Nations human rights body accused Israeli forces on Thursday of mistreating Palestinian children, including by torturing those in custody and using others as human shields. Palestinian children in Gaza and the West Bank, captured by Israel in the 1967 war, are routinely denied registration of their birth and access to health care, decent schools and clean water, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child said. "Palestinian children arrested by (Israeli) military and police are systematically subject to degrading treatment, and often to acts of torture, are interrogated in Hebrew, a language they did not understand, and sign confessions in Hebrew in order to be released," it said in a report. The Foreign Ministry said it had responded to a report by the UN children's agency UNICEF in March on ill-treatment of Palestinian minors and questioned whether the UN committee's investigation covered new ground. "If someone simply wants to magnify their political bias and political bashing of Israel not based on a new report, on work on the ground, but simply recycling old stuff, there is no importance in that," spokesman Yigal Palmor said. The report by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child acknowledged Israel's national security concerns and noted that children on both sides of the conflict continue to be killed and wounded, but that more casualties are Palestinian. Most Palestinian children arrested are accused of having thrown stones, an offense which can carry a penalty of up to 20 years in prison, the committee said. soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces had testified to the often arbitrary nature of the arrests, it said. The watchdog's 18 independent experts examined Israel's record of compliance with a 1990 treaty as part of its regular review of a pact signed by all nations except Somalia and the United States. An Israeli delegation attended the session. The UN committee regretted Israel's "persistent refusal" to respond to requests for information on children in the Palestinian territories and occupied Syrian Golan Heights since the last review in 2002. |
|
|
|
Monya Baker
Nature 2013-06-20 13:54:00
Three in ten women worldwide have been punched, shoved, dragged, threatened with weapons, raped, or subjected to other violence from a current or former partner. Close to one in ten have been sexually assaulted by someone other than a partner. Of women who are murdered, more than one in three were killed by an intimate partner. These grim statistics come from the first global, systematic estimates of violence against women. Linked papers published today in The Lancet and Science assess, respectively, how often people are killed by their partners1 and how many women experience violence from them2. And an associated report and guidelines from the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Swizerland, along with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the South African Medical Research Council in Pretoria, estimates how often women suffer sexual violence from someone other than a partner, gauge the impact of partner and non-partner violence on women's health and advise health-care providers on how to support the victims. "These numbers should be a wake-up call. We want to highlight that this is a problem that occurs in all regions and it's unacceptably high," says Claudia García-Moreno, a physician at WHO who coordinates research on gender violence and worked on all the publications. |
|
|
|
|
Daily Mail UK
Euphoric basketball fans spilled onto the streets of Miami for an
impromptu party after the Heat claimed their second consecutive NBA
title last night. But this picture suggests that celebrations turned
sour in at least one corner of the city.2013-06-21 10:44:00 It reveals a woman apparently being pushed to the ground by police officers as they attempted to clear the streets of jubilant Miami Heat fans. One picture shows the woman tumbling onto the concrete, while another shows a police officer apparently trying to haul her to her feet by grasping her t-shirt.
Additional images |
|
|
|
|
The Extinction Protocol
Brazil's president, Dilma Rousseff, and key ministers are to hold an
emergency meeting on Friday following a night of protests that saw Rio
de Janeiro and dozens of other cities echo with percussion grenades and
swirl with teargas as riot police scattered the biggest demonstrations
in more than two decades. The protests were sparked last week by
opposition to rising bus fares, but they have spread rapidly to
encompass a range of grievances, as was evident from the placards. "Stop
corruption. Change Brazil;" "Halt evictions;" "Come to the street. It's
the only place we don't pay taxes; "Government failure to understand
education will lead to revolution." A vast crowd - estimated by the
authorities at 300,000 and more than a million by participants - filled
Rio's streets, one of a wave of huge nationwide marches against
corruption, police brutality, poor public services and excess spending
on the World Cup.2013-06-21 09:17:00
|
|
|
|
|
rt.com
2013-06-19 06:45:00
The Russian Ministry of Finance plans to raise tax on tobacco by 50% to bring it closer to European levels. The World Health Organization has suggested Russia needs a seven-fold increase by 2020. The draft legislation is to be presented to the government on June 20, Izvestia daily reports. Excise duty on filter cigarettes will be raised to 820 roubles ($25) per thousand cigarettes from 550 roubles ($17). The hike will increase the retail price of cigarettes by 50% to an average $3 per pack, the paper calculates. The excise tax on alcoholic beverages also will increase, the paper reports. It will go up from 9% to 25% on spirits, 14% on wine, and 4% on champagne. The duties will be raised to equalize taxation of tobacco products with other European countries, the paper reports. The fight against smoking is the second reason for the increase. If the price is increased, children, adolescents and the poor will either smoke less or move to low-quality tobacco, the paper reports. |
|
|
|
|
Reuters
2013-06-20 10:09:00
Violent clashes have erupted in the northern city of Fortaleza in the hours leading to a Confederations Cup match with Mexico. Dozens were hurt as riot police unleashed tear gas and barrage of rubber bullets at a crowd of some 30,000 Brazilian protesters. Images and video of the demonstration just outside of the north-eastern city depicted throngs of protesters marching down a road towards the stadium hosting Wednesday's match. One person was reported to have suffered an eye injury and another was taken away on a stretcher. The protesters were marching against government spending on the World Cup and the Olympics. During the Fortaleza protest, demonstrators carried banners reading "a teacher is worth more than Neymar," a reference to one of Brazil's star players slated to appear in Wednesday's game |
|
|
|
| Secret History |
|
No new articles. |
| Science & Technology |
|
Mike Adams
Natural News 2013-06-20 00:33:00
Most people don't know about the existence of quantum computers. Almost no one understands how they work, but theories include bizarre-sounding explanations like, "they reach into alternate universes to derive the correct answers to highly complex computational problems." Quantum computers are not made of simple transistors and logic gates like the CPU on your PC. They don't even function in ways that seem rational to a typical computing engineer. Almost magically, quantum computers take logarithmic problems and transform them into "flat" computations whose answers seem to appear from an alternate dimension. For example, a mathematical problem that might have 2 to the power of n possible solutions -- where n is a large number like 1024 -- might take a traditional computer longer than the age of the universe to solve. A quantum computer, on the other hand, might solve the same problem in mere minutes because it quite literally operates across multiple dimensions simultaneously. |
|
|
|
|
Ker Than
National Geographic 2013-06-19 21:41:00
A newly discovered crack in the Earth's crust could pull North America and Europe together and cause the Atlantic Ocean to vanish in about 220 million years, scientists say. A new map of the seafloor off the coast of Iberia - the region of Europe that includes Portugal and Spain - has revealed what could be the birth of a new subduction zone. Subduction zones happen when tectonic plates - the large rock slabs that make up the Earth's crust - crash into one another. The edge of the heavier plate slides, or subducts, below the lighter plate. It then melts back into the Earth's mantle - the layer just below the crust. The discovery of this new subduction zone, published on June 6 in the journal Geology, could signal the start of an extended cycle that fuses continents together into a single landmass - or "supercontinent" - and closes our oceans. This breakup and reformation of supercontinents has happened at least three times during Earth's approximately four-billion-year history. In the far future, Earth's continents could "look very much like the Pangea," said study first author João Duarte, referring to a supercontinent that existed about 200 million years ago. |
|
|
|
|
Mara Hvistendahl and Martin Enserink
ScienceNow 2013-06-20 17:15:00
A mysterious group of viruses known for their circular genome has been detected in patients with severe disease on two continents. In papers published independently this week, researchers report the discovery of agents called cycloviruses in Vietnam and in Malawi. The studies suggest that the viruses - one of which also widely circulates in animals in Vietnam - could be involved in brain inflammation and paraplegia, but further studies are needed to confirm a causative link. The discovery in Vietnam grew out of a frustrating lack of information about the causes of some central nervous system (CNS) infections such as encephalitis and meningitis, which can be fatal or leave lasting damage. "There are a lot of severe cases in the hospitals here, and very often we can't come to a diagnosis," says H. Rogier van Doorn, a clinical virologist with the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, Ho Chi Minh City. Extensive diagnostic tests turn up pathogens in only about half of patients with such infections, he says. Van Doorn and colleagues in Vietnam and at the University of Amsterdam's Academic Medical Center hoped that they might uncover new pathogens using a powerful new technique called next-generation sequencing. The group sequenced all the genetic material in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) samples taken from more than 100 patients with undiagnosed CNS infections. One sample batch returned a promising lead: a viral sequence belonging to the Circoviridae family. Probing the original patient samples, the scientists ferreted out the sequence in two of the samples - one from an adult and one from a child. Next, they expanded their search, testing samples from an additional 642 patients with CNS infections using a sensitive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test developed to specifically target the detected sequence. Roughly 4% of the samples tested positive, the team reported in mBio on Tuesday. Whole-genome sequencing confirmed that the virus, which the scientists have dubbed CyCV-VN, for cyclovirus-Vietnam, is novel; it belongs to a genus within the Circoviridae family called cycloviruses. |
|
|
|
|
National Science Foundation
2013-06-20 18:10:00
Bacterial DNA may integrate into the human genome more readily in tumors than in normal human tissue, scientists have found. The researchers, affiliated with the University of Maryland School of Medicine's Institute for Genome Sciences, analyzed genomic sequencing data available from the Human Genome Project, the 1,000 Genomes Project and The Cancer Genome Atlas. They considered the phenomenon of lateral gene transfer (LGT), the transmission of genetic material between organisms in a manner other than than traditional reproduction. Scientists have already shown that bacteria can transfer DNA to the genome of an animal. The researchers found evidence that lateral gene transfer is possible from bacteria to the cells of the human body, known as human somatic cells. They found that bacterial DNA was more likely to integrate in the genome in tumor samples than in normal, healthy somatic cells. The phenomenon might play a role in cancer and other diseases associated with DNA damage. "Advances in genomic and computational sciences are revealing the vast ways in which humans interact with an ever-present and endlessly diverse planet of microbes," says Matt Kane, program director in the National Science Foundation's Division of Environmental Biology in its Directorate for Biological Sciences, which funded the research. |
|
|
|
| Earth Changes |
|
David Bailey
Severe storms producing wind gusts up to 85 mph, heavy rain and
lightning strikes in Minnesota and Wisconsin early on Friday, knocked
down trees and power lines and at one point left more than 176,000
customers without power.Reuters 2013-06-21 14:44:00 An area stretching from the Dakotas through Wisconsin was bracing for more storms, some severe, later on Friday and possible flooding after reports of three to four inches of rain fell in some communities already, the National Weather Service said. "The weather pattern is pretty much going to be stationary tonight and through the weekend so we are concerned about the severe weather and also the potential for flooding," said Jacob Beitlich, a weather service meteorologist in the Twin Cities. The storms developed in the Dakotas and powered southeast through Minnesota into Wisconsin, bringing heavy straight-line wind damage with a gust of 85 mph at the heart of it northwest of the Twin Cities, he said. The weather service also has issued a severe thunderstorm watch for parts of eastern Iowa stretching across northwest Illinois to just west of Chicago. |
|
|
|
Tim Becker
KOIN 6 News 2013-06-19 22:31:00
Experts are investigating why 25,000 bees were found dead or dying in a parking lot at a Target store in Wilsonville. The strange sight first caught shoppers' eyes a few days ago. It's still there Wednesday, clustered under blooming European Linden trees. "I've never seen an incident on this scale," said Pollinator Conservation Program Director Mace Vaughan. Experts believe this could be a poisonous species of the tree that caused them to die, or they may have been poisoned by insecticides. Conservationists Vaughan and Rich Hatfield were in Wilsonville Wednesday,filling test tubes with samples to take back to a lab. There they'll try to confirm either theory for the bees sudden deaths. |
|
|
|
|
US Geological Survey
2013-06-21 11:22:00
Event Time: 2013-06-21 10:33:59 UTC 2013-06-21 12:33:59 UTC+02:00 at epicenter Location: 44.222°N 10.113°E depth=10.3km (6.4mi) Nearby Cities: 2km (1mi) SSW of Fivizzano, Italy 11km (7mi) E of Aulla, Italy 17km (11mi) NE of Sarzana, Italy 18km (11mi) NNE of Carrara, Italy 189km (117mi) W of San Marino, San Marino Technical Data |
|
|
|
|
Philip Pullella
Reuters 2013-06-21 11:19:00
A magnitude 5.2 earthquake was felt across central and northern Italy on Friday, causing some minor damage in rural areas but there were no immediate reports of injuries. The epicentre of the quake, which hit at about 12:33 p.m. (6.33 a.m. EDT) was between the towns of Massa and Lucca in Tuscany and La Spezia in the Liguria region, the national geophysics institute said. The tremor was felt in Milan, the largest city in northern Italy, and as far north as the Friuli region near the border with Slovenia. The mayor of Casola in Lunigiana, a small town in the Tuscan countryside, told Italian television the quake had caused cracks in some old buildings and minor collapses but there were no reports of injuries. Aftershocks continued to rock the area, some as strong as magnitude 4.0, officials said, adding that residents in some rural areas were advised to stay out of their homes for the time being. |
|
|
|
|
GabeHashTV
Youtube 2013-06-20 10:07:00
|
|
|
|
|
Fiona Govan
The Telegraph, UK 2013-06-11 09:57:00
Authorities in Castile-La Mancha have declared a state of high alert and ordered the compulsory vaccination of all dogs and cats within a 18 mile radius of where the attacks took place. The owner of the dog has been arrested for several counts of criminal negligence resulting in injury and for failing to have the correct license for a dangerous breed. It is thought he deliberately doctored veterinary records of the pit bull-cross after bringing it into Spain from Morocco. The dog bit three children, aged two, six and twelve, as well as a 17-year old male in the village of Arges, near Toledo, early this month. It was immediately destroyed and was confirmed to have been rabid following tests on Monday. All were discharged after being given rabies innoculations, apart from the two-year-old who was kept in hospital after being bitten in the face. The regional government has ordered all cats, dogs and ferrets in the danger zone to be vaccinated against the disease within fifteen days. Some 60,000 dogs in 56 villages are thought to be at risk. "We have also forbidden dogs to be allowed off the lead in public spaces until the danger has passed," confirmed Tirso Yuste, head of the regional Agriculture department. At least seven dogs have already been identified as having high levels of rabies and have been put in quarantine for one month. Mainland Spain was officially declared rabies free in 1975 after successful campaigns to stamp out the disease. There have been occasional examples recorded in Spain's North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, cities on Morocco's Mediterranean coast. It is understood that the rabid pit bull cross was bred in Spain but spent four months in Morocco, only returning within the last month. |
|
|
|
|
youtube.com
2013-06-18 08:24:00
An Arlington Minnesota couple discovered a strange rock in one of their corn fields. Source: KSTP TV Twin Cities |
|
|
|
|
Ottawa Citizen
In B.C., flood watches have been issued for rivers and creeks in the
province's west and east Kootenay region and smaller waterways in the
upper and lower Columbia regions2013-06-20 22:07:00
Torrential rains and widespread flooding throughout southern Alberta on Thursday washed out roads and bridges, sent residents scurrying for safety, and delivered up surreal scenes of cars, couches and refrigerators just floating away. The RCMP put out a call for help to the Canadian Armed Forces, which sent in two helicopters and a Hercules aircraft to help extract people stranded by water. Officials with the City of Calgary said as many as 100,000 people in low-lying neighbourhoods could be forced from their homes due to heavy flooding, an evacuation that would take place in stages over the next few days. Bruce Burrell, director of the Calgary Emergency Management Agency, said water levels on the Bow River aren't expected to subside until Saturday afternoon. "Depending on the extent of flooding we experience overnight, there may be areas of the city where people are not going to be able to get into until the weekend," he told a news conference. |
|
|
|
|
Maseeh Rahman
The Guardian 2013-06-20 00:00:00
Hindu pilgrims visiting shrines in Uttarakhand state are left stranded days after floods killed more than 100 As many as 4,000 people are believed trapped by landslides in a valley near a Hindu shrine in the Indian Himalayas, days after floods killed more than 100 people. Helicopters have ferried rescue workers and doctors along with equipment, food and medicine to Kedarnath in the state of Uttarakhand, the nearest town. Most of those stranded are Hindu pilgrims who were visiting four shrines. Amit Chandola, a state spokesman, said authorities had so far been unable to reach eight villages feared washed away by the weekend floods in the worst-hit districts of Rudraprayag and Chamoli. |
|||
|
|
|
Ron Plants
WGRZ.com 2013-06-20 16:37:00
We're hearing about more sinkholes developing on some streets in Buffalo and that could be much more of a problem for property owners. That is especially the case if the city determines it's caused by leaking or broken water pipes which undermine the street. City Council Majority Leader Richard Fontana estimates the repairs could run up to three or four thousand dollars or more in repairs if the city makes the ruling that a property owner's pipes are leaking or broken. He says much of the problem is tied to the age of the pipes. People on Duerstein Street off of Seneca Street in South Buffalo recently sent us pictures of a deep sinkhole which opened up this past weekend. The city feels the homeowner is responsible but in this case the city will make a repair according to City Spokesman Mike DeGeorge. It is in the middle of the street near the sewer line. | |
|
Comment: This excuse that all underground pipes in the
U.S. suddenly became too old is growing a little 'old' itself. In fact
an incredible number of sink-holes have been appearing world-wide. Take a
look at these: Sinkholes - A Sign of the Times?
|
|
|
|
|
WTAETV
A giant sink-hole forces West View road to shut down.2013-06-19 00:00:00
|
|
|
|
|
Chris Carrington
The Activist Post 2013-06-19 00:00:00
On a dark winter's night in January 1700 a tsunami struck Japan. It flooded fields, swept away villages for miles inland and cost many lives. Even as far back as 1700 the Japanese had made the connection between earthquakes and Tsunami, but this time there was no earthquake, no warning to allow the people time to evacuate to higher ground. The tsunami was called the 'orphan tsunami' because it had no 'parent' earthquake. For more than 300 years the origin of the orphan tsunami remained a mystery. In the 1980s Hiroo Kanamori and Tom Heaton published a paper that said the 1700 tsunami was caused by a massive rupture of the Cascadia fault line that runs off the west coast of the United States from California to Vancouver. In 1987 Brian Atwater studied soil samples far inland across the length of the fault and discovered that the United States had also suffered a tsunami at the same time as the Japanese. He concluded that Kanamori and Heaton were correct, a massive earthquake had sent a tsunami out from the source of the quake inundating the coasts on both sides of the Pacific. Recent studies by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania has concurred on the findings of previous studies. |
|
|
|
|
RT news
2013-06-20 18:12:00
|
|
|
|
| Fire in the Sky |
|
BBC
2013-06-17 07:00:00
"Loud explosions" heard across the east of England were caused by a sonic boom when a jet broke the sound barrier. The noise, at 11:30 BST, caused shaking and smashed windows and prompted calls to police in Cambridgeshire, Essex and Hertfordshire. The Ministry of Defence said a Typhoon jet from RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire was launched when communication was lost with a Heathrow-bound plane. It is understood the plane, travelling from the USA, landed without incident. Air traffic controllers had become concerned but communication was re-established with the passenger airliner and there were no problems on board. | |
|
Comment: A sonic boom from a fighter jet does not 'smash windows' or cause 'whole houses' to shake...
|
|
|
|
|
PAP
2013-06-21 06:11:00
A huge fireball as bright as a Quarter Moon crossed the sky over Poland just before midnight on Thursday, reports the Polish Fireball Network (PKiM). It was seen as a falling green ball with a red tail, as reported by a witness from the town of Piaseczno, near Warsaw. At 23.55 pm local time, Thomas Lewandowski, a member of the PKiM, saw a huge fireball that swept low over the horizon and ended with spectacular flashes. It was seen in the northwest part of the sky when observed from a location near Warsaw. This observation was quickly confirmed by Paul Zareba who runs a Polish Fireball Network station equipped with four cameras. One of the cameras recorded the phenomenon in all its glory. The fireball was also picked up on radio waves. Stayed tuned for more information. |
|
|
|
|
Lauren Leamanczyk
CBS Boston 2013-06-14 22:29:00
Amesbury - Phil Green wasn't quite sure what he had, when he noticed the unusual rock on the banks of the Merrimack River. His yard backs up to the river and he was on one of his frequent walks, looking for arrowheads. The tide was low, leaving behind exposed mud and smooth granite. And then he noticed something that just didn't look right. "There she was just sitting there, sticking up like that, and I said heck what is this," recalls as he holds a large greenish colored rock. "It just didn't belong." The rock was covered in mud when Phil found it. It was hard to see the burn marks on the side. At first he thought it was a rock used to make arrowheads. Then he suspected it might be meteorite. He used a metal detector to check and found it wasn't metallic. |
||
|
|
| Health & Wellness |
|
Strangely like Fiction: Sponsored academics admit falsely claiming dairy hormone safety endorsements
Jonathan Latham, PhD & Allison Wilson, PhD
Independent Science News 2013-06-17 14:51:00
The fight over rbGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone) continues, even under new ownership. After acquiring rbGH from Monsanto, Elanco (part of Eli Lilly) has stepped up efforts to convince milk processors and the wider food industry that milk from rbGH-injected cows is safe. Central to their new campaign is a paper, commissioned through PR company Porter-Novelli, from eight prominent experts and academics in medicine and dairy science (Recombinant bovine somatotropin (rbST): a safety assessment). The authors are Richard Raymond, former undersecretary for Food Safety at USDA, Connie Bales of Duke University Medical Centre, Dale Bauman of Cornell University, David Clemmons of the University of North Carolina, Ronald Kleinman of Harvard Medical school, Dante Lanna of the University of Sao Paolo, Stephen Nickerson of the University of Georgia, and Kristen Sejrsen of Aarhus University, Denmark. The new paper was not peer-reviewed but it was presented at the July 2009 joint annual meeting of the American Dairy Science Association, the Canadian Society of Animal Science and the American Society of Animal Science in Montreal, Canada. It argues strongly for the benefits and safety of rbGH milk and has been widely distributed by Elanco. According to a rebuttal circulated by a number of consumer advocacy organisations, however, the paper misrepresents the position of various medical bodies (1). The paper claims, for instance, that the safety of rbGH is endorsed by the American Medical Association (AMA). Through their Campaign for Safe Food, Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility (Oregon PSR), has pointed out that the AMA has no policy on rbGH and offers no such endorsement. Instead, they note the April 2008 AMA newsletter cites past president Ron Davis saying "Hospitals should......use milk produced without recombinant bovine growth hormone". | |
|
Comment: Learn more about the 'corrupt science' behind rBGH (Bovine Growth Hormone):
Your Milk on Drugs: The Dangers of rBGH in Dairy Products Is Eli Lilly Milking Cancer by Promoting and Treating It? The Tale of rBGH, Milk, Monsanto and the Organic Backlash An FDA Ban On Genetically-Engineered Milk Is 20 Years Overdue Banned in 27 Countries, Monsanto's rBGH Inhabits Many U.S. Dairy Products Dr. Samuel Epstein's 20 Year Fight Against Biotech, Cancer-Causing Milk Case Study in Corporatocracy: Monsanto, Big Pharma, and the FDA Used Key Players to Approve rBGH Fox News Continues Persecution of Reporters Who Exposed Network Lies on Monsanto's rBGH |
|
|
|
|
Michael Snyder
Activist Post 2013-06-20 14:20:00
If you could get 70 percent of Americans addicted to your drugs and rake in $280 billion a year in the process, would you do it? If you could come up with a "pill for every problem" and charge Americans twice as much for those pills as people in other countries pay, would you do it? If you could make more money than you ever dreamed possible by turning the American people into the most doped up people in the history of the planet, would you do it? In America today, the number of people hooked on legal drugs absolutely dwarfs the number of people hooked on illegal drugs. And, sadly, the number of people killed by legal drugs absolutely dwarfs the number of people killed by illegal drugs. But most Americans assume that if a drug is "legal" that it must be safe. After all, the big pharmaceutical companies and the federal government would never allow us to take anything that would hurt us, right? Sadly, the truth is that they don't really care about us. They don't really care that prescription painkillers are some of the most addictive drugs on the entire planet and that they kill more Americans each year than heroin and cocaine combined. They don't care that antidepressants are turning tens of millions of Americans into zombies and can significantly increase the chance of suicide (just look at the warning label). All the big pharmaceutical companies really care about is making as much money as they possibly can. The following are 20 signs that the pharmaceutical companies are running a $280 billion money making scam... |
|
|
|
|
Mark Sisson
Huffington Post 2013-06-20 10:17:00
I find that grain bashing makes for a tasty, but ultimately unsatisfying meal. You all know how much I love doing it, though. But no matter how often I sit down to dine on the stuff (and I've done it with great gusto in the past), I always leave the table feeling like I left something behind. Like maybe I wasn't harsh enough about the danger of gluten, or I failed to really convey just how much I hated lectins. If I didn't know better, I'd think the mere mention of grains was eliciting a crazy insulin-esque response and throwing my satiety hormones all out of whack. I was filling up on anti-grain talk, but I just couldn't fill that void for long. Well, I've got the hunger today, and this time I aim to stuff myself to the point of perpetual sickness. I don't ever want to have to look at another anti-grain argument again (yeah, right). If things get a little disjointed, or if I descend into bullet points and sentence fragments, it's only because the hunger has taken over and I've decided to dispense with the pleasantries in order to lay it all out at once. So please, bear with me. Apart from maintaining social conventions in certain situations and obtaining cheap sugar calories, there is absolutely no reason to eat grains. Believe me -- I've searched far and wide and asked everyone I can for just one good reason to eat cereal grains, but no one can do it. They may have answers, but they just aren't good enough. For fun, though, let's see take a look at some of the assertions: |
|
|
|
|
Charlie Cooper
The Independent 2013-06-17 19:45:00
The majority of doctors, nurses and front line health workers were not vaccinated against flu last winter, official figures have revealed. Health officials said they were "very disappointed" with the figures, which mean that, despite drives to improve uptake, only 45.6 per cent of health care workers were vaccinated against seasonal influenza - only slightly more than the previous year. Of more than one million health care workers involved in direct patient care, 466,600 were vaccinated. Forty five per cent of doctors were vaccinated and only 41 per cent of qualified nurses. Professor Nick Phin, a flu expert at Public Health England (PHE), said: "We are very disappointed to see that fewer than half of frontline healthcare workers received protection against flu last winter, and that the number is only slightly more than the previous year. "Few healthcare workers will need reminding of the potential impact of flu during winter. Apart from reducing their chances of a miserable illness, vaccination is the only way to protect those patients who are at high risk of the complications of flu. PHE strongly recommends that all frontline health and social care staff take up the offer of vaccination before next winter, and that they encourage their professional colleagues to do the same." |
|
|
|
| Science of the Spirit |
|
Consumer 360
2013-06-05 18:07:00
Malcolm Gladwell has good news for underdogs: There probably is a way to win. But it's definitely not the easy way. "Most people who are running a weak team would rather do the easy thing and lose than do the hard thing and win," Gladwell said Wednesday at Nielsen's Consumer 360 conference in Phoenix. The author gave a preview of the themes from his upcoming book, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants - in which he finds that advantages in life aren't always ... advantageous. Case in point: A successful tech executive named Vivek who, in coaching his 12-year-old daughter's basketball team, had several things going against him. First, he was coaching a team of girls who were far from top athletes. And more importantly, he knew nothing about basketball, having grown up in Mumbai. But Vivek's outsider status made him see basketball in a way most people didn't. "He decided the way Americans play basketball is completely mindless," Gladwell said. |
|
|
|
| High Strangeness |
|
The Hindu
Residents of Mogappair claimed to have sighted an unidentified flying object (UFO) on Thursday night.2013-06-20 18:02:00 Around 8.55 p.m. on Thursday, V.S. Ragunathan, a bank officer, saw five specks of bright orange light moving from the south to the north in the sky. "The spots appeared in batches of five and disappeared after a few seconds," said Mr. Ragunathan. His wife and daughter and some of their neighbours too witnessed the spectacle. "There was no sound at all and the bright object was flying higher than an aeroplane. Some of our neighbours too saw it," said Jayalakshmi, Ragunathan's wife. According to P. Iyamperumal, executive director, Tamil Nadu Science and Technology Centre, the bright objects could be a result of meteor showers. "But the season for meteor showers is usually in November and December," he said. The air traffic control officials at Chennai Airport said they did not receive any reports of foreign flying objects. |
|
|
| Don't Panic! Lighten Up! |
|
Marc Lallanilla
Life's Little Mysteries 2013-06-20 10:37:00
If you suffer from ophidiophobia - an irrational fear of snakes - you may want to think twice before watching the above video. And if you assume that the albino Burmese python opened a closed door purely by accident, know this: Snakes and other reptiles are surprisingly clever. A 2011 study published in the Journal of the Royal Society: Biology Letters found that lizards are smart enough to solve puzzles to help them find food, and could quickly adapt to changes in those puzzles, meaning they're as smart as some other vertebrates. These findings upended previous assumptions about how higher intelligence is limited to social species with varied daily diets. Most reptiles are solitary creatures, and many will eat only occasionally, not every day. Perhaps it's time to deadbolt your doors - and hide the key in a snake-proof container. |
