Massive global banker scandal revealed – breaking news in the Mainstream Media

Hundreds of bankers across three continents are embroiled in the interest-rate fixing scandal that has left Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond fighting to save his job.

As pressure intensified on Britain’s highest paid banking boss to quit, MPs heard a string of other financial institutions across the world were under investigation.

At least 20 banks are believed to be under suspicion, with growing demands for a criminal investigation.

Barclays Bank Tower at Churchill Place, Docklands: The bank has been fined £290million over attempts to rig money market interest rates. HSBC is one of the twenty other banks also under investigation, it emerged today

Barclays’ shares crashed by 15.5 per cent in a day as the implications sank in, wiping £3.7billion from its value, with other banks also hit.

Barclays has been fined £290million after devastating emails revealed that its traders manipulated the London Interbank Rate (Libor) – the rate at which banks lend money to each other.

Chancellor George Osborne told the Commons the exchanges ‘read like an epitaph to an age of irresponsibility’.

On the blackest day for Britain’s finance industry since the 2008 economic crisis:

• Serious Fraud Office investigators were revealed to be in talks with financial watchdogs over the scandal
• David Cameron and Ed Miliband piled pressure on Mr Diamond to resign
• Barclays and other banks were braced for a damning verdict today in an official report on mis-selling of complex loans to 28,000 small firms
• Mr Osborne promised new criminal sanctions for those guilty of market abuse
• Downing Street faced a growing clamour for a judge-led public inquiry into the ethics of Britain’s banks

‘Epitaph to an age of irresponsibility’: George Osborne today briefed MPs in the Commons about the unfolding bank trading scandal

David Cameron, who is at an EU summit in Brussels, described the situation as an ‘extremely serious scandal’.

Mr Diamond, who was in charge of Barclays Capital at the time traders are now known to have been rigging the market, has offered to forgo his short-term bonus for this year. But he is still entitled to millions of pounds in salary and long-term share incentives.

Asked how much wider the rate-fixing scandal might go, the Chancellor told MPs: ‘HSBC and RBS are two of the banks under investigation, but international banks such as UBS and Citigroup are under investigation too, partly for activities conducted in this country.’

Mr Osborne said the total impact on the economy and on individuals was ‘extremely difficult to work out, because the Libor rate was manipulated up as well as down’.

‘Sometimes the rate was too low for the true market price, and sometimes it was too high,’ he said.

‘The Financial Services Authority has made it clear, however, that that contributed to a risk to the country’s financial stability, and the cost of that is enormous.’

Tracey McDermott, director of enforcement at the FSA, said: ‘The initial indications are that Barclays was not the only firm that was involved in this.’

As well as RBS and HSBC, others under scrutiny include Lloyds, JPMorgan Chase, Germany’s Deutsche Bank and Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi.

A number of employees have already been fired, suspended or put on gardening leave at various banks including state-backed RBS, which has sacked and suspended ‘several’ staff, though the bank declined to comment.

SACKED RBS TRADER ACCUSES BANK CHIEFS OF COLLUDING WITH STAFF TO RIG INTEREST RATES

The alleged behaviour at RBS started when Fred Goodwin was chief executive

Royal Bank of Scotland managers are accused of colluding to rig the financial markets in court papers filed by a former employee.

Tan Chi Min, a former head of delta trading for RBS’s global banking and markets division in Singapore, alleges that managers condoned collusion between its staff to set the Libor rate artificially high or low to maximise profits.

He names five staff members he claims made requests for the Libor rate to be altered and three senior managers who he said knew what was going on. He also says the practice ‘was known to other members of [RBS]’s senior management’.

Mr Tan, who was eventually sacked for gross misconduct, worked for RBS from August 2006 to November 2011 and it is believed the alleged behaviour started when Fred Goodwin, pictured, was chief executive.

He claims that he was made a ‘scapegoat’ for malpractice condoned by managers and is suing for wrongful dismissal.

In the court papers filed in New York as part of a class action, Mr Lin also implicates hedge fund bosses who have given thousands of pounds to the Conservative Party.

It is claimed that hedge fund Brevan Howard asked RBS to fix financial data by making false submissions. The fund donated £10,000 to the Tories and spent £3,542 on flights for George Osborne to attend a conference in 2008.

RBS said it was confident of mounting a successful defence against Mr Tan’s claims.
Last night there were reports the bank is to be fined £150million for similar offences to those committed by Barclays.

Lloyds said it had suspended two traders. ICAP, the leading City broking firm headed by Tory donor Michael Spencer, has also been dragged into the scandal. It has suspended one employee and placed two on ‘administrative leave’.

A senior manager at U.S. giant Citigroup’s Japanese operation left the firm late last year after his division was temporarily banned from trading linked to Libor and its Tokyo equivalent, Tibor, by the authorities.

Giant Swiss bank UBS said it had approached regulators with information over abuses of the rate-setting system.

The Libor rate is crucial, since it is a key benchmark for trillions of pounds’ worth of financial products.

The £290million fine on Barclays from the UK and U.S. authorities, issued on Wednesday, is likely to be only the beginning of a wave of punishments and civil suits for damages against other banks caught up in the global web of deceit.

Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds are two other UK-based banks under scrutiny as part of the probe

Experts said banks might have to set aside billions of pounds in damages to cover their liabilities resulting from the conspiracy.

Former Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott said that once any criminal probe was underway, a public inquiry – like the one being conducted by Lord Leveson into media ethics – would have to be held.

‘Clearly, the worms that are now crawling out from under the stones at the banking industry are even worse than any of us thought,’ he added.

THE WORDS THAT WILL COME BACK TO HAUNT BANK CHIEF

Speech: Bob Diamond alongside George Osborne at the Davos World Economic Forum

On 3 November 2011, Bob Diamond, chief executive of Barclays, delivered the BBC Today programme’s inaugural business lecture. Today, his words have come back to haunt him.

‘Rebuilding trust requires banks  to be better citizens. I believe  in this passionately.’

Within a few months of making this statement, Barclays was found guilty of a tax avoidance plot to rob taxpayers of around £500million.

Earlier in 2011, it had been found guilty of enticing elderly customers to gamble their life savings on the stock market. Around 12,000 customers lost half their savings. And this week it was found guilty of a ‘serious and widespread’ attempt to manipulate the Libor interest rates and ordered to pay a fine of £290million.

‘I know how angry customers are about issues such as payment protection insurance. That’s why we are working hard to clear claims as quickly as possible. We want to put things right.’

When a person takes out a credit card or personal loan, they buy the insurance to pay out if they lose their job, or have to stop working due to poor health. But banks, including Barclays, were selling the policies to people who did not need them. Barclays said the PPI scandal would cost them £1billion. Four months after making this speech, he admitted the bill had increased to £1.3billion.

‘But for me the evidence of culture is how people behave when no one is watching them. Our culture must be one where the interests of customers and clients are at the very heart of every decision we make, where we all act with trust and integrity.’

The Financial Services Authority this week found Barclays guilty of misconduct ‘extended over number of years’. The US Department of Justice said simply that the bank was guilty of ‘illegal conduct’ on its attempts to manipulate the Libor rate. The culture of Barclays allowed traders to manipulate Libor in a bid to make sure they scooped millions in bonuses, and to pretend the bank was in a healthier state than it was.

Dr. Mercola Interviews Dr. Huber about GMO

(Mercola) – Internationally renowned natural health physician and Mercola.com founder Dr. Joseph Mercola interviews Dr. Don M. Huber, one of the senior scientists in the U.S about area of science that relates to genetically modified organisms (GMO).

The Coming Revolution in Wireless

The proliferation of mobile broadband – including smartphones, tablets, and other data-centric devices – and applications and services from Facebook to GPS navigation has transformed the wireless world on many fronts and sent ripples throughout the industry. We used to just talk on our mobile phones. Now we text, email, watch videos, stream music, download games, and browse the Web. Based on this trend, industry observers forecast continued exponential growth in data traffic over the coming years.

According to Cisco, global mobile data traffic grew 2.3-fold in 2011, more than doubling for the fourth year in a row. The mobile-data traffic growth rate was higher than anticipated in 2011 and reached a level equivalent to eight times the size of the entire global Internet in 2000. Although mobile-network connection speeds increased 66% to an average of 315 kilobits per second (kbps) in 2011, such gains can't come close to keeping up with demand.

As data usage becomes more intensive, the gap between what systems can deliver and what people need is growing. Cisco forecasts that global mobile-data traffic will increase 18-fold over the next five years, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 78%, reaching 10.8 exabytes per month by 2016. (One exabyte is one quintillion bytes: 1.0 x 10¹⁸, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000.) In terms of what the expected demand on wireless systems will be versus the projected capacity of those systems, data from Cisco indicate that in the next two years there will be a 20-fold bandwidth gap between what you're going to want to do on your phone and what the network will be able to deliver.

Many of today's networks and products are already becoming overloaded by the explosive demand for data. And this is just the beginning.

Typically, when wireless carriers like AT&T or Verizon want to upgrade their networks to allow for more data flow and higher speeds, they have to purchase more spectrum at auction from the FCC. A recent example of this was the 700MHz auction in 2008. Both AT&T and Verizon bought large swaths of the 700MHz range to help build out their LTE 4G data networks.

The big carriers live and die by their spectrum, and they're spending billions to secure as much as possible. The problem is that we're now facing a spectrum crunch thanks to the growth of those bandwidth-gobbling smartphones and increasing demand for data across wireless networks. And it's not like we can just conjure up more spectrum.

But what if we didn't have to? What if we could boost the capacity of wireless networks by 100- or 1,000-fold without using any more spectrum? Turns out it might be theoretically possible.

The answer could lie in exploiting a relatively obscure property of light. Particles of light, known as photons, carry two kinds of angular momentum – what's known as "spin angular momentum" (SAM) and "orbital angular momentum" (OAM). SAM is associated with photon spin and is manifested as circular polarization, while OAM is linked to the spatial distribution of photons. To borrow a popular analogy, you can think about SAM and OAM like the Earth-sun system. SAM is akin to the Earth spinning on its axis, while OAM can be represented by the Earth's orbital movement around the sun.

The existence of OAM has been known for a long time, but in standard wireless communications like WiFi, we only modulate the SAM of radio waves. It was not until 2004 – when Miles Padgett and coworkers at the University of Glasgow demonstrated that classical information could be encoded in the OAM states of photons – that the wider scientific community began to ponder the use of OAM for communications networks. What's important about this is that while SAM has only two possible values, OAM can theoretically achieve an infinite number of possible states. These different states provide additional degrees of freedom within which to encode information without the need for a new frequency. Thus, since you could send any number of signals over the same frequency, OAM has the potential to tremendously increase the capacity of communications systems. This future may not be as far off as you might think.

Earlier this year, Bo Thidé of the Swedish Institute of Space Physics and while at the University of Padova in Italy, together with some Italian colleagues, confirmed the theory. They demonstrated in a real-world setting that it is possible to use two beams of incoherent radio waves, encoded in two different states of OAM, to simultaneously transmit two independent radio stations on the same frequency. The research opened the door, Thidé says, to the transmission of "an infinite number of channels in a given, fixed bandwidth." The spectrum crunch could be close to being solved.

Additional supporting evidence came just last week, when Alan Willner, an electrical engineer from the University of Southern California, and his team published a paper in Nature Photonics titled Terabit free-space data transmission employing orbital angular momentum multiplexing. Quite a title. But the gist is that through the exploitation of different OAM states, the group was able to transmit eight independent channels of data on the same signal across free space at a whopping 2.56 terabits per second (or 320 gigabytes per second). While this is below the world-record data-transmission speed of 26 terabits per second achieved last year by scientists at Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, it's the fastest wireless network so far using OAM.

We're not there yet. While the experimental results from Willner and his team are impressive, it's important to note that the transmission distance in this case was only about a meter, and the experiment took place in a vacuum. When asked about the prospects for transmission over long distances in free space, Willner replied:

This is the main goal. One of the challenges in this respect is turbulence in the atmosphere. For situations that require high capacity or spectral efficiency over relatively short distances of less than 1 km, this approach could be appealing. Of course, there are also opportunities for long-distance satellite-to-satellite communications in space, where turbulence is not an issue.

For now, however, spectrum remains a scarce and expensive resource. But we can imagine a future in which OAM technology pans out and is able to boost the capacity of wireless networks as the theory says it should. The result would be similar to how time division multiplexing (TDM) and code division multiple access (CDMA) technologies brought the price of cellphone access plummeting by allowing more information to transmit faster over existing channels. The large swaths of the electromagnetic spectrum that wireless carriers like AT&T and Verizon have paid billions for would no longer be necessary to ramp up speed and capacity; prices for unlimited data plans would plummet; and the business model for the whole industry would be rewritten overnight.

Chris Wood is the senior analyst for Casey Extraordinary Technology, which covers robotics, biotechnology, software development and every other aspect of the technology sector. He's also the manager of our analyst team, as well as a regular contributor to The Casey Report, our flagship publication, and the Casey Daily Dispatch.

If you enjoyed Chris' article today, you might also find a piece he wrote about advances in cyber warefare to be equally interesting.

Source: Casey Research

Maya archaeologists unearth new 2012 monument

(Phys.org) -- Archaeologists working at the site of La Corona in Guatemala have discovered a 1,300 year-old year-old Maya text that provides only the second known reference to the so-called “end date” for the Maya calendar on December 21, 2012. The discovery, one of the most significant hieroglyphic find in decades, was announced today at the National Palace in Guatemala.

“This text talks about ancient political history rather than prophecy,” says Marcello A. Canuto, Director of Tulane’s Middle American Research Institute and co-director of the excavations at the Maya ruins of La Corona. “This new evidence suggests that the 13 Bak’tun date was an important calendrical event that would have been celebrated by the ancient Maya; however, they make no apocalyptic prophecies whatsoever regarding the date," says Canuto.

La Corona for many decades has been known as the enigmatic “Site Q,” the source of many looted sculptures whose whereabouts had remained a mystery until its rediscovery only fifteen years ago. For the past five years, Marcello A. Canuto and Tomás Barrientos Q. (Director of the Centro de Investigaciones Arqueológicas y Antropológicas at Universidad del Valle de Guatemala) have directed the La Corona Regional Archaeological Project (PRALC) which has been investigating this intriguing Classic Maya city and its jungle environs.

In 2012, Canuto and Barrientos decided to excavate in front of a building that had been heavily damaged nearly 40 years ago by looters looking for carved stones and tombs. “Last year, we realized that looters of a particular building had discarded some carved stones because they were too eroded to sell on the antiquities black market,” said co-director Barrientos, “so we knew they found something important, but we also thought they might have missed something.” In fact, in 2012, excavations not only recovered 10 more discarded hieroglyphic stones but also something that the looters missed entirely—an untouched step with a set of 12 exquisitely carved stones still in their original location (in total, 22 carved stones were recovered). Combined with the known looted blocks, the original staircase had a total of no less than 264 hieroglyphs, making it one of the longest ancient Maya texts known, and the longest in Guatemala.

While the archaeological team investigated when and how this particular staircase was built, Dr. David Stuart, director of the Mesoamerica Center of the University of Texas at Austin undertook the decipherment of the many new hieroglyphic texts. Stuart was part of the first archaeological expedition to La Corona in 1997, and has been reading and reconstructing the site’s history ever since. The stairway inscription relates 200-years’ worth of political history of La Corona, its allies, and its enemies. Consistent with these themes, some of these stones portray rulers in various poses accepting tribute, dancing, and preparing to play the Maya ballgame.

Another entirely unexpected discovery was made on another stairway block bearing 56 delicately carved hieroglyphs. Stuart recognized that it commemorated a royal visit to La Corona in AD 696 by the most powerful Maya ruler of that time, Yuknoom Yich’aak K’ahk’ of Calakmul (located in modern Campeche, Mexico), also known as Fire Claw or Jaguar Paw. Calakmul had been an immensely powerful kingdom for centuries until its king was defeated in battle by his longstanding rival Tikal (located in modern Peten, Guatemala) on August 3, 695. “Scholars had assumed that the Calakmul king died or was captured in this engagement” says Stuart, “but this new extraordinary text from La Corona text tells us otherwise.”

It turns out that the defeated Calakmul king was neither killed nor captured; in fact, in the wake of his inglorious defeat, he was visiting La Corona and perhaps other trusted allies to allay their fears after his defeat. Why the reference to the year 2012? Does it provide a prophecy of what is to come? No, the reference to this important date has much more to do with events in the 7th rather than 21st century.

The key to understanding the reference to 2012 is a unique title that this Calakmul king gives himself. In the text, he calls himself the “13 K’atun lord”—that is, the king who presided over and celebrated an important calendar ending, the 13th K’atun cycle (9.13.0.0.0). This event had occurred just a few years before in AD 692. In order to vaunt himself even further and place his reign and accomplishments into an eternal setting, he connects himself forward in time to when the next higher period of the Maya calendar would reach the same 13 number—that is, December 21, 2012 (13.0.0.0.0).

Rather than prophesy, the 2012 reference served to place this king’s troubled reign and accomplishments into a larger cosmological framework. “This was a time of great political turmoil in the Maya region and this king felt compelled to allude to a larger cycle of time that happens to end in 2012,” says Stuart. This evidence is consistent with the only other reference to the 2012 date in ancient Maya inscriptions—Monument 6 from Tortuguero, Mexico. “What this text shows us is that in times of crisis, the ancient Maya used their calendar to promote continuity and stability rather than predict apocalypse,” says Canuto.

The project continues to study and record these newly carved stones, others of which record other important episodes of ancient Maya history. Furthermore, the project plans to continue to fieldwork at La Corona, directed by Tulane University and the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, supported by the Ministry of Culture of Guatemala

Source: Phys.org

Government orders youtube to censor protest videos

In a frightening example of how the state is tightening its grip around the free Internet, it has emerged that You Tube is complying with thousands of requests from governments to censor and remove videos that show protests and other examples of citizens simply asserting their rights, while also deleting search terms by government mandate.< /p>

The latest example is You Tube’s compliance with a request from the British government to censor footage of the British Constitution Group Lawful Rebellion protest,  during which they attempted to civilly arrest Judge Michael Peake at Birkenhead county court.

Peake was ruling on a case involving Roger Hayes, former member of UKIP, who has refused to pay council tax, both as a protest against the government’s treasonous activities in sacrificing Britain to globalist interests and as a result of Hayes clearly proving that council tax is illegal.

Hayes has embarked on an effort to legally prove that the enforced collection of council tax by government is unlawful  because no contract has been agreed between the individual and the state. His argument is based on the sound legal principle that just like the council, Hayes can represent himself as a third party in court and that “Roger Hayes” is a corporation and must be treated as one in the eyes of the law.

The British government doesn’t want this kind of information going viral in the public domain because it is scared stiff of a repeat of the infamous poll tax riots of 1990, a massive tax revolt in the UK that forced the Thatcher government to scrap the poll tax altogether because of mass civil disobedience and refusal to pay.

When viewers in the UK  attempt to watch videos of the protest, they are met with the message, “This content is not available in your country due to a government removal request.”

We then click through to learn  that, “YouTube occasionally receives requests from governments around the world to remove content from our site, and as a result, YouTube may block specific content in order to comply with local laws in certain countries.”

You can also search by country  to discover that Google, the owner of You Tube, has complied with the majority of requests from governments, particularly in the United States and the UK, not only to remove You Tube videos, but also specific web search terms and thousands of “data requests,” meaning demands for information that would reveal the true identity of a You Tube user. Google claims that the information sent to governments is “needed for legitimate criminal investigations,” but whether these “data requests” have been backed up by warrants is not divulged by the company.

“Between July 1 and Dec. 31 (2009), Google received 3,580 requests for user data from U.S. government agencies, slightly less than the 3,663 originating from Brazil,” reports PC World. “The United Kingdom and India sent more than 1,000 requests each, and smaller numbers originated from various other countries.”

With regard to search terms, one struggles to understand how a specific combination of words in a Google search can be considered a violation of any law. This is about government and Google working hand in hand to manipulate search results in order to censor inconvenient information, something which Google now freely admits to doing.

You Tube’s behavior is more despicable than the Communist Chinese, who are at least open about their censorship policies, whereas You Tube hides behind a blanket excuse and doesn’t even say what law has been broken.

Anyone who swallows the explanation that the videos were censored in this case because the government was justifiably enforcing a law that says scenes from inside a court room cannot be filmed is beyond naive. Court was not even in session in the protest footage that was removed, and the judge had already left the courtroom.

The real reason for the removal is the fact that the British government is obviously petrified of seeing a group of focused and educated citizens, black, white, old and young, male and female, go head to head with the corrupt system on its own stomping ground.

In their efforts to keep a lid on the growing populist fury that has arrived in response to rampant and growing financial and political tyranny in every sector of society, governments in the west are now mimicking Communist Chinese-style Internet censorship policies in a bid to neutralize protest movements, while hypocritically lecturing the rest of the world on maintaining web freedom.

Via a combination of cybersecurity legislation and policy that is hastily introduced with no real oversight, governments and large Internet corporations are crafting an environment where the state can simply demand information be removed on a whim with total disregard for freedom of speech protections.

This was underscored last year at the height of the Wikileaks issue, when Amazon axed Wikileaks from its servers following a phone call made by Senator Joe Lieberman’s Senate Homeland Security Committee  demanding the website be deleted.

Lieberman has been at the forefront of a push to purge the Internet of all dissent by empowering Obama with a figurative Internet kill switch that he would use to shut down parts of the Internet or terminate websites under the guise of national security. Lieberman spilled the beans on the true reason for the move during a CNN interview when he stated “Right now China, the government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in case of war and we need to have that here too.”

Except that China doesn’t disconnect the Internet “in case of war,” it only ever does so to censor and intimidate people who express dissent against government atrocities or corruption, as we have documented.  This is precisely the kind of online environment the British and American governments are trying to replicate as they attempt to put a stranglehold on the last bastion of true free speech – the world wide web.

Source: World Truth TV

GMO Farming, Glyphosate Significant Causes of Water Pollution

Water pollution and air pollution has been and continues to be a serious issue in many nations. Both of these pollution types are successfully bringing down the health of not only humans, but also animals, plant life, and the ecosystem as a whole. While the causes of water pollution and causes of air pollution are many, research is actually pointing a straight finger at GMO farming and chemicals like glyphosate for being important culprits.

Causes of Water Pollution – GMO Farming, Glyphosate Big Contributors

One groundbreaking study found that glyphosate, the active ingredient residing in the ever-so-popular Roundup product from Monsanto, is making its way into groundwater across the nation through widespread contamination of aquifers, wells, and springs. The explosive study that confirmed the contamination effect of Monsanto’s Roundup was published in the journal Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry in late 2011, where researchers discovered that 41% of the 140 groundwater samples taken from Catalonia Spain were actually above the limit of quantification.

The findings indicate that glyphosate actually doesn’t break down rapidly in the environment, and is continuously building up in concerning quantities. With glyphosate growing among the causes of water pollution, it is becoming more and more apparent that the chemical is polluting groundwater in alarming quantities, enough to pose a significant threat to the purity of drinking water wherever it is used.

How prevalent is this issue, really? One study conducted by a German university found very high concentrations of glyphosate in all urine samples tested. The amount of the chemical found in the urine was quite alarming, with each sample containing concentrations of 5 to 20-fold the limit established for drinking water. Unfortunately, the study doesn’t clearly say how many samples were tested for, and needs to be translated using one of the many translators available.

In addition, the issue of water contamination is only part of the pollution problem. Other findings, published in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, came across glyphosate in 60-100% of all air and rain samples tested for. This shows that glyphosate is not only among causes of water pollution, but also resides in the air due to massive overuse.

While GMO farmers and other individuals using Roundup are the heavy contributors, biotechnology giant Monsanto is ultimately fueling water pollution surrounding glyphosate involvement. Monsanto is the world’s largest provider and producer of glyphosate, and dominates the genetically modified crops market. With many of Monsanto’s GM crops being resistant to glyphosate-containing Roundup, glyphosate is sprayed in massive amounts in order to function properly against the resistant crops. In fact, 88,000 tons were used in the US in 2007 alone.

Regarding glyphosate being found in rain and streams in the Mississippi River Basin, Paul Capel, USGS chemist and author of one study has this to say:

“Though glyphosate is the mostly widely used herbicide in the world, we know very little about its long term effects to the environment. This study is one of the first to document the consistent occurrence of this chemical in streams, rain and air throughout the growing season. This is crucial information for understanding where management efforts for this chemical would best be focused.”

With glyphosate becoming more of an issue and player in the causes of water pollution, it is becoming more apparent that the massive use of this chemical needs to cease.

Source: Natural Society

Overcoming the Victim Mentality

Japan Diplomat: A problem with Fukushima No. 4 fuel pool would be the end of Japan — “We cannot sleep peacefully”

Google's 'brain simulator': 16,000 computers to identify a cat

Stanford computer scientist Andrew Ng next to an image of a cat that a neural network taught itself to recognise. Photo: The New York Times

Inside Google's secretive X laboratory, known for inventing self-driving cars and augmented reality glasses, a small group of researchers began working several years ago on a simulation of the human brain.

There Google scientists created one of the largest neural networks for machine learning by connecting 16,000 computer processors, which they turned loose on the internet to learn on its own.

Presented with 10 million digital images found in YouTube videos, what did Google's brain do? What millions of humans do with YouTube: looked for cats.

The neural network taught itself to recognise cats, which is actually no frivolous activity. This week the researchers will present the results of their work at a conference in Edinburgh, Scotland.

The Google scientists and programmers will note that while it is hardly news that the internet is full of cat videos, the simulation nevertheless surprised them. It performed far better than any previous effort by roughly doubling its accuracy in recognising objects in a challenging list of 20,000 distinct items.

Read more: The Sydney Morning Herald

Monsanto’s seedy legacy

Jane Burgermeister – Pandemic Update

Jane Burgmeister is an Austrian doctor that has discovered the conspiracies behind the Swine flu and vaccination programs. She has been researching and reporting about this and in the following video, she reports about a variety of stories and builds a case about the state of things.

McAfee discovers $78 million worth of sophisticated cyber attacks against banking systems

Security firms McAfee and Guardian Analytics have published a joint fraud report, dubbed Operation High Roller, on new methods of siphoning money from banking systems. Using a series of highly sophisticated cyber attacks to target high balance accounts, criminals have been able to successfully bypass physical "chip and pin" authentication and use server-based fraudulent transactions to steal money from a number of accounts in Europe. The attacks originated in Italy, using SpyEye and Zeus malware to transfer funds into fraudulent accounts.

Although the fraud requires an initial client-based attack, McAfee discovered 426 unknown variants of the typical Zeus or SpyEye malware that were difficult to detect. The most unique part of the attack is the ability for the malware to use JavaScript web injects to alter internet login experiences for users and glean login information and two-factor authentication tokens. Once the malware has successfully retrieved this information from an end user, it initiates a bank transfer while holding up a users session. "Financial institutions must take this innovation seriously," say McAfee, warning that the latest technique can be used for other forms of physical security devices.

The majority of attacks appear to have taken place across European banking systems, but McAfee warns that it has found evidence of attacks at Latin American and North American financial institutions too. The company is warning that 60 servers have been processing thousands of attempted thefts from high-value accounts over a period of months, resulting in attempts to steal at least €60 million (US$78 million). McAfee says that if all the attempted fraud attacks were successful then the total attempted fraud could be as high as €2 billion ($2.49 billion).

Source: The Verge

The Truth Behind The Energy Lie

Up to 20,000 Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes Released in Australian Towns

Do you remember how some scientists, researchers, and individuals like Bill Gates were trying to release genetically modified mosquitoes into the environment? Well, that endeavor isn’t quite over. Two towns in Northern Australia have recently been gifted with 10-20 thousand genetically engineered mosquitoes – almost completely replacing mosquitoes naturally occurring in the outdoors.

Different Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes?

Although the mosquitoes released are still GM, they aren’t exactly the same as the more well-known mosquitoes developed my Oxitec. Oxitec is a British company responsible for the creation of the genetically engineered mosquitoes containing a gene designed to kill themselves unless given an antibiotic known as tetracycline. The company created this internally manipulated insect to help control agricultural pests and reduce insect-borne diseases like dengue fever and malaria.

These new mosquitoes released in Australia, however, are developed with a slightly different strategy. A bacterium named Wolbackiapipientis infects numerous insects species, and harnesses the ability to alter it’s hosts reproductive ability. When this happens, entire populations become infected within generations, and when the bacterium infects mosquitoes, the mosquitoes’ ability to pass on the dengue virus vanishes.

Needless to say, numerous scientists, researchers, and many individuals have expressed concern regarding the release of genetically engineered mosquitoes. The first mosquito release by Oxitec took place in the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean in 2009, only for a second trial to occur in 2010, where 6,000 mosquitoes were released in Malaysia for further experiments. Now, 10-20 thousand mosquitoes were released in Australia, drilling the environment with even more genetically modified creations. As mentioned, many people are not happy about this.

Some individuals, such as Daniel Strickman, point out the obvious discomfort surrounding the possibility that the bacterium could become out of control once released – in a way that does not naturally occur in nature. In addition, mosquitoes less susceptible to dengue infection could in turn become more susceptible to other viruses.

Unfortunately, no peer-reviewed scientific proof of the safety of such biotechnologies can be offered. Long-term effects have not been at all measured, and once these insects are released, they can not be recalled. Here are but a few of the questions and issues regarding GM mosquitoes (or any GM insect for that matter).

• Will Oxitec need to acquire the free and informed consent of residents in Key West for the release of the GM mosquitoes? With the previous release of the mosquitoes in the Cayman Islands there was no public consultation taken on potential risks and informed consent was not given from locals.

• What could happen to the ecosystem and local food chain with the major decrease in the Aedes aegypti mosquito population?

• Tetracycline, the antibiotic Oxitec’s genetically engineered mosquitoes are supposed to have no contact with, is showing up in the environment. With tetracycline being present in the wild, these GE mosquitoes would survive and thrive.

• Mosquitoes can develop resistance to the lethal gene inputted by Oxitec. In fact, 3.5 percent of the insects survived to adulthood in laboratory tests despite carrying the lethal gene, according to Todd Shelly, an entomologist for the Agriculture Department in Hawaii.

• 0.5 percent of the released insects are female (the gender which bites humans); what happens to humans if bitten by the female mosquitoes?

• Who regulates releases, and who will be responsible in the event of complications – to any degree?

The truth is that we have no idea what the future holds for genetic modification and the potential impacts it has on the environment and public health. We know that the genetically engineered mosquitoes are equipped with a lethal gene designed to lower the mosquito population, but what does that really mean for humans? We simply do not know the potential outcomes that could arise from such creations.

Source: Natural Society

Tokyo Residents: Don't Touch the Black or Blue Dirt

Fukushima has been decimated by radiation.

But Fukushima City has less than 300,000 residents. And all of Fukushima prefecture has 2 million. On the other hand, greater Tokyo - the world's largest megacity - has 35 million inhabitants.

Tokyo soil has been blanketed by Fukushima radiation, even though the Japanese capital is 170 miles from the Fukushima nuclear complex.

Now, substances with even higher levels of radiation are showing up around Tokyo.

Minamisoma city council member Koichi Oyama writes:

People in Tokyo, the black substance is here!

***

Please, people who live around, look at that!

***

It’s on the roof, on the asphalt, on concrete… Everywhere on all surfaces.

“Almost every part where is black”.

“Those black substances have fallen away and because of the rain water it accumulates underfoot”.

“I think 1 micro is almost 100000 becquerels?, 1 second ?,?,? Ray 100 needles?”.

“Never touch them with naked hands”.

What is he talking about?

City council member Koichi filmed black "dirt" on the ground in various areas of Tokyo, showing very high radiation levels.

For example, here's Tokyo University last month:

Read more: Zerohedge

Research: Gulf Shrimp Widely Contaminated With Carcinogens

Conservative estimates indicate that the 2010 BP oil disaster released over 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf, followed by at least 1.8 million gallons of dispersants. While the use of dispersants helped mitigate the public relations disaster by preventing the persistent formation of surface oil, as well as keeping many beaches visibly untouched, they also drove the oil deeper into the water column (and food chain) rendering a 2-dimensional problem (surface oil) into a 3-dimensional one. Additionally, research indicates that dispersants prevent the biodegradation of toxic oil components, as well as increasing dispersant absorption into fish from between 6 to 1100 fold higher levels.

Since the event, both the mainstream media and the government have acted as if the oil disappeared, and that no significant health risks remain for the millions still consuming contaminated seafood from the Gulf.*

Now, a new study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives has revealed that the 2010 BP Gulf oil disaster resulted in widespread contamination of Gulf Coast seafood with toxic components from crude oil.1 In fact, levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in shrimp were found to exceed the FDA’s established thresholds for allowable levels [levels of concern (LOCs)] for pregnant women in up to 53% of Gulf shrimp sampled.

PAHs are well-known carcinogens and developmental toxicants, which is why the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is obligated to set risk criteria and thresholds for allowable levels of exposure to them.**

In the new study the authors set out to evaluate the degree to which the FDA’s procedures for determining the safety of Gulf seafood after the BP disaster reflect the current risk assessment guidelines and practices, as produced by other authoritative entities, including the National Research Council (NRC), the World Health Organization (WHO), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the California EPA. The authors focused on cancer risk associated with shellfish consumption, looking at whether or not the FDA’s guidelines protect the most vulnerable populations, e.g. pregnant women, infants.

The authors discovered a glaring discrepancy between the FDA Gulf seafood risk assessment (FDA 2010a) and the FDA’s own prior practice with risk assessment guidelines produced by other authoritative entities.

The FDA’s risk assessment was found to be seriously flawed because of the following six questionable assumptions:

The questionable assumptions include six main issues: a) high consumer body weight,b) low estimates of seafood consumption, c) failure to include a cancer risk assessment for naphthalene, d) failure to adjust for early-life susceptibility to PAHs, e) short exposure duration, and f) high cancer risk benchmarks. Taken together, these flaws illustrate a failure to incorporate the substantial body of evidence on the increased vulnerability of subpopulations to contaminants, such as PAHs, in seafood. Their final conclusion was as follows

Environmental risk assessment requires the use of scientifically founded assumptions and appropriate default estimates about the exposed population, the intensity and duration of exposure, and the dose–response relationship. The risk assessment methods used by the FDA to set safe exposure levels for Gulf Coast seafood after the oil spill do not incorporate current best practices and do not protect vulnerable populations. The FDA’s conclusions about risks from Gulf seafood should be interpreted with caution in coastal populations with higher rates of seafood consumption and in vulnerable populations such as children, small adults, and pregnant women. Our analysis demonstrates that a revised approach, using standard risk assessment methods, results in significantly lower acceptable levels of PAHs in seafood and identifies populations that could be at risk from contaminants in Gulf Coast seafood. Health advisories targeted at high-end consumers would better protect vulnerable populations such as pregnant women, women who may become pregnant, and children. Our approach did not address infant exposure to PAHs via maternal seafood consumption and lactational transfer. The NRC (2008) found up to 50-fold interindividual variability in cancer risk and recommends incorporation of estimates of uncertainty, as well as population risk distributions, into future risk assessments. Improved public health protection from contaminants in food will require reforming FDA risk assessment practices.Taken together, these findings demonstrate that the FDA’s conclusion that there are no significant risks to Gulf populations from oil spill–related contaminants in seafood are incorrect, and reckless when it comes to the health of the most vulnerable populations.

With reports now surfacing in mainstream media outlets on the appearance of eyeless shrimp and mutant fish, this latest finding probably only scratches the surface of a health problem in the Gulf titanic in proportions.

Source: Activist Post

Superbug vs. Monsanto: Nature rebels against biotech titan

A growing number of rootworms are now able to devour genetically modified corn specifically designed by Monsanto to kill those same pests. A new study shows that while the biotech giant may triumph in Congress, it will never be able to outsmart nature.

Western corn rootworms have been able to harmlessly consume the genetically modified maize, a research paper published in the latest issue of the journal GM Crops & Food reveals. A 2010 sample of the rootworm population had an elevenfold survival rate on the genetically modified corn compared to a control population. That’s eight times more than the year before, when the resistant population was first identified.

Experts are also noting that this year’s resistant rootworm populations are maturing earlier than expected. In fact, the time the bug’s larvae hatched was the earliest in decades.

“The Western corn rootworm 'season' is underway at a pace earlier than I have experienced since I began studying this versatile insect as a graduate student in the late 1970s,” entomologist Mike Gray wrote in The Bulletin, a periodical issued by the University of Chicago’s Department of Crop Studies.

Studies in other states have also revealed that the rootworm population is becoming increasingly resistant to genetically modified corn. Last year, Iowa State University researcher Aaron Gassmann noted that a number of farmers reported discovering, much to their dismay, that a large number of rootworms survived after the consumption of their GM crops. Gassmann branded these pests “superbugs.”

Farmers and food companies have increasingly been dependent on GM crops, and many have abandoned crop rotation, a practice that has been used to stave off pest infestations for centuries. Some have even gone as far as to ignore federal regulation, which require the GM corn plantations be accompanied by a small “refuge” of non-GM maize.

The recent findings have potentially devastating ramifications for both farmers and consumers. Genetic maize plantation would easily come under attack from the swelling number of “superbugs,” resulting in dwindling harvest numbers for farmers. Ultimately, consumers will pay the price not only for corn, an essential product whose derivatives are used in a plethora of products ranging from yogurts to baby powder, but for other crops sold in the market. Rising corn prices would mean that more farmers would plant corn, despite the risks, and the yield for other crops would drop. That would drive prices for virtually all food items up, hitting hard on a population already smitten by ongoing economic difficulties.

Monsanto launched its anti-rootworm GM corm in 2003. The Cry3Bb1 protein, derived from the Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt.) bacterium, was inserted into the corn’s genetic code. The embedded protein was supposed to be fatal to all rootworms.

The recent findings came days after Monsanto, along with other biotech companies, got a major boost from a congressional panel, which okayed the manufacture of GM crops despite pending legal challenges. Many of the lawsuits that Monsanto faces include assessments that its crops are unsafe for human consumption and affect the health of unborn children.

Monsanto has also been an active plaintiff itself. Its primary targets include entities that seek to label GM foods, and small farmers, whom the biotech behemoth accuses of using genetically modified crops patented by Monsanto.

Source: RT

Tick Bites Turning Meat Eaters Into Vegetarians

Ai Weiwei: to live your life in fear is worse than losing your freedom

Ai Weiwei holds the government document informing him of the expiry of his bail term, in Beijing today. Photograph: Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images

A year ago tomorrow, I was released from more than two months of secret detention. Police told me today that they have lifted my bail conditions. I am happy that the year is up, but also feel sorry about it. I have no sense of why I lost my freedom and if you don't know how you lost something, how can you protect it?

"Wei" means "future" and also "uncertainty", and the future really is unknown. They have said I cannot leave China because they are still investigating cases against me – for pornography, exchanging foreign currency and bigamy. It is very, very strange. I am not a criminal. They grabbed something from me because they have power.

The 81 days of detention were a nightmare. I am not unique: this has happened to many people, and is still happening. It's an experience no one should share. They were extreme conditions, created by a system that thinks it is above the law, and has become a kind of monstrous machine. Everybody who has been through it loses their original hope or has it changed somehow.

There are so many moments when you feel desperate and hopeless and you feel that's the end of it. But still, the next morning, you wake up, you hear the birds singing and the wind blows. You have to ask yourself: can you afford to give up the fight for freedom of expression or human dignity? As an artist, this is an essential value that can never be given up.

I often ask myself if I am afraid of being detained again. My inner voice says I am not. I love freedom, like anybody; maybe more than most people. But it is such a tragedy if you live your life in fear. That's worse than actually losing your freedom.

What I gained from the experience is a much stronger sense of responsibility, and an understanding of what the problems are and how one can understand what's happening and remain a positive force. You have to see your own position from the other side. At the same time you have to maintain a passion for what you are doing. You have to have sensitivity and joy. If you don't have that, you will be like a fish on the beach, drying up on the sand.

Read more: the Guardian

New Hampshire Passes First State-Wide Fluoride Warning Law

NEW YORK, June 20, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Beginning August 4, 2012, New Hampshire will require notification that 6-month-olds should not be routinely fed infant formula mixed with fluoridated water to avoid discoloring babies' unerupted teeth (fluorosis), reports the Fluoride Action Network (FAN).

Passed by the House, 253-23, unanimously by the Senate, and signed by the Governor, HB-1416 reads: "If a public water supply is fluoridated, the following notice shall be posted in the water system's consumer confidence report: 'Your public water supply is fluoridated. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, if your child under the age of 6 months is exclusively consuming infant formula reconstituted with fluoridated water, there may be an increased chance of dental fluorosis. Consult your child's health care provider for more information.'" The bill was introduced by Rep. Anne Cartwright (R-Alstead), and had four co-sponsors.

"Neither a nutrient nor required for healthy teeth, fluoride chemicals are added to public water supplies in a failed attempt to reduce tooth decay," says Paul Connett, Ph.D., FAN's Executive Director. "Current science shows that fluoride hardens teeth topically. Swallowing fluoride delivers risks without benefits," says Connett.

Fluoridated water contains 100-200 times more fluoride than breast milk. And all infant formula already contains some fluoride.

The Centers for Disease Control reports that 41% of 12-15 year-olds are affected with fluoride overdose symptoms - dental fluorosis, white spotted, yellow, brown and/or pitted teeth - from over-ingesting fluoride while their teeth were forming.

Connett says, "We are proud of New Hampshire legislators for taking this bold step. Fluoridation is a political issue and most legislators shy away from notifying constituents of any scientifically-verified negative effects from fluoride for fear of offending the dental lobby."

The scientific literature has been reporting for over a decade that mixing infant formula with fluoridated water is linked to dental fluorosis. And many government, health and dental agencies now advise against mixing fluoridated water and infant formula. But New Hampshire is the first state to require warnings on annual water reports.

Connett says, "We hope this gives legislators the courage to stop fluoridation entirely because several studies from China show even modest exposure to fluoride is associated with lower IQ. Fluoride promoters can provide no evidence that efforts are being made to either refute or repeat these studies in the U.S."

Source: Market Watch

They admit on CNBC that the Central Banks Rule the World

Privacy Lawyers Sell Out Facebook Users for $10 Million

Facebook is agreeing to give its users the right to “limit” how the social-networking site uses their faces in ads, as a part of a way to settle a privacy lawsuit brought against the company.

The other part of the settlement is $10 million in fees to the lawyers who brought the case against Facebook’s so-called Sponsored Stories program and a $10 million donation to charity.

Sponsored stories work like this: If a Facebook user ‘likes’ an advertiser, that user’s profile and picture may appear on their friends’ Facebook pages — in ads — stating that the person, indeed, ‘likes’ that advertiser. Facebook also reserves the right to do this on ads that appear on sites other than Facebook.

The suit, filed in April 2011, claimed that the social-networking site did not adequately inform people of the feature or give them a way to opt out of the advertising program that began in January 2011.

As part of the deal, the social-networking site will have to disclose to Facebook users in its new terms of service, which nobody reads, that it can use its 850 million users as public spokespersons for some company for just having “Liked” a company in order to watch a movie or get a discount.

Terms of the deal (.pdf) were unveiled Thursday and they require Facebook to let members be “capable of taking steps to limit their appearance in those ads.” Read that lawyerly phrase again — it doesn’t mean provide a way to opt out entirely.

The settlement, which still needs to be approved by a California federal judge, also says:

Facebook will create an easily accessible mechanism that enables users to view the subset of their interactions and other content that have been displayed in Sponsored Stories. Facebook will further engineer settings to enable users, upon viewing the interactions and other content that have been used in Sponsored Stories, to control which of these interactions and other content are eligible to appear in additional Sponsored Stories.

While the 45-page settlement agreement is nebulous at best when it comes to how much a Facebook user would be able to stop appearing on Sponsored Stories, the deal makes clear that plaintiff’s lawyers are entitled to up to $10 million in fees, and that Facebook will donate $10 million to charity. Facebook users receive no compensation under the deal.

Facebook contends in the settlement that it stands to lose as much as $103 million in ad revenue over the life of the two-year agreement.

Facebook and the plaintiff’s attorneys did not respond to calls and emails seeking comment.

It’s not the first time Facebook has run into legal trouble over user privacy, although the consequences of its actions have been minimal at best.

In November, the Federal Trade Commission slapped Facebook’s hand to settle government charges it “deceived” users that their information would be kept private, although it was “repeatedly” shared with the public.

The FTC deal, among other things, required Facebook to submit to a privacy audit every two years for the next two decades. The accord, which carried no financial penalties, demands that the social-networking site obtain “express consent” of its 850 million users before their information “is shared beyond the privacy settings they have established.”

In 2010, a federal judge approved a $9.5 million settlement to a class-action lawsuit challenging Facebook’s so-called “Beacon” program that monitored and published what users of the site were buying or renting from Blockbuster, Overstock and other locations without users’ permission.

The lawyers in that case were awarded about $3 million of the pot, and the remainder was earmarked for grants to study online privacy.

Facebook, without admitting wrongdoing, terminated the Beacon program, though much of it has resurfaced under the guise of Facebook’s so-called “frictionless sharing.”

What Does Microsoft's New Tablet Mean for Investors?

It is not an iPad, nor is it one of the many iPad wannabes from competitors like Samsung and Motorola. It's a Microsoft tablet. Not a tablet built by Dell or HP or Lenovo running Microsoft Windows, but an actual device built and sold by Microsoft.

The device, dubbed "Surface," has no publicly disclosed release date nor an indication of its price, but it is already making waves because it marks the first time that Microsoft has decided to build its own computer. The apparent decision to jump into the fray and compete head-on with Apple in the tablet market has sparked all sorts of reactions.

On one side of the equation, you have those people who are quick to point to the Kin (a failed Microsoft-built phone for Verizon Wireless) and Zune (a failed portable music device meant to compete with the iPod) as proof that Microsoft doesn't have the internal chops to do hardware right. The design process is different. The supply chain is an entirely new animal for a company used to just packing up software. And the company's DNA just doesn't support it, they say. Plus, what about the current original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) that sell Windows machines? Isn't making tablets their territory?

On the other side seem to be boosters of the strategy.  The "ecosystem model" has failed, they say. Commodity hardware doesn't deliver. These pundits have been quick to point out that Apple is basically unrivaled in market with the iPhone, with the iPad, and with more traditional computers like the MacBook they make far more money than any other OEM. These people want alternatives to Apple without having to sacrifice quality and ending up with some flimsy, plastic HP notebook and a slow, buggy Agros tablet.

Some in the latter camp even argue that Apple has so decisively run away with both the media and market share that Microsoft is being compelled to change its business model from software-platform licenser. Essentially, it is said, Microsoft has no choice now but to copy Apple.

Read more: Casey Research

Data Mining: Big Corporations Are Gathering and Selling Every Shred Of Information About You That They Can

When most people think of "Big Brother", they think of the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the Department of Homeland Security and other shadowy government agencies. Yes, they are definitely watching you, but so are many big corporations. In fact, there are some companies that are making tens of millions of dollars by gathering every shred of information about all of us that they can and selling it for profit to anyone willing to pay the price. It is called "data mining", and these data miners want to keep track of literally everything that you do.

Most people know that basically everything that we do on the Internet is tracked, but data mining goes far beyond that. When you use a customer rewards card at the supermarket, the data miners know about it. When you pay for a purchase with a credit card or a debit card, the data miners know about it. Every time you buy a prescription drug, that information is sold to someone. Every time you apply for a loan, a whole host of organizations is notified.

Information has become an extremely valuable commodity, and thanks to computers and the Internet it is easier than ever before to gather information. But that also means that our personal information is no longer "private", and this trend is only going to get worse in the years ahead.

You have probably never even heard of many of these companies that are making millions of dollars selling your personal information. Acxiom and Epsilon are two of the biggest names in the industry, and most of the time they are selling your information to companies that want to sell you stuff.

Almost every single day, very personal information about you is being bought and sold without your permission and it is all perfectly legal.

Read more: Activist Post

US Government Gives Classified Tesla Technology to UN for Sustainable Development Scheme

Wireless energy transfer (WET), a.k.a. wireless energy transmission, is the transference of electromagnetic energy transmitted from a central power source without the use of connecting wires.

Tesla’s coil experiments, proving the feasibility of WET, during his experiments in Colorado in the early 1900s were the pre-cursor to the “inventions” in this field today.

After Tesla died, the US government confiscated all documents pertaining to his experiments and classified them. Since the 1950s the US government has held this technology in secret.

In the UK, the induction power transfer (IPT) is the first commercially available wireless electric car charger. HaloIPT, a start-up corporation, has released this technology in certain areas of England’s motorways or car parks. Electric cars will be charged automatically when the integrated receiver pad is enabled.

General Motors (GM) has invested $5 million into a wireless charging device called PowerMat that uses inductive charging, which transmits electricity via magnets without any actual, physical connection. Since GM is owned by the US government, their new device may have more to do with the release of certain Tesla technology covertly.

Marin Soljačić, assistant professor at MIT, searching for ways to transmit power wirelessly, focused on mid-range power that could charge portable devices, such as cell phones, PDAs and laptops. Using the phenomenon of resonant coupling, Soljačić was able to tune two objects to the same frequency to exchange energy.

Magnetic resonance can freely transfer magnetic fields with little effect on the surrounding environment. This technique enables devices to automatically recharge by wireless transfer.

Soljačić attracted the attention of the US Department of Defense (DoD); which is now funding more projects to perfect the technology. According to their Fiscal Year 2012 Operational Energy Budget Certification Report, they are researching experiments to facilitate the energy required for military operations. In the name of national security, the DoD is “directly [supporting] military operations [that] require a steady supply of energy for mission success”. WET technology obviously would expedite this need.

In conjunction with the “2009 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) directed theappointment of a Director of Operational Energy Plans and Programs in the DoD . . . are coordinating and overseeing program activities related to the implementation of operational energy [strategies], research and development, investments” for the exclusive use of the US government.

Dr. Heinz Schandal, lead researcher for the Social Systems, Institutions and Governance in the Social and Economic Sciences Program at CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, is working with governments and local communities in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region to make “recommendations” regarding industrial and developing nations, and their relationship to sustainability.

Schandal, working with the United National Environment Program (UNEP), under the CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems Corporation, is coercing and pressuring nations worldwide through eco-terrorism to alter their lifestyle and consumption to reflect the UNEP’s international regulations.

In Australia, the UNEP and Schanal are admonishing the government of consequences of their resource use and emissions.

Seeking to change governmental policy to reflect the UN’s sustainable development adherence, as well as control individual household rights to energy and consumption, Australia is being pressured to adopt the mandates in the Growing the Green Collar Economy report.

The Millennium Project of the American Council for the United Nations University is turning toward WET to answer global energy needs. Soljačić’s technique for resonance transfer of magnetic fields is the perfect technology to further the UN’s movement toward governance over the world’s use of electricity.

The UN admonishes carbon dioxide emissions as the direct causation to global warming (although this theory has been debunked by empirical scientific data). With wireless energy transmission, Jerome Glenn, director of the Millennium Project, claims they will avert a “potentially catastrophic” global problem “and eventually open up new energy sources such as solar panels in Earth’s orbit.”

Funding for the UN’s new control endeavor is coming from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in collaboration with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Electric Power Research Institute.

Essentially, the US government is working with the UN to develop wireless energy transmission technology for the express use of the UN.

The support of the US government in the schemes of global governance of the UN locks this once independent nation into being an accessory to the march of the globalist Elite toward one world government.

Source: Activist Post

MegaUpload founder teases revolutionary new music sharing service

The founder of MegaUpload may be down, but he’s not out.

Despite having watched the U.S. government destroy his cloud-based storage website and accuse him of a “mega conspiracy” to defraud movie and music studios, online entrepreneur Kim Dotcom revealed this week that his ambitious new music service “Megabox” is still on track.

In an update published to the micro-blogging service Twitter, Dotcom revealed that his next business venture will connect artists and music lovers directly, offering free downloads and unlimited cloud-based media storage while also funneling advertising dollars to the content creators.

“The major Record Labels thought Megabox is dead,” Dotcom wrote. “Artists rejoice. It is coming and it will unchain you.”

Speaking to the technology publication Torrentfreak, Dotcom said the service, conceived more than a year ago, will allow artists to keep 90 percent of their profits from actual music sales.

Another innovation: artists will even get paid for free downloads through a new internal technology Dotcom is calling “Megakey.” It’s not yet clear how this would work, but it is likely based on technology developed for MegaUpload.

The service is expected to offer users free cloud-based media storage and social networking capabilities. A launch date has not yet been announced, but Digital Music News reported last December — just a month before Dotcom’s mansion was raided by police — that Megabox was already rife with major label content, and that they had partnered with Amazon MP3 and several other major players in digital music distribution.

“These guys think an iPad is a facial treatment, the internet is the devil, and wired phones are still hip,” Dotcom reportedly said. “They are in denial about the new realities and opportunities. They don’t understand that the rip-off days are over.”

Dotcom was arrested in January at his mansion in New Zealand after U.S. authorities accused him of running the largest copyright infringement scheme in history. Prosecutors are not having an easy go of the trial, however, and New Zealand courts have been hesitant to accept the charges at face value.

Source: Raw Story

George Carlin Message For The 2012 United Nations Earth Summit in RIO DE JANEIRO

Uruguay unveils plans to allow government to sell

Uruguay’s national government has said it plans to send a bill to Congress that would allow it to sell marijuana, making it the first country in the world to do so.

Under the plan, only the government would be allowed to sell marijuana and only to adults who register on a government database when buying the drug to keep track of their purchases over time.

Minister of Defence Eleuterio Fernandez Huidobro told reporters at a press conference in Montevideo that the measure aims to weaken crime in the country by removing profits from drug dealers and diverting users from harder drugs.

He said the bill would be sent to Congress soon, but an exact date had not been set.

Uruguayan newspapers have reported that money from taxes on marijuana sold by the government would go towards rehabilitating drug addicts. The government did not provide details.

There are no laws against marijuana use in Uruguay. Possession of the drug for personal use has never been criminalised.

Media reports have said that people who use more than a limited number of marijuana cigarettes would have to undergo drug rehabilitation and that money from taxes on the cigarettes would go to rehabilitating addicts.

But some Uruguayans wondered how successful such a measure could be.

“People who consume are not going to buy it from the state,” said Natalia Pereira, 28, adding that she smokes marijuana occasionally. “They’re going to mistrust buying it from a place where you have to register and they can typecast you.”

A debate over the move lit up social media networks in the country, with some people worried about free sales of marijuana and others joking about it.

“Legalising marijuana is not a security measure,” one man in the capital of Uruguay wrote on his Twitter account.

“Ha, ha, ha!” joked another. “I can now imagine you going down to the kiosk to buy bread, milk and a little box of marijuana.”

The idea is to weaken crime by removing profits from drug dealers and diverting users from harder drugs.

“The main argument for this is to stop addicts from dealing and reaching (crack-like) substances” such as base paste, said Juan Carlos Redin, a psychologist who works with drug addicts in Montevideo.

“Some studies conclude that a large number of base paste consumers first looked for milder drugs like marijuana and ended with freebase.”

Mr Redin said Uruguayans should be allowed to grow their own marijuana because the government would run into trouble if it tries to sell it. The big question he said will be, “Who will provide the government (with marijuana)?”

“If they actually sell it themselves, and you have to go to the Uruguay government store to buy marijuana, then that would be a precedent for sure, but not so different than from the dispensaries in half the United States,” said Allen St.Pierre, executive director of US-based National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML.

Mr St Pierre said the move would make Uruguay the only national government in the world selling marijuana. Numerous dispensaries on the local level in the US are allowed to sell marijuana for medical use.

Source: Hang the Bankers

ACTA rejected by committee in crucial blow before final EU Parliament vote

The International Trade Committee (INTA) of the European Parliament recommends rejecting ACTA.

The committee rejected the controversial legislation 19 votes to 12. This is the fourth and final committee to deliver its report on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), and will likely affect the European Parliament’s vote early July.

MEP Marietje Schaake, a member of the INTA committee, shares her satisfaction about the vote on the “undesirable treaty.”

“With this vote my committee has given an important advice to the plenary vote in two weeks. The EU should reject ACTA,” says Schaake, who has opposed ACTA since the beginning.

“ACTA contains some troublesome provisions for policy areas such as internet freedom and access to medicines. By regulating several policy areas in one document, ACTA enforces laws in an undesirable and dangerous way,” she adds.

“The way is now paved for a quick and total rejection of ACTA by the European Parliament! With a political symbol of such a global scale, the way will be open for copyright to be reformed in a positive way, in order to encourage our cultural practices instead of blindly repressing them,” concludes Jeremie Zimmermann, co-founder and spokesperson of the citizen advocacy group La Quadrature du Net told RT.

ACTA is aimed at protecting copyright in many industries from software engineering to agriculture. Critics say the national governments would have to make a draconian attack on online privacy to implement provisions of the treaty on their soil.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement has been in development since 2007. The purpose of the international document has been establishing international standards for intellectual property rights and creating a global framework for targeting counterfeit goods on the Internet.

ACTA supporters claim the treaty is the only way to respond to pirated copyright and global trade of counterfeit goods. Their opponents insist ACTA is an act of war, that would create a new governing body outside the existing World Trade Organization and United Nations.

In February, the EU suspended efforts to ratify the ACTA treaty due to a wave of protests from human rights activists and Internet users. Thousands rallied across the EU over the amount of power ACTA would give global corporations.

Source: RT

Malware Wars: Software Vendor Claims CIA and NSA Infiltrated Microsoft

According to Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer of antivirus and security software vendor F-Secure, U.S. intelligence infiltrated Microsoft’s core Windows and application development programming teams in order to spread the Stuxnet, Dugu, and Flame viruses.

A screen capture of a Windows error message on Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant’s map.

“The announcement that links Flame to Stuxnet and the conclusive proof that Stuxnet was a US tool means that Flame is also linked to the US government,” Hypponen told PC Pro last week.

“This makes you think that this breach of Microsoft’s update system was done by the Americans and most likely a US agency, someone like the NSA,” Hypponen said. “That must make Microsoft mad as hell that its most critical system, used by 900 million of its customers, was breached by fellow Americans.”

Although the NSA has worked with Microsoft in the past, Hypponen does not believe the software giant collaborated with the NSA and the CIA to exploit their own operating system.

“I don’t think Microsoft was in on it, that it was helping the US government and I don’t believe that because it looks very bad for Microsoft. I find it very hard to believe that Microsoft’s top management would have approved that,” he said.

“It’s plausible that if there is an operation under way and being run by a US intelligence agency it would make perfect sense for them to plant moles inside Microsoft to assist in pulling it off, just as they would in any other undercover operation. It’s not certain, but it would be common sense to expect they would do that.”

In 2003, it was speculated that the CIA had worked with Microsoft to build a backdoor for intelligence purposes in its software. In 2009, the NSA and the Defense Department worked with Microsoft on Windows 7 security measures.

“The key problem is that NSA has a dual mission,” Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronics Privacy Information Center, said at the time.

Following the revelation that the NSA was illegally collecting vast amounts of data on American citizens via the internet, Michael McConnell, then Director of National Intelligence, said the U.S. government should have unlimited and warrantless access to U.S. citizens’ Google search histories, private emails and file transfers.

Earlier this week it was reported that the U.S. and Israel collaborated on the sophisticated Flame virus which they unleashed on Iran’s oil industry and its nuclear program. Experts now believe Flame was built by the “same nation-state responsible for the Stuxnet virus that targeted Iran’s nuclear power plant in 2010. Many suspect Stuxnet was the work of Israeli intelligence,” Fox News reported.

The CIA, the NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, as well as the Israeli Embassy in Washington, declined to comment.

Kaspersky Lab researchers discovered a link between the two viruses earlier this month. Both take advantage of infected machines by exploiting a Windows flaw to launch the “autorun” feature.

Source: Infowars

Even bigger Big Brother: Facebook purchases Israeli facial recognition company Face.com

Facebook has purchased the facial recognition startup Face.com since Facebook has come under fire from European regulators for revealing a massive facial recognition database and been busted for spying on the text messages of smartphone users, showing a complete disregard for privacy.

If you continue to use Facebook in a state of ignorant bliss, hopefully this will help you wake up to the reality of what this internet giant is really up to.

A Facebook spokesperson put it, this acquisition seems purely logical and perfectly in line with their business model.

“People who use Facebook enjoy sharing photos and memories with their friends, and Face.com’s technology has helped to provide the best photo experience,” said the Facebook spokesperson to VentureBeat. “This transaction simply brings a world-class team and a long-time technology vendor in house.”

It also greatly enhances their facial recognition capabilities which Facebook will also most likely be applying to all photos captured by the other company recently purchased by Facebook: Instagram.

The privacy issues inherent in Faceboook’s move to snatch up Face.com are so blatant and impossible to ignore that even InformationWeek has raised the issue in an article entitled, “Facebook Buys Face.com: At What Privacy Cost?”

The actual terms of the deal between Facebook and Face.com have yet to be disclosed to the public but the previous reports released on the subject have placed the purchase price somewhere in the neighborhood of $80-100 million.

The pending deal is expected to come to be closed at some point in the next few weeks.

Face.com, which is a relatively new company founded in and based out of Israel, boasts some of the most cutting-edge consumer facial recognition technology which can not only identify people but also guess the age of a person in the photo.

One of their products is a camera application for iOS (which runs on iPhones and iPads) called KLIK which uses Face.com’s facial recognition technology to automatically tag their Facebook friends in photographs.

Reuters reports that a third-party Facebook application tracking service called AppData has reported that KLIK boasts 40,000 monthly active Facebook users.

“We love building products, and like our friends at Facebook, we think that mobile is a critical part of people’s lives as they both create and consume content, and share content with their social graph,” said Face.com CEO Gil Hirsch.

“By working with Facebook directly, and joining their team, we’ll have more opportunities to build amazing products that will be employed by consumers — that’s all we’ve ever wanted to do,” he added.

Reuters also reports that Facebook has quickly acted in an attempt to improve their image after the somewhat failed public launch by making some well thought out purchases and hires.

Facebook recently purchased Karma, a mobile “gifting” application, as well as iOS developers Pieceable Software and there have also been reports of Facebook investigating acquiring Opera for their mobile browser.

While all of this might sound fine and dandy, I would encourage my readers to consider the privacy implications as well.

Source: End te Lie