Wag the Dog: Media Publish Photoshop Forgery to Sell Image of War Torn Syria

While mainstream press have been hailing the virtues of the alliance between al Qaeda, the Syrian Free Army and the West in opposing Assad in Syria, they’ve also been caught once again “faking the war” to play up sympathy for an all out invasion.

Austria’s largest daily paper, Kronen Zeitung, with some 3 million readers daily, published this sympathetic photo, seemingly portraying a man carrying a baby and a woman in burka fleeing from some war-torn corner of Aleppo. However, it was later exposed to be a Photoshop forgery, juxtaposing the people walking on a normal looking corner with that of a blown out city block ravaged by heavy damage.

Click for larger image:

The subjects were apparently taken from the previously-published file photo credited to the European Pressphoto Agency, as the publishing notes next to the image indicate. The revealing side by side comparison was first posted to Reddit.com.

Gizmodo points out:

Just to be clear, the family in the photograph is, in fact, in Syria; the original photo (on the right) came from the European Pressphoto Agency. But merely fleeing a city ravaged by guns and mortars apparently isn’t quite dramatic enough on its own. The editors of the Krone—as it’s commonly called—needed this baby to sing.

A nearly identical example of war propaganda is depicted in the 1997 film Wag the Dog, where green screen technology was used to place an actor in a studio with a kitten in a war torn zone in Bosnia:

To be sure, the entire perception of the conflict in Syria has been (purposely) distorted in the media, including many blatant lies.

Remember the Syrian Danny hoax?

Advocating intervention, “Syrian Danny” was caught faking gun fire on CNN in order to portray heavy fighting that wasn’t really going on in the background while he literally begged for Western-backed forces to enter Syria and overthrow Assad. Paul Joseph Watson described the hoax: While waiting to be connected, Danny says, “Well, let the gunfire sound then,” before subsequently asking someone off camera, “Did you tell him to get the gunfire ready?” An explosion is heard soon after, but Danny doesn’t even flinch. The following video demonstrates this amazing stunt, which correlated with numerous other exaggerated reports issued by propaganda-activist Danny.

Another hoax was revealed after the BBC falsely portrayed an Assad-led massacre of children in Houla, using a photo from dead children in Iraq to play up the scale of the atrocity, which was later found to be the work of the al Qaeda-led Free Syrian Army.

A reported massacre in Homs was likewise a deception:

Obviously, these incredible lies and deceptions are not limited to the Syrian conflict, but have become a mainstay in this age of modern media. From the phony babies in incubators testimony to demonize Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf war, to the lies about WMDs in Iraq the next time around, false flag events to start most 20th Century wars, and so much more: these lies are not crafted to fool fact checkers, critics, historians or true investigative reporters, but to goad the general public into a wave of hysteria ensuring enough support to start a war and profit from the destruction.

Is it any wonder the chemical weapons / WMD story is being rehashed to drum up a crescendo of apparent legitimacy for an otherwise naked coup? They are literally asking the public to cheer for al Qaeda.

Modern warfare is no longer limited to the physical assault. Television and the Internet have made propaganda an indispensable force to wage war by other means– besieging allies and public support to isolate Assad and diffuse his defenses on the media/international community front long enough to complete the kill. Syria, like Libya, has been a classic proxy war, with the hidden hand of the United States and its western allies only partial obscured. That is, in the most general sectors of public knowledge, opinion and discussion about the Syrian conflict is saturated with the deliberately crafted lie demonizing the target and producing mass levels of knee-jerk support for the action. In this case: bad guy = Assad Gaddafi Saddam Bin Laden baby talk about boogie men.

But the truth is plainly laid as well, for anyone willing to face it.

IN YOUR FACE: AL QAEDA IS RUN FROM WASHINGTON D.C.

Take a look at some of the videos analyzed in this story. The Syrian rebels have been on a killing spree. And they’ve been killing as many civilians, including women and children, as they have government forces backing Assad. After all, they are the feared al Qaeda forces, pursuing the radical goals of the jihadists in an even more radical partnership with the West. While the Assad regime is authoritarian and hardly supportable, the entire action is timed around policy based in Washington, D.C. We’ve been lied to about who the good guys are in Syria (nobody in power wears a white hat in those parts).

There is no avoiding the fact that while TSA expands across the public sector to catch imaginary terrorists and harass the public, the nation’s military forces are NOT fighting al Qaeda overseas; we are currently giving them aid, comfort, and new claims to mideast power, as in Libya, and now in Syria.

Source: Infowars

You Think GMO Is Scary? Nano Tech is Here, In Your Store

Nanotechnology is measured in billionths of a meter, encompassing all aspects of life from food to medicine, clothing, to space. Imagine hundreds of microcomputers on the width of a strand of hair programmed for specific tasks....in your body. Sound good?

Engineering at a molecular level may be a future corporations' dream come true, however, nano-particles inside your body have few long-term studies especially when linked to health issues. Despite this new huge income-generating field there is a growing body of toxicological information suggesting that nanotechnology when consumed can cause brain damage (as shown in largemouth bass), and therefore should undergo a full safety assessment.

It is possible for nano-particles to slip through the skin, suggestive of a potential unnatural interaction with the immune system, or when micro particles enter the blood-stream. Some sunscreens on the shelf today, for instance, have nano-particles that might be able to penetrate the skin, move between organs, with unknown health effects. Nano-particles in cosmetics have few regulations done by FDA.

Thomas Faunce, of the Australian National University, who holds an Australian Research Council fellowship that looks at public nanotechnology health issues, said study's findings are significant and strengthens the case for mandatory labeling, and that stringent safety data should be required from manufacturers.'' Research is showing that nano-particles have the capacity to damage living cells and the precautionary principle should be applied,'' he said.

In 2005, The Helmut Kaiser Consultancy Group, global leaders in pro-nanotechnology, stated that about 300 nano-food products were available on the market worldwide estimating that market alone was worth 5.4 billion dollars in the USA. That was then.

By 2015, (just a few years away) they predict that nanotechnology will be used in 40% of the food industries. According to these consultants, by 2040, nano-produced food, with correct nutritional composition, maintaining the same taste and texture of organically produced food, will be commonplace, the norm.

It is clear that nanotechnology is already in the in some food and cosmetics, (including anti aging products and sunscreens). 'Smart' packaging and tracking, is ubiquitous. Invisible, (to the naked eye and some microscopes), edible nano-wrappers, complete with bar codes can track not only early spoilage, but improve the taste of food, or, whatever is called food. Manufacturers are excited because the availability of food would no longer be affected by limited resources, bad crop weather, water problems, etc. A modern way to feed the world.

Where is the public debate, on the labeling of nano particles in your foods, or cosmetics, or the risks? Probably no where...Political leaders are still arguing on requiring GMO (genetically modified) labeling, it seems.

When lab rats are starved, and given a choice to eat organic potatoes or GMO, they go right to the organic. When only given the GMO potato they will eat it, or starve to death ... (studies have shown severe damage subsequently). What do rats know?

So the next time you reach for something that say's 'smart'...think about what that means. Learn what you can about the source of what you put in, or on your body. Smart mini micro computers to control your skin and body fluids?

Source: Activist Post

Engineers create ultra-sensitive artificial skin

Engineers from South Korea and the United States working together have developed a new type of artificial skin that is less complex, cheaper to make and more sensitive than other electronic sensors designed to mimic human skin. In their paper published in Nature Materials, the team says the idea for their strain gauging material came from the way tiny hairs on some beetles’ bodies interlock with equally tiny hairs on their wings, allowing them to sense very small external stimuli.

To replicate the beetle sensing abilities, the team attached a multitude of polymer fibers, each just 1 micrometer long and 100 nanometers around, to a solid base, forming what looked like a tiny bed of nails. They then created another just like it and placed in on top of the first, causing the “hairs” of each to intermingle, sort of like pushing two hairbrushes together. Since each fiber was coated with a very thin layer of metal, the team was able to measure electrical current sent though them. The amount of current varied at each hair junction depending on how much of the hair touched another, and that varied depending on external stimulation. With this arrangement, the team was able to measure torque (twisting motion), direct overhead pressure and sheer, which is what happens when the material is subjected to sideways movement, such as a gentle caress.

In testing their artificial skin, the team found that they were able to trace the path of a tiny bug as it made its way across its surface, to detect the motion of a water droplet and even the subtle beating of a human heart when it was placed against the skin.

The researchers say that their method replaces the complex circuits that others have used to allow robots to “feel” their environment with something that is much simpler to create and use. Their design is also somewhat proven in that the sensor reception electronics is not unlike that used in some screen displays that rely on tactile input via user’s fingers.

In addition to allowing robots to gain a better understanding of their environment, it’s possible the new technology might one day be used to help human beings who have lost feeling in their skin or better, as way to restore sensation to those with artificial limbs.

More information: A flexible and highly sensitive strain-gauge sensor using reversible interlocking of nanofibres, Nature Materials (2012) doi:10.1038/nmat3380

Abstract
Flexible skin-attachable strain-gauge sensors are an essential component in the development of artificial systems that can mimic the complex characteristics of the human skin. In general, such sensors contain a number of circuits or complex layered matrix arrays. Here, we present a simple architecture for a flexible and highly sensitive strain sensor that enables the detection of pressure, shear and torsion. The device is based on two interlocked arrays of high-aspect-ratio Pt-coated polymeric nanofibres that are supported on thin polydimethylsiloxane layers. When different sensing stimuli are applied, the degree of interconnection and the electrical resistance of the sensor changes in a reversible, directional manner with specific, discernible strain-gauge factors. The sensor response is highly repeatable and reproducible up to 10,000 cycles with excellent on/off switching behaviour. We show that the sensor can be used to monitor signals ranging from human heartbeats to the impact of a bouncing water droplet on a superhydrophobic surface.

Source: Phys.org

Approved: The First Swallowable Electronic Devices

Smart Pills Proteus Biomedical

No matter how fast pharmaceutical companies can churn out drugs to prevent or cure illnesses, health insurance doesn't cover the cost of hiring a person to follow you around and remind you to take your meds. So the FDA has approved a pill that can do it on its own by monitoring your insides and relaying the information back to a healthcare provider.

The pills, made by Proteus Digital Health, have sand-particle-sized silicon chips with small amounts of magnesium and copper on them. After they're swallowed, they generate voltage as they make contact with digestive juices. That signals a patch on the person's skin, which then relays a message to a mobile phone given to a healthcare provider. It's only been approved for use with placebos right now, but the company is hoping to get it approved for use with other drugs (which would be where it would get the most use).

Even if there's a slight whiff of dystopia about a pill that tracks your actions, it does help with a major problem. Patients aren't the best at taking their pills, especially those suffering from chronic illnesses, so it's one step of many toward a future where they don't have to.

Source: Popsci

Study of Lucid Dreamers Leads to Better Understanding of Consciousness

Scientists studying lucid dreamers – men and women who can become fully aware in and control their dreams – have pinpointed a specific area of the brain that enables people to perceive the world in a self-reflective manner. The organic components that allow for this kind of metacognition have eluded scientists for some time, and this ground-breaking study could pave the way for a better understanding of how people think and process information.

The human capacity of self-perception, self-reflection and consciousness development are among the unsolved mysteries of neuroscience. Despite modern imaging techniques, it is still impossible to fully visualise what goes on in the brain when people move to consciousness from an unconscious state. The problem lies in the fact that it is difficult to watch our brain during this transitional change. Although this process is the same, every time a person awakens from sleep, the basic activity of our brain is usually greatly reduced during deep sleep. This makes it impossible to clearly delineate the specific brain activity underlying the regained self-perception and consciousness during the transition to wakefulness from the global changes in brain activity that takes place at the same time.

Read more at EurekaAlert.

Top 10 GMO Foods to Avoid

It’s important to note that steering clear from these foods completely may be difficult, and you should merely try finding other sources than your big chain grocer.

If produce is certified USDA-organic, it’s non-GMO (or supposed to be!) Also, seek out local farmers and booths at farmer’s markets where you can be ensured the crops aren’t GMO.

Even better, if you are so inclined: Start organic gardening and grow them yourself.

Top 10 Worst GMO Foods for Your GMO Foods List

1. Corn: This is a no-brainer. If you’ve watched any food documentary, you know corn is highly modified. “As many as half of all U.S. farms growing corn for Monsanto are using genetically modified corn,” and much of it is intended for human consumption. Monsanto’s GMO corn has been tied to numerous health issues, including weight gain and organ disruption.

2. Soy: Found in tofu, vegetarian products, soybean oil, soy flour, and numerous other products, soy is also modified to resist herbicides. As of now, biotech giant Monsanto still has a tight grasp on the soybean market, with approximately 90 percent of soy being genetically engineered to resist Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup. In one single year, 2006, 96.7 million pounds of glyphosate was sprayed on soybeans alone

3. Sugar: According to NaturalNews, genetically-modified sugar beets were introduced to the U.S. market in 2009. Like others, they’ve been modified by Monsanto to resist herbicides. Monsanto has even had USDA and court-related issues with the planting of it’s sugarbeets, being ordered to remove seeds from the soil due to illegal approval.

4. Aspartame: Aspartame is a toxic additive used in numerous food products, and should be avoided for numerous reasons, including the fact that it is created with genetically modified bacteria.

5. Papayas: This one may come as a surprise to all of you tropical-fruit lovers. GMO papayas have been grown in Hawaii for consumption since 1999. Though they can’t be sold to countries in the European Union, they are welcome with open arms in the U.S. and Canada.

6. Canola: One of the most chemically altered foods in the U.S. diet, canola oil is obtained from rapeseed through a series of chemical actions.

7. Cotton: Found in cotton oil, cotton originating in India and China in particular has serious risks.

8. Dairy: Your dairy products contain growth hormones, with as many as one-fifth of all dairy cows in America are pumped with these hormones. In fact, Monasnto’s health-hazardous rBGH has been banned in 27 countries, but is still in most US cows. If you must drink milk, buy organic.

9 and 10. Zucchini and Yellow Squash: Closely related, these two squash varieties are modified to resist viruses.

The dangers of some of these foods are well-known. The Bt toxin being used in GMO corn, for example, was recently detected in the blood of pregnant women and their babies. But perhaps more frightening are the risks that are still unknown.

With little regulation and safety tests performed by the companies doing the genetic modifications themselves, we have no way of knowing for certain what risks these lab-created foods pose to us outside of what we already know.

The best advice: steer clear of them altogether.

Source: Activist Post

Crime fighters have long used brains and brawn, but now a new kind of technology known as “predictive policing” promises to make them more efficient.

A growing number of law enforcement agencies, in the US and elsewhere, have been adopting software tools with predictive analytics, based on algorithms that aim to predict crimes before they happen.

The concept sounds like something out of science fiction and the thriller “Minority Report” based on a Philip K. Dick story.

Without some of the sci-fi gimmickry, police departments from Santa Cruz, California, to Memphis, Tennessee, and law enforcement agencies from Poland to Britain have adopted these new techniques.

The premise is simple: criminals follow patterns, and with software — the same kind that retailers like Wal-Mart and Amazon use to determine consumer purchasing trends — police can determine where the next crime will occur and sometimes prevent it.

Colleen McCue, a behavioral scientist at GeoEye, a firm that works with US Homeland Security and local law enforcement on predictive analytics, said studying criminal behavior was not that different from examining other types of behavior like shopping.

“People are creatures of habit,” she said.

“When you go shopping you go to a place where they have the things you’re looking for… the criminal wants to go where he will be successful also.”

She said the technology could help in cities where tight budgets were forcing patrol reductions.

“When police departments are laying more sworn personnel, they can do more with less,” she said.

The key to success in predictive policing is getting as much data as possible to determine patterns. This can be especially useful in property crimes like auto theft and burglary, where patterns can be detected.

“You can build a model that factors in attributes like the time of year, whether it is hot and humid or cold and snowy, if it is a payday when people are carrying a lot of cash,” says Mark Cleverly, who heads the IBM unit for predictive crime analytics.

“It’s not saying a crime will occur at a particular time and place, no one can do that. But it can say you can expect a wave of vehicle thefts based one everything we know.”

IBM has worked with dozens of agencies such as London’s Metropolitan Police, the Polish National Police and a number of US and Canadian cities.

In Memphis, officials said serious crimes fell 30 percent and violent crimes declined 15 percent since implementing predictive analytics in a program with IBM and the University of Memphis in 2006.

The program known as CRUSH — Criminal Reduction Utilizing Statistical History — targeted certain “hot spots” to allow police to deploy more efficiently.

John Williams, crime analysis manager for the city’s police, said the system has had a dramatic impact, allowing Memphis to get off the list of worst US cities for crime.

“If the data is indicating a hot spot, we are able to immediately deploy resources there. And in a lot of instances we are able to make quality arrests because we’re in the right area at the right time,” he told AFP.

Although beat officers can use their instincts for similar results, Williams said the software could be far more precise, such as predicting burglaries in a small geographic area between 10 pm and 2 am.

In one case, the software was able to help police break up a group that was committing armed robberies on the city’s Hispanic population.

“There were 84 robberies, but we had no idea it was so organized,” Williams said.

By crunching the numbers, police were able to pinpoint the zone and time of likely holdups: “We caught a group of robbers in progress, we had leads on additional robberies,” he said.

Williams said police officials from as far away as Hong Kong, Rio de Janeiro and Estonia have come to review the experience in Memphis.

In Los Angeles, another program developed by scientists at the University of California-Los Angeles and Santa Clara University was tested in a single precinct, and resulted in a 12 percent drop in crime while the rest of the city saw a 0.2 percent increase.

That test and others led to the creation of a company called PredPol.

And Los Angeles will expand its use of the program under contract with PredPol, said CEO Caleb Baskin.

Baskin said the system is based on a model from mathematician George Mohler which “is very effective in predicting the time and location for crimes that have not yet taken place.”

PredPol had begun working with other cities in California and “we’ve had inquiries from a lot of places in the US and international locations,” Baskin said.

“The science that underlies the tool will work anywhere. The question is does the agency maintain a database that we can plug into.”

While use of such analytics generally wins plaudits for helping “smarter” policing, it does raise concerns about Big Brother-like snooping.

Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, a law professor at the University of the District of Columbia, said the use of technology could be positive but that it could lower the threshold for constitutional protections on “unreasonable” searches.

“To stop you and frisk you and search you, a police officer needs reasonable suspicion, so my question is how will this affect reasonable suspicion?” he said.

If the search is based on a computer algorithm, Ferguson said, and the case comes to court, “How do you cross-examine a computer?”

IBM’s Cleverly said the technology can in many cases improve privacy.

“You can pinpoint the record of who has access to information, you have a solid history of what’s going on, so if someone is using the system for ill you have an audit trail,” he said.

As for “The Minority Report” and its predictive software, Cleverly said, “It was a great film and great short story, but it’s science fiction and will remain science fiction. That’s not what this is about.”

Source: Raw Story

Fluoride Lowers IQ in Kids, New Study Shows

A review of some two dozen studies by Harvard University researchers published this month in a peer-reviewed federal journal suggests that fluoride added into water supplies “significantly” decreases the IQ of children, leading to renewed calls by activists to end the controversial practice of fluoridation. Most public water supplies in the United States still have the chemical added in by authorities under the guise of preventing tooth decay.

"The children in high fluoride areas had significantly lower IQ than those who lived in low fluoride areas," noted the Harvard research scientists about the results of their study, echoing claims by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that there is substantial evidence of developmental neurotoxicity associated with the chemical. “The results support the possibility of an adverse effect of high fluoride exposure on children’s neurodevelopment.” 

The researchers also expressed concerns about the potential of fluoride to cause irreversible brain damage in unborn children. "Fluoride readily crosses the placenta,” they observed. “Fluoride exposure to the developing brain, which is much more susceptible to injury caused by toxicants than is the mature brain, may possibly lead to damage of a permanent nature."

The study, which was published on July 20 in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives of the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, also called for further studies on the issue. While fluoride may cause neurotoxicity in animals and adults, not enough was known about the chemical’s effects on the neurodevelopment of children, the researchers said.

“Fluoride seems to fit in with lead, mercury, and other poisons that cause chemical brain drain,” noted senior study author Philippe Grandjean, a professor of environmental health at Harvard. “The effect of each toxicant may seem small, but the combined damage on a population scale can be serious, especially because the brain power of the next generation is crucial to all of us.”

Of course, the latest study is hardly the first to document the toxic effects of fluoride on the human brain. Even recently, after some two dozen studies documented the problem, scientists and experts spoke out about the dangers of fluoridation.

“In this study we found a significant dose-response relation between fluoride level in serum and children’s IQ,” observed Fluoride Action Network director Paul Connett, Ph.D., after a previous study was released showing the same effects. “This is the 24th study that has found this association, but this study is stronger than the rest.”

Numerous other studies, including a 2006 report by the U.S. National Academy of Science, have concluded that fluoride affects brain function and can cause other health problems. Most of the research so far, however, has been conducted abroad — much of it in countries without government fluoridation of public water supplies.

In the United States, authorities have been fluoridating the water for decades, and very few proper investigations have studied its potential effects — especially on the developing minds of children. But opposition to the practice is growing quickly, with each new study adding fuel to the fire.

A broad coalition of American attorneys, doctors, dentists, and activists has long demanded that authorities stop adding fluoride to the public’s drinking water. And like other recent studies highlighting the myriad dangers, the latest research — especially because it was published in a federal journal — has already been seized on by opponents of water fluoridation.

"It's senseless to keep subjecting our children to this ongoing fluoridation experiment to satisfy the political agenda of special-interest groups," said attorney Paul Beeber, president of the New York State Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation. "Even if fluoridation reduced cavities, is tooth health more important than brain health? It's time to put politics aside and stop artificial fluoridation everywhere."

Alleged dental benefits aside, other critics of water fluoridation oppose the controversial practice in principle, pointing out that instead of being used to purify the water supply, it is added to treat people in what amounts to the mass-medication of populations without lawfully required individual consent. Some experts even challenge the supposed usefulness of fluoride in preventing cavities.

As evidence about the dangers of fluoridation continues to build, however, communities across America have been debating whether or not to stop medicating people through the water supply. More than a few municipal governments have already stopped the controversial practice altogether. But as analysts have noted, officials and much of the mainstream medical establishment have tended to ignore the growing amount of research exposing the toxicity of fluoride.

“Will the latest Harvard-backed study be ignored by major public health organizations, or will serious change be initiated?” wondered Natural Society’s Anthony Gucciardi, citing decades-old evidence that the toxic chemical leads to a wide array of health problems including brain damage, accelerated tumor growth, and even death. “This should come as no surprise to those who have followed fluoride research over the past several years.”

The most recent study on fluoride relied on more than two dozen previous studies documenting the effects of the chemical on the brains. Researchers concluded that future investigations should examine information on exposure by unborn children and neurobehavioral performance.

Activists hope the latest research may be the beginning of the end for proponents of mass medicating Americans through the water supply. However, considering the vast amount of research already available that has been largely overlooked or even concealed by public health authorities, it remains unclear whether any significant reforms will be forthcoming.

Native American Prophecy

Google: Didn't delete Street View data after all

After being caught spying on people across Europe and Australia with its Wi-Fi-slurping Street View cars, Google had told angry regulators that it would delete the ill-gotten data.

Google broke its promise.

Britain's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) received a letter from Google in which the company admits it kept a "small portion" of the electronic information it had been meant to get rid of.

"Google apologizes for this error," Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel, said in the letter, which the ICO published on its website.

The ICO said in a statement that Google Inc. had agreed to delete all that data nearly two years ago, adding that its failure to do so "is cause for concern."

Other regulators were less diplomatic, with Ireland's deputy commissioner for data protection, Gary Davis, calling Google's failure "clearly unacceptable." Davis said his organization had conveyed its "deep unhappiness" to Google and wants answers by Wednesday.

Google said that other countries affected included France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Austria and Australia. Attempts to reach regulators in several of those countries weren't immediately successful Friday.

Google angered officials on both sides of the Atlantic in 2010 when it acknowledged that its mapping cars, which carried cameras across the globe to create three-dimensional maps of the world's streets, had also scooped up passwords and other data being transmitted over unsecured wireless networks. Investigators have since revealed that the intercepted data included private information including legal, medical and pornographic material.

The Mountain View, California-based company had been meant to purge the data, and Google chalked up its mistake to human error.

The company said it recently discovered the data while undertaking a comprehensive manual review of Street View disks. The company said it had contacted regulators in all of the countries where it had promised to delete data but realized it had not.

Fleischer's letter asks Britain's ICO for instructions on how to proceed; the ICO told Google that it must turn over the data immediately so it can undergo forensic analysis.

Friday's disclosure comes just over a month after the ICO reopened its investigation into Google's Street View, saying that an inquiry by authorities in the United States raised new doubts about the disputed program.

In April, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission fined Google, saying the company "deliberately impeded and delayed" its investigation into Street View.

It's unclear what, if any, penalties would be imposed on Google by Britain's ICO or regulators in any of the 10 other jurisdictions in which the company had wrongly retained Street View data.

"We need to take a look at the data... There's all sorts of questions we need to ask," an ICO spokesman said, speaking on condition of anonymity because office rules prohibit him from being named in print.

The ICO has the power to impose fines of up to 500,000 pounds (roughly $780,000) for the most serious data breaches, although penalties are generally far less severe and can involve injunctions or reprimands.

More information:
Google's letter to Britain's watchdog: bit.ly/OrXSd3
British watchdog's response to Google: bit.ly/OrXYRV

Red Flag On Biometrics: Iris Scanners Can Be Tricked

At the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas this week, Javier Galbally revealed that it’s possible to spoof a biometric iris scanning system using synthetic images derived from real irises. The Madrid-based security researcher’s talk is timely, coming on the heels of a July 23 Israeli Supreme Court hearing where the potential vulnerabilities of a proposed governmental biometric database drove the debate. Consider the week’s events a reminder that if the adoption of biometric identification systems continues apace without serious contemplation of the pitfalls, we’re headed for trouble.

When it comes to the collection and storage of individuals’ digital fingerprints, iris scans, or facial photographs, system vulnerability is a chief concern. A social security number can always be cancelled and reissued if it’s compromised, but it’s impossible for someone to get a new eyeball if an attacker succeeds in seizing control of his or her digital biometric information.

Among all the various biometric traits that can be measured for machine identification--such as fingerprints, face, voice, or keystroke dynamics--the iris is generally regarded as being the most reliable. Yet Galbally’s team of researchers has shown that even the method traditionally presumed to be foolproof is actually quite susceptible to being hacked.

The project, unveiled for the first time at the security researchers’ conference, made use of synthetic images that match digital iris codes linked to real irises. The codes, which are derived from the unique measurements of an individuals’ iris and contain about 5,000 pieces of information, are stored in biometric databases and used to positively identify people when they position their eyes in front of the scanners. By printing out the replica images on commercial printers, the researchers found they could trick the iris-scanning systems into confirming a match.

The tests were carried out against a commercial system called VeriEye, made by Neurotechnology. The synthetic images were produced using a genetic algorithm. With the replicas, Galbally found that an imposter could spoof the system at a rate of 50 percent or higher. A Wired article hit on the significance of this discovery:

“This is the first time anyone has essentially reverse-engineered iris codes to create iris images that closely match the eye images of real subjects, creating the possibility of stealing someone’s identity through their iris.”

This revelation not only exposes a security hole in a commercial iris-recognition system, but also proves that prominent tech firm and FBI contractor B12 Technologies--which is building a database of iris scans for the Next Generation Identification System--was wrong when it when it noted on its website that biometric templates “cannot be reconstructed, decrypted, reverse-engineered or otherwise manipulated to reveal a person’s identity.”

Any new detection of biometric system flaws is relevant in the context of the massive governmental identification programs moving forward at the global level. There’s India’s bid to create the world’s largest database of irises, fingerprints and facial photos, for example, and Argentina’s creation of a nationwide biometric database containing millions of digital fingerprints. Just this week in Israel, High Court justices criticized a planned biometric database as a “harmful” and “extreme” measure. Lawmakers who approve such identification schemes should give serious consideration to any new information surfacing about biometric system vulnerabilities.

EFF

180K Computer Woman Put To Work At Newark Airport

GMO wars - Monsanto suing DuPont to see who will dominate the world's food supply

Biotechnology giant Monsanto is suing one of its largest rivals, DuPont, for what the company says are violations of a licensing agreement established between the two firms back in 2002. And at the very same time, DuPont is suing Monsanto for allegedly, illegally withholding important details from the federal patent office about its Roundup Ready trait, as well as for allegedly engaging in anticompetitive business practices that restrict competitive agriculture.

Many people are unaware of this, but DuPont's Pioneer Hi-Bred division, which produces seeds, several years ago tried to develop its own genetically-modified (GM) soybean product known as Optimum GAT that was intended to rival Monsanto's Roundup Ready GM soy product. When the original Optimum GAT product failed to perform as intended; however, DuPont decided to add Monsanto's Roundup Ready trait onto Optimum GAT's existing glyphosate-resistant trait, a fact that did not come to light until 2009.

Once DuPont's trait-blending activity became public knowledge, Monsanto initiated legal action against DuPont for allegedly using its own Roundup Ready trait in violation of the established licensing agreement between the two companies, which prohibited DuPont's creation of a GM soy product containing multiple GM traits. According to Monsanto, DuPont illegally used the Roundup Ready trait without a license in hundreds of seed lines back in 2008.

"For years, they told the world GAT was going to work," said George C. Lombardi, an attorney for Monsanto, during Monsanto's opening arguments before the jury. "When it failed, they relied on the Roundup Ready product."

But DuPont, in its own defense, says Monsanto's Roundup Ready patent is unenforceable because it was not properly obtained. According to the company, Monsanto failed to disclose pertinent details in its patent filing about how Roundup Ready seeds work, and how they are made. In fact, DuPont alleges Monsanto actually lied to the federal government in order to obtain the patent, which means it cannot legally be considered valid.

"(Monsanto's Roundup Ready soybean patent) is invalid and unenforceable because Monsanto intentionally deceived the United States Patent and Trademark Office on several occasions as it procured the patent," said Thomas L. Sager, DuPont Senior Vice President and General Counsel, in a recent statement.

The trial, which is expected to last several weeks, officially began on July 9, 2012. Some commentators believe the case will more than likely be settled rather than take its full course because neither Monsanto nor DuPont want to be hit with a surprise verdict. If the case does proceed; however, Monsanto's Roundup Ready patent could end up being declared null and void, which would be a significant victory for food freedom.

Source: Natural News

Harvard Study Finds Fluoride Lowers IQ - Published in Federal Gov't Journal

NEW YORK, July 24, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Harvard University researchers' review of fluoride/brain studies concludes "our results support the possibility of adverse effects of fluoride exposures on children's neurodevelopment." It was published online July 20 in Environmental Health Perspectives, a US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences' journal (1), reports the NYS Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation, Inc. (NYSCOF)

"The children in high fluoride areas had significantly lower IQ than those who lived in low fluoride areas," write Choi et al.

Further, the EPA says fluoride is a chemical "with substantial evidence of developmental neurotoxicity."

Fluoride (fluosilicic acid) is added to US water supplies at approximately 1 part per million attempting to reduce tooth decay.

Water was the only fluoride source in the studies reviewed and was based on high water fluoride levels. However, they point out research by Ding (2011) suggested that low water fluoride levels had significant negative associations with children's intelligence.

Choi et al. write, "Although fluoride may cause neurotoxicity in animal models and acute fluoride poisoning causes neurotoxicity in adults, very little is known of its effects on children's neurodevelopment. They recommend more brain/fluoride research on children and at individual-level doses.

"It's senseless to keep subjecting our children to this ongoing fluoridation experiment to satisfy the political agenda of special-interest groups," says attorney Paul Beeber, NYSCOF President. "Even if fluoridation reduced cavities, is tooth health more important than brain health? It's time to put politics aside and stop artificial fluoridation everywhere," says Beeber.

After reviewing fluoride toxicological data, the NRC reported in 2006, "It's apparent that fluorides have the ability to interfere with the functions of the brain."

Choi's team writes, "Fluoride readily crosses the placenta. Fluoride exposure to the developing brain, which is much more susceptible to injury caused by toxicants than is the mature brain, may possibly lead to damage of a permanent nature."

Fluoride accumulates in the body. Even low doses are harmful to babies, the thyroid, kidney patients and heavy water-drinkers. There are even doubts about fluoridation's effectiveness (2). New York City Legislation is pending to stop fluoridation. Many communities have already stopped.

Infant formula when mixed with fluoridated water delivers 100-200 times more fluoride than breastmilk. (3)

Source: Market Watch

Social Scientists Might Gain Access to Facebook's Data on User Behavior

Social scientists hungry for Facebook’s data may be about to get a taste of it. Nature has learned that the social-networking website is considering giving researchers limited access to the petabytes of data that it has amassed on the preferences and behaviour of its almost one billion users.

Outsiders will not get a free run of the data, but the move could quell criticism from social scientists who have complained that the company’s own research on its users cannot be verified. Facebook's in-house scientists have been involved in publishing more than 30 papers since 2009, covering topics from what drives the spread of information and ideas to the relationship between social-networking activity and loneliness. However, because the company fears breaching its users’ privacy, it does not release the underlying raw data.

Facebook is now exploring a plan that could allow external researchers to check its work in future by inspecting the data sets and methods used to produce a particular study. A paper currently submitted to a journal could prove to be a test case, after the journal said that allowing third-party academics the opportunity to verify the findings was a condition of publication.

“We want to participate in the scientific process and we believe that there should be a way to have other researchers validate [our studies] without infringing on the policies that we have set with our users,” says Cameron Marlow, head of Facebook's data-science team.

Restricted access
If the scheme were to go ahead, it would apply to papers after publication. Scholars would have to travel to the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, because Facebook would not risk sending the data electronically, and they would have access to aggregated data only, and no personally identifiable information. The company would also allow access for only a limited period — and contingent upon researchers signing a non-disclosure agreement. Marlow says, however, that these conditions should not keep researchers from being openly critical about matters related to the published paper such as technique or data processing.

External scholars would not be allowed to conduct their own studies on the data sets.

The alternative — publicly releasing anonymized raw data sets — is not likely to be an option, says Facebook. Internet company AOL, based in New York, and film rental and streaming firm Netflix, based in Los Gatos, California, have both done this in the past, only for researchers to show that individuals could be identified in the anonymized data. “It is hard to really guarantee that it is anonymous,” says Marlow.

Facebook's proposals are a step in the right direction, say researchers. “Their intentions are very good,” agrees Bernardo Huberman, director of the social-computing group at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto, California. Huberman has voiced concerns in Nature about the lack of researcher access to 'big data' at private companies. Facebook “wants to get closer to something that is the scientific method”, he says.

But Huberman and others have practical concerns. The requirement for on-site visits will hinder many researchers, with few likely to receive  funding to travel to merely validate a completed study. Furthermore, it is unclear whether Facebook will allow researchers to validate research by running their own programs on the data. If scientists are restricted to repeating Facebook researchers’ own analyses, says Anatoliy Gruzd, director of the social-media lab at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, “they may be unknowingly repeating the same errors inherent in a technique”.

Source: Scientific American

Genetically Modified Apples Newest GMO Creation to be Pushed on Consumers

After setting sights on creating a heavily modified apple that ‘never browns’ and doing their very best to hide the fact that they are indeed genetically altered, a biotech corporation known as Okanagan Specialty Fruits is now pushing for their new genetically modified apples to hit the market. The company recently submitted an application to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to launch their initiative to get the apples into your local grocery market and reap ‘improved industry sales’, but they made sure that the data was not available to the public.

Now, after providing virtually no information to the citizens of Canada and submitting only two pages of information on the product actually written by the company, Okanagan Specialty Fruits is now set on a United States release. On July 9th, the USDA posted the corporation’s request for approval on their website for the genetically modified ‘non-browning’ apples, giving the public 60 days to comment before ultimately making a decision.

The move has outraged many watchdog organizations, who have continued to highlight the fact that the initial submission to the Canadian government was ‘embarrassing’ in its utter lack of real information. Speaking on behalf of the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network, activist and biotech researcher Lucy Sharratt stated:

“The CFIA should be deeply embarrassed for wasting Canadian’s time on a false invitation to comment on the GM apple… the CFIA public comment period was always a sham because it was based on no data but this farce is now completely exposed.”

Genetically Modified Apples Opposed by 69% of Canadians

Unsurprisingly, Sharatt’s sentiments have been echoed by many Canadian citizens and activists. The crusade to bring genetically modified apples has been met with extreme activism from concerned citizens as documented by a number of new polls and surveys. Giving a powerful statistical concept of how citizens see the proposition of the modified apples, a consumer poll commissioned by apple grower associations based in British Columbia and Quebec revealed that 69% of Canadians simply do not want the genetically modified apple.

One reason that some citizens are concerned is the fact that biotechnology researchers have openly admitted that while only one gene is necessary to be altered to prevent browning in the apples, the change could likely affect a multitude of other genes in the process. And with unknown gene changes comes unknown consequences. In case you’re skeptical, even Monsanto’s top PhD researchers have openly stated to former Monsanto employee and whistleblower Kirk Azevedo that during the genetic modification process “other proteins that are being produced, not just the one we want, a byproduct of the genetic engineering process.”

Eventually leaving the company and coming out to expose their health-wrecking practices, Azevedo reports:

“I saw what was really the fraud associated with genetic engineering. My impression, and I think most people’s impression with genetically engineered foods and crops and other things, is that it’s just like putting one gene in there and that one gene is expressed….But in reality, the process of genetic engineering changes the cell in such a way that it’s unknown what the effects are going to be.”

There is still time to submit your comments to the USDA regarding the potential approval of genetically modified apples. The Alliance for Natural Health has established a simple form to do so.

Source: Infowars

"Dramatic" New Maya Temple Found, Covered With Giant Faces

Archaeological "gold mine" illuminates connection between king and sun god.

The Maya sun god as shark-man—one of his several guises on a newfound monument in Guatemala.

Photograph courtesy Edwin Román, Brown University

Some 1,600 years ago, the Temple of the Night Sun was a blood-red beacon visible for miles and adorned with giant masks of the Maya sun god as a shark, blood drinker, and jaguar.

Long since lost to the Guatemalan jungle, the temple is finally showing its faces to archaeologists, and revealing new clues about the rivalrous kingdoms of the Maya.

Unlike the relatively centralized Aztec and Inca empires, the Maya civilization—which spanned much of what are now Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico's Yucatán region (Maya map)—was a loose aggregation of city-states. (Read about the rise and fall of the Maya in National Geographic magazine.)

"This has been a growing awareness to us since the 1990s, when it became clear that a few kingdoms were more important than others," said Brown University archaeologist Stephen Houston, who announced the discovery of the new temple Thursday.

El Zotz, in what's now Guatemala, was one of the smaller kingdoms, but one apparently bent on making a big impression.

By 2010 archaeologists working on a hilltop near the ancient city center had discovered 45-foot-tall (13-meter-tall) Diablo Pyramid. Atop it they found a royal palace and a tomb, believed to hold the city's first ruler, who lived around A.D. 350 to 400.

Around the same time, Houston and a colleague spotted the first hints of the Temple of the Night Sun, behind the royal tomb on Diablo Pyramid. Only recently, though, have excavations uncovered the unprecedented artworks under centuries of overgrowth.

Video: Archaeologist Stephen Houston on the Temple Find

 

Solar Power

The sides of the temple are decorated with 5-foot-tall (1.5-meter-tall) stucco masks showing the face of the sun god changing as he traverses the sky over the course of a day.

(Related: "Unprecedented Maya Mural Found, Contradicts 2012 'Doomsday' Myth.")

One mask is sharklike, likely a reference to the sun rising from the Caribbean in the east, Houston said.

The noonday sun is depicted as an ancient being with crossed eyes who drank blood, and a final series of masks resemble the local jaguars, which awake from their jungle slumbers at dusk.

In Maya culture the sun is closely associated with new beginnings and the sun god with kingship, Houston explained. So the presence of solar visages on a temple next to a royal tomb may signify that the person buried inside was the founder of a dynasty—El Zotz's first king.

It's an example of "how the sun itself would have been grafted onto the identity of kings and the dynasties that would follow them," he said in a press statement.

Maya archaeologist David Freidel added, "Houston's hypothesis is likely correct that the building was dedicated to the sun as a deity closely linked to rulership. The Diablo Pyramid will certainly advance our knowledge of Early Classic Maya religion and ritual practice."

Houston's team also found hints that the Maya, who added new layers to the temple over generations, regarded the building as a living being. For example, the noses and mouths of the masks in older, deeper layers of the temple were systematically disfigured.

"This is actually quite common in Maya culture," Houston told National Geographic News. "It's very hard to find any Mayan depiction of the king that doesn't have its eyes mutilated or its nose hacked ... but 'mutilation' is not the appropriate term to describe it. I see it as more of a deactivation.

"It's as if they're turning the masks off in preparation for replicating them in subsequent layers ... It's not an act of disrespect. It's quite the opposite."

(Also See "End of World in 2012? Maya 'Doomsday' Calendar Explained.")

"Gold Mine of Information"

Maya scholar Simon Martin said the masks on the newfound El Zotz temple are "completely unique" and valuable, because they could help verify theories about Maya portrayals of the sun god.

"We have images of the sun god at different stages ... but we've never found anything that puts it all together," said Martin, of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, who was not involved in the project.

"We've had to assemble [the sequence] from bits and pieces of information and just trust that we got it right. This could be an opportunity to see the whole thing stage by stage."

The temple is also wonderfully well preserved, Martin added, making it a "real gold mine of information."

"We've seen a few places where whole buildings have been preserved," he said. "But normally what happens is [the Maya] smashed up a building and then built on top of it, so when you dig into a building you don't find very much of their decoration."

By contrast, Maya workers at El Zotz went to great pains to preserve the original temple structure, going so far as padding it with earth and small rocks before building on top of it.

(Take a Maya quiz.)

Facing Out

Archaeologist Karl Taube points out the craftsmanship of the masks. "They're three-dimensional. The faces push out of the side of the facade. You don't really see that very often ... because if they project too much they fall off. But here they were able to pull it off.

"With the play of light on these things, the faces would have been extremely dramatic," said Taube, of the University of California, Riverside (UCR),who also was not involved in the project.

Project leader Houston added that the masks' color—crimson, according to paint traces—would have also helped them stand out. "With that bright red pigment, it would have had a particularly marked effect at dawn and at the setting of the sun," Houston said.

Blazing red and perched on high, the Temple of the Night Sun was meant "to see and to be seen," Houston said.

Importantly, it would have been noticeable from Tikal, a larger, older, and more powerful kingdom that El Zotz may or may not have been on friendly terms with.

"We tend to think of kings being completely autonomous, but for the Maya, a sacred king was often part of a hierarchy of kings," the Penn Museum's Martin said.

"So the people at El Zotz at times may have been heavily under the influence of Tikal, and when powers were weak at Tikal, they may have been completely independent or may have linked themselves with more powerful kings somewhere else."

"A Lot More Discoveries" to Come?

Despite the obvious care that was taken to construct and preserve the newfound temple, it wasn't used for long. Evidence at the site suggests the building was abandoned sometime in the fifth century, for reasons unknown.

"It's like they just dropped their tools and left" in the middle of once again expanding the temple, Houston said. "I think what you're looking at is the death of a dynasty."

The answer to this mystery and others could become evident as more of the Temple of the Night Sun is uncovered.

"Only 30 percent of this facade has been exposed," UCR's Taube said. "I think there're going to be a lot more discoveries and a broader understanding of what this building actually shows in the future."

The Truth About Sports Drinks

If you’ve ever looked at a fluorescent colored so-called “sports drink” (i.e. Gatorade, Powerade and all the wannabes in the category) and wondered if it could possibly quality as a natural, healthy beverage, we now know the answer: No, it’s not. Don’t take my word for it, here’s an exhaustive review of the relevant science by Deborah Cohen in the BMJ:

Prehydrate; drink ahead of thirst; train your gut to tolerate more fluid; your brain doesn’t know you’re thirsty—the public and athletes alike are bombarded with messages about what they should drink, and when, during exercise. But these drinking dogmas are relatively new. In the 1970s, marathon runners were discouraged from drinking fluids for fear that it would slow them down, says Professor Tim Noakes, Discovery health chair of exercise and sports science at Cape Town University. At the first New York marathon in 1970, there was little discussion about the role of hydration—it was thought to have little scientific value.

So how did the importance of hydration gain traction? An investigation by the BMJ has found that companies have sponsored scientists, who have gone on to develop a whole area of science dedicated to hydration. These same scientists advise influential sports medicine organisations, which have developed guidelines that have filtered down to everyday health advice. These guidelines have influenced the European Food Safety Authority, the EU agency that provides independent advice on the evidence underpinning health claims relating to food and drink. And they have spread fear about the dangers of dehydration.

Much of the focus on hydration can be traced back to the boom in road running, which began with the New York marathon. Manufacturers of sports shoes and the drink and nutritional supplement industries spotted a growing market.

One drink in particular was quick to capitalise on the burgeoning market. Robert Cade, a renal physician from the University of Florida, had produced a sports drink in the 1960s that contained water, sodium, sugar, and monopotassium phosphate with a dash of lemon flavouring.1 2

Gatorade—named after the American Football team, the Gators, that it was developed to help—could prevent and cure dehydration, heat stroke, and muscle cramps, and improve performance, it was claimed.2 …

[continues in the BMJ]

How Much is Your Gmail Account Worth?

While the really big bucks may be built into your big data, your trusty Gmail account just got a price tag slapped on it — and it may be worth more than you thought.

The cloud backup guys over at Backupify put together a calculator to help folks estimate the value of their cloud-based Google Gmail web mail accounts. So what’s the average account’s worth? $3,588.85, Backupify’s Jay Garmon writes in a blog post.

That’s the value of the time invested in the average Gmail account, given how many emails the average Gmail user has written (5,768), how long it takes to write the average email (one minute, 43 seconds), and the most recent U.S. Depart of Labor statistics on average annual salary ($45,230). In other words, if the average Gmail user were paid to recreate all the Gmail messages he or she’s ever written, it would cost $3,588.85.

Some highlights, per Backupify:

• Your Gmail is worth $3,588.85, and increases by about $1,196 per year
• You “spend” as much in Gmail every year as you do on your car
• Your Gmail is worth five times as much as your laptop
• Your Gmail represents over four weeks of wages
• You store one old-school floppy disk (1.44 MB) of Gmail data every day

And the full-monty, in infographic form:

Image and data courtesy of Backupify

Of course, Backupify has a white paper and is championing its service here, but with Gmail and other mail services as “the cloud” for most consumers — and increasingly for business — it is good to think about how much me have in our existing personal clouds already, before — well, Apple released OS X Mountain Lion today — the mainstreaming of the cloud in the next generations of Windows and Mac operating systems.

Source: Wired

The New York Times Admits That Virtually Every Major News Outlet Allows Censorship By Government Officials

In one of the most shocking articles that the New York Times has ever put out, a New York Times reporter has openly admitted that virtually every major mainstream news organization allows government bureaucrats and campaign officials to censor their stories.

For example, almost every major news organization in the country has agreed to submit virtually all quotes from anyone involved in the Obama campaign or the Romney campaign to gatekeepers for "quote approval" before they will be published.

If the gatekeeper in the Obama campaign does not want a certain quote to get out, the American people will not see it, and the same thing applies to the Romney campaign. The goal is to keep the campaigns as "on message" as possible and to avoid gaffes at all cost.

But this kind of thing is not just happening with political campaigns.

According to the New York Times, "quote approval" has become "commonplace throughout Washington". In other words, if you see a quote in the newspaper from someone in the federal government, then it is safe to say that a gatekeeper has almost certainly reviewed that quote and has approved it.

This is another sign that "the free and independent media" in this country is a joke. What we get from the mainstream media is a very highly filtered form of propaganda, and that is one reason why Americans are turning away from the mainstream media in droves. People want the truth, and more Americans than ever realize that they are not getting it from the mainstream media.


The following quote comes from the recent article in the New York Times mentioned above and it is absolutely jaw dropping....

The quotations come back redacted, stripped of colorful metaphors, colloquial language and anything even mildly provocative. 

They are sent by e-mail from the Obama headquarters in Chicago to reporters who have interviewed campaign officials under one major condition: the press office has veto power over what statements can be quoted and attributed by name. 

Most reporters, desperate to pick the brains of the president’s top strategists, grudgingly agree. After the interviews, they review their notes, check their tape recorders and send in the juiciest sound bites for review. 

The verdict from the campaign — an operation that prides itself on staying consistently on script — is often no, Barack Obama does not approve this message.

This is an article that everyone needs to read. If you have not read it yet, you can find it right here.

What all of this means is that both the Obama campaign and the Romney campaign essentially have "veto power" over any quotes from those campaigns that we see in the newspapers.

According to the New York Times, virtually every major news organization has agreed to submit their quotes for "quote approval"....

It was difficult to find a news outlet that had not agreed to quote approval, albeit reluctantly. Organizations like Bloomberg, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Reuters and The New York Times have all consented to interviews under such terms.

This is absolutely disgusting, and it goes against everything that our media is supposed to stand for.

The following is what Joseph Farah had to say when he learned about this story....

All I can say about these people I once considered “colleagues” is that I am so ashamed of them. I am mortified. They are humiliating themselves and a vital institution for any free society. 

It seems the biggest threat to the American tradition of a free and independent press is not government coercion. It’s the willing submission of the press to being handled and managed by government and politicians.

Keep in mind that Joseph Farah has been working in the world of journalism for decades. He is deeply saddened to see what is happening to a profession that he deeply loves.

But he is not the only one.

Just check out what Dan Rather had to say during a speech back in 2009....

'At my age and stage I've finally reached the point where I don't have to kiss up to anybody,' he said. 'What a wonderful feeling it is.'

Even so, his talk emphasized what he believes is the erosion of quality journalism, because of the corporatization, politicization, and “trivialization” of news. Those three factors, Rather argued, have fueled the “dumbing down and sleezing up of news” and the decline of “great American journalism.”

Likening media consolidation to that of the banking industry, Rather claimed that “roughly 80 percent” of the media is controlled by no more than six, and possibly as few as four, corporations.

And Dan Rather is right. The control over the media in the United States is more tightly concentrated than ever before.

Back in the early 1980s, approximately 50 corporations essentially had nearly total control of the media in the United States.

Today, just six monolithic media corporations dominate virtually everything you watch, hear and read.

These six gigantic corporations own television networks, publishing houses, movie studios, newspapers, radio stations, music labels and video game companies. Most Americans are absolutely addicted to information and entertainment, and those six massive corporations supply the vast majority of the information and entertainment that Americans take in.

The amount of control that those six corporate giants have is absolutely incredible. For example, the average American watches 153 hours of television a month. If you can beam 153 hours of "programming" into someone's head each month, that gives you an awesome amount of influence over that person.

The six monolithic corporations mentioned above are Time Warner, Walt Disney, Viacom, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., CBS Corporation and NBC Universal.

There are some areas of the media that are not completely dominated by those corporations, but even control over those areas is becoming more highly concentrated than ever.

For example, Clear Channel now owns over 1000 radio stations across the United States. The power that Clear Channel has over the radio industry in America is absolutely staggering.

Even control over the Internet is becoming much more concentrated. Giant corporations such as Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are increasingly controlling what we see and hear online.

But it really is the "big six" that dominate most of what we see, hear and read on a daily basis.

In a previous article, I detailed a portion of the vast media holdings of these gigantic corporations....

Source: Activist Post

Govt follows you: Twitter feeds info to US police state

NASA Reports Massive Solar Flare; Massive Madness in Tow?

The sun is starting to wake up: After years of relative quiet, our sun has begun ejecting huge coronal flares. According to NASA, these solar flare-ups happen in cycles of five to 11 years, and when they occur, they bathe our planet in radiation. This active cycle began in 2011, and will continue through the next decade or so.

The most recent solar storm occurred just this past Thursday at 1:13 AM Easter Daylight Time, peaking about 45 minutes later. While the output from this storm was deemed mild, it is an established fact that solar flare-ups impact not only electronics, but also the behavior of human beings.

Just months ago, the Washington Times reported that solar storms like the one last Thursday interfere with human circadian rhythms, producing side effects that range form headaches and poor sleep to confused thinking and agitated moods. Could the coming years of increased solar activity translate to more human violence and socially disruptive behavior?

Source: Disinfo

It's Terrifying and Sickening that Microsoft Can Now Listen In on All My Skype Calls

There was a wildly terrifying story published late Friday on Slate that didn’t get much attention because of the time of the week it was released.

In it, the author – Ryan Gallagher – lays out how Microsoft (MSFT) seems to have made some subtle and (to most) imperceptible changes to the popular Skype calling service that allows it to eavesdrop on all of your calls going forward.  (Forbes contributor Anthony Wing Kosner flagged the service changes in an earlier  post published July 18.)

Although it’s not completely clear, some seem to think that Microsoft may have made the changes either from or in anticipation of pressure from various government entities.

Shocked?  I certainly was.

One of the reasons that Skype has grown so swiftly in the last 5 years was the belief by many users that the founders from Luxembourg had taken steps to make the service one of the most locked-down and encrypted services available to communicate with.

But in May 2011, Microsoft announced that it was spending $8.5 billion to buy Skype and that it would form a new division within the software giant.  From the start, observers wondered how Microsoft could justify paying so much for a service that most of its users pay nothing for but which still lets them talk for free to other Skype users.  Microsoft countered by saying that Skype was the world leaders in voice-over-IP communications and it wanted to own that brand and was sure that it could be sold alongside other popular Microsoft enterprise-focused software and services.

(Given that Microsoft just wrote down its last blockbuster multi-billion dollar acquisition by $6.2 billion after paying $6.3 billion for aQuantive in 2007, it’s hard not to be suspicious that they haven’t made the same mistake with Skype.  But, we’ll see….)

As Gallagher points out, “in June [2011], Microsoft was granted a patent for ‘legal intercept’ technology designed to be used with VOIP services like Skype to ‘silently copy communication transmitted via the communication session.’”

Gallagher tried several times last week to confirm that Microsoft had changed Skype’s policies and technologies to allow for accessing all communications.  He got no response, which strongly suggests that they are able to do this.  It’s also important to note that Skype/Microsoft denied the allegation that the change to its architecture this Spring had anything to do with surveillance, according to the Slate article.

Why is this so significant?

- Most Skype users are still under the legacy impression that Skype communications are private — more private than even their regular old phone conversations.

- If this has changed since the Microsoft acquisition, it hasn’t been overtly communicated to users.  It’s unclear why, but presumably Microsoft worries that Skype’s meteoric growth would be stunted if more people knew about this privacy adjustment made behind their backs.

- Since the Microsoft purchase, it has been heavily promoted to Facebook (FB) users as an additional communications tool within the Facebook platform.  Yet, new sign-ups to the Skype service are also likely not aware of the capability

It’s not bad enough the big web companies are trying to track every keystroke we make, website we visit, and image we hover over — with Facebook and any other cookie maker leader the charge.  They also want to nefariously go around Apple‘s (AAPL) stated privacy policies and track our geographic location — thanks Google (GOOG).  Now, they want to track our every utterance and text message via Skype.

I don’t know if it’s going to be Apple or some other smaller company trying to knock Skype off its leadership perch in VOIP calling, but it seems to me that there is a huge opportunity for big and small Web/mobile companies to champion true user privacy.  I’m willing to bet that a huge proportion of users would opt for it if truly given the choice in a clear and open manner, instead of having the choice hidden from their view.

This latest back-door changing of the rules by Microsoft is truly terrifying – and sickening.

Source: Forbes

Scientists Read Monkeys' Minds, See What They're Planning to Do Before They Do it

How To Construct a 'Circle-Out' Experiment (BYO Monkey) MORAN/PEARCE via WUSTL

Neurologists working with monkeys at Washington University in St. Louis to decode brain activity have stumbled upon a rather surprising result. While working to demonstrate that multiple parameters can be seen in the firing rate of a single neuron (and that certain parameters are embedded in neurons only if they are needed to solve the immediate task), they also found that they could read their monkeys’ minds.

This isn’t exactly ESP, but it is really interesting. The researchers came to find out that by analyzing the activity of large populations of neurons, they could discover what actions the monkeys were planning before they made a single motor movement. By monitoring neural activity, the researchers could essentially see what the monkey was thinking about doing next.

This discovery occurred largely because the two monkeys involved in the experiment had already demonstrated very different cognitive styles. One is a bit hyperactive, eager to begin and complete each task even before being given the signal to begin. The other is more methodical, waiting for the entire breadth of the task to be revealed before making a motion.

The tasks involved were so-called “center-out tasks” in which a monkey or some other subject must place a hand at the center of a field (a tabletop or some surface) and then move it from this center location to another location placed in the area around the center. To plan this movement, the brain needs to know simply where its hand is located (at the center), where the target locations is (somewhere on the surface away from center), and the velocity vector the hand will follow (what path the hand will take to move from starting place to target). These can all be measured in the neural activity of the brain.

When the path between center and target locations is unimpeded, this is relatively straightforward in terms of neural activity. But when the the researchers introduced obstacles that would pop up between the center and the target like whack-a-moles, the neural activity of the two monkeys began to show interesting differences.

The impatient monkey (known as subject H) couldn’t wait to reach for the target and planned to reach directly for it, so when the obstacle popped up his directional vector shortened and then rotated to find a way around the obstacle. Methodical monkey (subject G), however, would wait for the obstacle to present itself before moving, and only then begin to plan its directional vector to go around the obstacle and reach the target. In cases where the target was unimpeded, it paid to jump the gun. But when an obstacle was presented, Methodical Monkey reached the target faster.

In other words, the two monkeys showed completely different strategies for reaching the target--strategies that the researchers could see unfolding in the neural activities of their brains beforehand. They could see what the monkeys were planning before they did it--which is pretty amazing from a neuroscience standpoint.

2012 Something Is Going On

Jon Stewart Explains Libor

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Matt Taibbi: LIBOR Crime Defrauded Trillions from 99%

Inside The Deep Web: My Journey Through The New Underground

The Internet has evolved quite a bit since I first logged on to CompuServe in 1994. I’d spent a few years tooling around on BBS (Bulletin Board Systems) connections throughout the country at that point and the most visible portions of a forming World Wide Web were quite innocent in appearance. But as I ramped up my father’s 4600 baud modem and looked around at the fringes of online existence, I unknowingly caught a glimpse at the Web’s early underbelly. From there, pornography, craziness and illegal activities were easily accessible. There weren’t many people logging on so, naturally, there weren’t many people to police this new digital space. Eventually, as AOL, Prodigy and other ISPs became more mainstream, the more nefarious outlets vanished into the shadows. But where did it all go? I recently took a plunge into the ‘Deep Web,’ a sub-surface area of the Internet not indexed by search engines and only available to those on the forefront of technology, namely people connected to the Tor Network. This network of hidden websites is the new underbelly of the Web, the New Underground, if you will, chock full of all sorts of illicit activities. Child porn peddlers, drug dealers, hitmen and other criminal groups thrive on the Deep Web and anonymity reigns supreme. The following post outlines my findings and hopefully sheds some light on the true Wild Wild West of the World Wide Web.

What is the Deep Web?: Wikipedia has an excellent overview on the Deep Web.

The Deep Web (also called Deepnet, the invisible Web, DarkNet, Undernet or the hidden Web) refers to World Wide Web content that is not part of the Surface Web, which is indexed by standard search engines.

Mike Bergman, credited with coining the phrase,[1] has said that searching on the Internet today can be compared to dragging a net across the surface of the ocean: a great deal may be caught in the net, but there is a wealth of information that is deep and therefore missed. Most of the Web’s information is buried far down on dynamically generated sites, and standard search engines do not find it. Traditional search engines cannot “see” or retrieve content in the deep Web – those pages do not exist until they are created dynamically as the result of a specific search. The deep Web is several orders of magnitude larger than the surface Web.

So if the Internet as you know it is an iceberg, the smallest part of that iceberg, the visible portion, is where you have been surfing your entire life. You visit websites, click links, use search engines to research topics of interest and generally just make your way around the visible Web. But below that visible portion, there is a much larger compilation of destinations beyond the reach of most Internet users. This portion, the Deep Web, is much harder for the average person to access and even harder to navigate. Much of the criminal activity that happens on the Deep Web is cloaked in anonymity, shrouded in secrecy or somehow hidden from the prying eyes that would love to put an end to this virtual land of OZ. Essentially what I’m saying is this: You may be familiar with the Internet, maybe even the darker side of the Internet. You may know how to find pornography for free, download music illegally, use a torrent program to download pirated movies and other media or purchase prescription pills from some online pharmacy. But if you haven’t visited the Deep Web, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Sure, there are research papers and legitimate and interesting pieces of content to view on The Other Side but there’s also some pretty nefarious happenings there.

How do you connect to the Deep Web?: Though the Deep Web may be beyond those of you with little in the way of technical and Web savvy, it’s not impossible, nor even extremely difficult to visit. First, you’ll need to download Tor, the software that allows you to access the Deep Web. Tor is designed to provide Internet users with as close to complete anonymity as possible. The Tor website describes their software and their mission as follows.

Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location. Tor works with many of your existing applications, including web browsers, instant messaging clients, remote login, and other applications based on the TCP protocol.

You can use Tor on virtually any PC, Mac or even mobile devices like the iPhone and Android-operated smartphones. But, if, like me, you’re using Firefox, you next need to install the Torbutton. With the Tor software up and running and the Torbutton installed, you’ll see a small onion logo near the address bar of your browser. If you’re correctly logged in to the Tor network, you can click this button and begin to explore the Deep Web. This collection of Deep Web links should get you started. But, keep in mind, you won’t be able to maneuver in this new land quite as easily as you did back on the visible Web. There is no Google-like search engine of these sites that I’m aware of at the moment. Instead, it’s a collection of Wikis and BBS-like sites that aggregate links to other locations on the Deep Web. These sites generally have bizarre, unmemorable domain names like SdddEEDOHIIDdddgmomionw.onion. That’s right, instead of .com, these domains generally end in the .onion suffix. And because you’ll never remember how you got to where you are if you spend any significant time here, it’s best to save URLs or bookmark your way through this journey.

What can you find on the Deep Web?: The Silk Road is the most popular place to buy drugs on the Deep Web. From ecstasy, pure MDMA, marijuana, psychedelics and seeds to opiates, they have basically any drug with a userbase. They also have categories for ‘services’ like hacking, ‘lab supplies’ like sulfuric acid and liquid mercury, ‘money’ for stolen credit cards, travelers checks and forged bills and coins, ‘jewelry’ like uncut stones, stolen gold and other precious metals obtained via devious means and finally ‘weapons’ where they currently list a Glock 17 for sale out of Canada that “includes 1 clip with 9 live rounds.” Another Deep Web drug outlet, the General Store, focuses on Ketamine, MDMA, MDPV and DMT (you may need to Google some of those).

Source: The News Junkie