All data stored on cloud computing services can be accessed by US government without a warrant

According to reports, all personal information stored on major cloud computing services can be spied on by US agencies without users’ knowledge or even a search warrant.

This is all reportedly being done under the recently reauthorized Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and has led British Members of Parliament to call on the British government to not only end the use of cloud computing but also stop sharing intelligence services with the U.S, according to the Independent.

It’s worth pointing out that the US government has admitted breaching the Fourth Amendment under FISA while maintaining an absurd level of secrecy around the Act. Given the massive expansion of the Pentagon’s cyberwarfare forces and the exponential rise in surveillance overall, people around the world have a quite legitimate reason to be concerned.

As New Zealand’s IOL points out, under FISA “all documents uploaded on to cloud systems based in the US or falling under Washington’s jurisdiction can be accessed and analyzed without a warrant by American security agencies.”

Apparently, US agencies have been able to access private data stored on the cloud since 2008 while no one had any clue it was going on.

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Documentary about the Tsunami survivors

F. William Engdahl (Seeds of Destruction) Lecture

Secret Door Discovered At Center Of Machu Picchu

The secret portal has yet to be unsealed, but an electromagnetic survey suggests it houses treasure chambers filled with gold. Who’s going to try to get it and end up with an Incan curse? Heritage Daily reports:

This discovery was made possible thanks to a French engineer, David Crespy, who in 2010 noticed the presence of a strange “shelter” located in the heart of the city, at the bottom of one of the main buildings. For him, there was no doubt about it, he was looking at a “door”, an entrance sealed by the Incas.

It is indeed an entrance, blocked by the Incas at an undetermined moment of history. In April 2012, an electromagnetic survey not only confirmed the presence of an underground room, but several. Just behind the famous entrance, a staircase was also discovered. The two main paths seem to lead to specific chambers. [The electromagnetic survey also revealed] a large quantity of gold and silver.

French Archaeologist and adventurer Thierry Jamin is now preparing the next step: the opening of the entrance sealed by the Incas more than five centuries ago. He officially submitted a request for authorization to the Peruvian authorities which would allow his team to proceed with the opening of the burial chambers.

Source: Disinfo

The Aspartame Epidemic

A worldwide epidemic is raging. The cause is a poisonous chemical sweetener, aspartame (marketed as NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful), the most controversial food additive ever approved. In reality it is a drug which interacts with other drugs and changes brain chemistry.

H.J. Roberts, M.D., describes interactions with drugs such as Coumadin, Dilantin, Inderal, methyldopa or Aldomet, insulin, and lidocaine in Aspartame (NutraSweet): Is It Safe? [1]

From the paper Effects of Aspartame on the Brain: Neurologic Effects of Aspartame? by Richard J. Wurtman and Timothy J. Maher: “Compounds that do affect physiological systems are classified as drugs by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and are subject to considerably more demanding regulatory procedures than food constituents. However, and perhaps paradoxically because food additives must be shown to be physiologically inert in order to…

Read More: Disinfo

The 18 Most Suppressed Inventions Ever

THE ORIGINAL ELECTRIC CAR: UNPLUGGED?

Perhaps the most notorious suppressed invention is the General Motors EV1, subject of the 2006 documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car? The EV1 was the world’s first mass-produced electric car, with 800 of them up for lease from GM in the late ’90s. GM ended the EV1 line in 1999, stating that consumers weren’t happy with the limited driving range of the car’s batteries, making it unprofitable to continue production.

Many skeptics, however, believe GM killed the EV1 under pressure from oil companies, who stand to lose the most if high-efficiency vehicles conquer the market. It didn’t help that GM hunted down and destroyed every last EV1, ensuring the technology would die out.

THE DEATH OF THE AMERICAN STREETCAR

In 1921, if the streetcar industry wasn’t actually naming streetcars Desire, it was certainly desiring more streetcars. They netted $1 billion, causing General Motors to hemorrhage $65 million in the face of a thriving industry. GM retaliated by buying and closing hundreds of independent railway companies, boosting the market for gas-guzzling GM buses and cars. While a recent urban movement to rescue mass transit has been underway, it is unlikely we’ll ever see streetcars return to their former glory.

THE 99-MPG CAR

The holy grail of automotive technology is the 99-mpg car. Although the technology has been available for years, automakers have deliberately withheld it from the U.S. market. In 2000, the New York Times reported a little-known fact, at least to most: A diesel-powered dynamo called the Volkswagen Lupo had driven around the world averaging higher than 99 mpg. The Lupo was sold in Europe from 1998 to 2005 but, once again, automakers prevented it from coming to market; they claimed Americans had no interest in small, fuel-efficient cars.

FREE ENERGY

Nikola Tesla was more than just the inspiration for a hair metal band, he was also an undisputed genius. In 1899, he figured out a way to bypass fossil-fuel-burning power plants and power lines, proving that “free energy” could be harnessed using ionization in the upper atmosphere to produce electrical vibrations. J.P. Morgan, who had been funding Tesla’s research, had a bit of buyer’s remorse when he realized that free energy for all wasn’t as profitable as, say, actually charging people for every watt of energy use. Morgan then drove another nail in free energy’s coffin by chasing away other investors, ensuring Tesla’s dream would die.

MIRACLE CANCER CURE

In 2001, Nova Scotian Rick Simpson discovered that a cancerous spot on his skin disappeared within a few days of applying an essential oil made from marijuana. Since then, Simpson and others have treated thousands of cancer patients with incredible success. Researchers in Spain have confirmed that THC, an active compound in marijuana, kills brain-tumor cells in human subjects and shows promise with breast, pancreatic and liver tumors. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, however, classifies marijuana as a Schedule I drug, meaning that it has no accepted medical use, unlike Schedule II drugs, like cocaine and methamphetamine, which may provide medical benefits. What a buzzkill.

WATER-POWERED VEHICLES

Despite how silly it sounds, water-fueled vehicles do exist. The most famous is Stan Meyer’s dune buggy, which achieved 100 miles per gallon and might have become more commonplace had Meyer not succumbed to a suspicious brain aneurysm at 57. Insiders have loudly claimed that Meyer was poisoned after he refused to sell his patents or end his research. Fearing a conspiracy, his partners have all but gone underground (or should we say underwater?) and taken his famed water-powered dune buggy with them. We just hope someone finally brings back the amphibious car.

CHRONOVISOR

What if you had a device that could see into the future and revisit the past? And what if you didn’t need Christopher Lloyd to help you? Father Pellegrino Maria Ernetti, an Italian priest, claimed in the 1960s to have invented what he called a Chronovisor, something that allowed him to witness Christ’s crucifixion. The device supposedly enabled viewers to watch any event in human history by tuning in to remnant vibrations that are caused by every action. (His team of researchers and builders included Enrico Fermi, who also worked on the first atomic bomb). On his deathbed, Fermi admitted that he had faked viewings of ancient Greece and Christ’s demise, but insisted the Chronovisor, which had by then vanished, still worked. Unsurprisingly, conspiracy theorists say the Vatican is now the likely owner of the original Chronovisor.

RIFE DEVICES

American inventor Royal Rife (his real name), in 1934, cured 14 “terminal” cancer patients and hundreds of animal cancers by aiming his “beam ray” at what he called the “cancer virus.” So why isn’t the Rife Ray in use today?A 1986 book, The Cancer Cure That Worked, Fifty Years of Suppression, by Barry Lynes and John Crane, revived the Rife device affair. The book, written in a style typical of conspiratorial theorists, cites names, dates, events and places, giving the appearance of authenticity to a mixture of historical documents and speculations selectively spun into a web far too complex to permit verification by any thing short of a army of investigators with unlimited resources. The authors claim that Rife successfully demonstrated his device’s cancer curing ability in 1934, but that “all reports describing the cure were censored by the head of the AMA from the major medical journals.” A 1953 U.S. Senate special investigation concluded that Fishbein and the AMA had conspired with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to suppress various alternative cancer treatments that conflicted with the AMA’s pre-determined view that “radium, x-ray therapy and surgery are the only recognized treatments for cancer.”

CLOUDBUSTER

In 1953, a drought threatened Maine’s blueberry crop, and several farmers offered to pay Reich if he could make it rain. The weather bureau had reportedly forecast no rain for several days when Reich began the experiment at 10 a.m. on July 6, 1953. The Bangor Daily News reported on July 24:

Dr. Reich and three assistants set up their “rain-making” device off the shore of Grand Lake. The device, a set of hollow tubes, suspended over a small cylinder, connected by a cable, conducted a “drawing” operation for about an hour and ten minutes. According to a reliable source in Ellsworth the following climatic changes took place in that city on the night of July 6 and the early morning of July 7: “Rain began to fall shortly after ten o’clock Monday evening, first as a drizzle and then by midnight as a gentle, steady rain. Rain continued throughout the night, and a rainfall of 0.24 inches was recorded in Ellsworth the following morning.”

A puzzled witness to the “rain-making” process said: “The queerest looking clouds you ever saw began to form soon after they got the thing rolling.” And later the same witness said the scientists were able to change the course of the wind by manipulation of the device.

The blueberry crop survived, the farmers declared themselves satisfied, and Reich received his fee

OVERUNITY GENERATOR

A number of overunity generators, which produce more energy than they take to run, have surfaced in the past century. Ironically, they have been more trouble than they were worth. In nearly all cases, a supposedly working prototype has been unable to make it to commercial production as a result of various corporate or government forces working against the technology. Recently, the Lutec 1000, an “electricity amplifier,” has been making steady progress toward a final commercial version. Will consumers soon be able to buy it, or will it too be suppressed?

COLD FUSION

Billions of dollars have been spent researching how to create energy using controlled “hot fusion,” a risky and unpredictable line of experimentation. Meanwhile, garage scientists and a fringe group of university researchers have been getting closer to harnessing the power of “cold fusion,” which is much more stable and controllable, but far less supported by government and foundation money. In 1989, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons announced that they had made a breakthrough and had observed cold fusion in a glass jar on their lab bench. To say the reaction they received was chilly would be an understatement. CBS’s 60 Minutes described how the resulting backlash from the well-funded hot-fusion crowd sent the researchers underground and overseas, where within a few years their funding dried up, forcing them to drop their pursuit of clean energy.

HOT FUSION

Cold fusion isn’t the only technology to get buried by hot-headed scientists. When two physicists who were working on the decades-long Tokamak Hot Fusion project at Los Alamos Laboratory stumbled across a cheaper, safer method of creating energy from colliding atoms, they were allegedly forced to repudiate their own discoveries or be fired; the lab feared losing the torrent of government money for Tokamak. In retaliation, the lead researchers created the Focus Fusion Society, which raises private money to fund their research outside of government interference.

MAGNETOFUNK AND HIMMELKOMPASS

Nazi scientists spent much of World War II hidden in a covert military base somewhere in the arctic, creating the Magnetofunk. This alleged invention was designed to deflect the compasses of Allied aircraft that might be searching for Point 103, as the base was known. The aircraft pilots would think they were flying in a straight line, but would gradually curve around Point 103 without ever knowing they were deceived. The Himmelkompass allowed German navigators to orient themselves to the position of the sun, rather than magnetic forces, so they could find Point 103 despite the effects of the Magnetofunk. According to Wilhelm Landig, a former SS officer, these two devices were closely guarded secrets of the Third Reich. So closely guarded were they that neither device apparently survived the collapse of Hitler’s Germany, although the real tragedy is that no one has ever named their band Magnetofunk.

A SAFER CIGARETTE?

In the 1960s, the Liggett & Myers tobacco company created a product called the XA, a cigarette in which most of the stick’s carcinogens had been eliminated. Dr. James Mold, Liggett’s Research Director, reported in court documents in the case of “The City and County of San Francisco vs. Phillip Morris, Inc.,” that Phillip Morris threatened to “clobber” Liggett if they did not adhere to an industry agreement never to reveal information about the negative health effects of smoking. By advertising a “safer” alternative, they would be admitting the dangers of tobacco use. The lawsuit was dismissed on a technicality and Phillip Morris never addressed the accusations. Despite their own scientists’ publication of research that showed less cancer in mice exposed to smoke from the XA, Liggett & Myers issued a press released denying evidence of cancer in humans as a result of tobacco use, and the XA never saw the light of day.

TENS

The Transcutaneous Electronic Nerve Stimulation (TENS) device was created to alleviate pain impulses from the body without the use of drugs. In 1974, Johnson & Johnson bought StimTech, one of the first companies to sell the machine, and proceeded to starve the TENS division of money, causing it to flounder. StimTech sued, alleging that Johnson & Johnson purposely stifled the TENS technology to protect sales of its flagship drug, Tylenol. Johnson & Johnson responded that the device never performed as well as was claimed and that it was not profitable. StimTech’s founders won $170 Million, although the ruling was appealed and overturned on a technicality. The court’s finding that the corporation suppressed the TENS device was never overturned.

THE PHOEBUS CARTEL

Phillips, GE and Osram engaged in a conspiracy from 1924 to 1939 with the goal of controlling the fledgling light-bulb industry, according to a report published in Time magazine six years later. The alleged cartel set prices and suppressed competing technologies that would have produced longer-lasting and more efficient light bulbs. By the time the cabal dissolved, the industry-standard incandescent bulb was established as the dominant source of artificial light across Europe and North America. Not until the late 1990s did compact fluorescent bulbs begin to edge into the worldwide lighting market as an alternative.

THE CORAL CASTLE

How did Ed Leedskalnin build the massive Coral Castle in Homestead, Florida, out of giant chunks of coral weighing up to 30 tons each with no heavy equipment and no outside help? Theories abound, including anti-gravity devices, magnetic resonance and alien technology, but the answer may never be known. Leedskalnin died in 1951 without any written plans or clues as to his techniques. The centerpiece of the castle, which is now a museum open to the public, is a nine-ton gate that used to move with light pressure from one finger. After the gate’s bearings wore out in the 1980s, a crew of five took more than two weeks to fix it, although they never did get it to work as effortlessly as Leedskalnin’s original masterpiece.

HEMP BIO-FUEL

The father of our country, George Washington, who is rumored to have said “I cannot tell a lie,” was a proud supporter of the hemp seed. Of course, the only thing more suppressed in this country than an honest politician is hemp, which is often mistakenly for marijuana and therefore unfairly maligned. Governmental roadblocks, meanwhile, prevent hemp from becoming the leader in extracting ethanol, allowing environmentally damaging sources like corn to take over the ethanol industry. Despite the fact that it requires fewer chemicals, less water and less processing to do the same job, hemp has never caught on. Experts also lay the blame at the feet of (who else?) Presidential candidates, who kiss up to Iowa corn growers for votes.

McDonald’s serving up ‘restructured meat technology’ – you want fries with that?

Well, it’s that time of year again when McDonald’s rolls out  its venerable McRib sandwich. Tens of millions of Americans will purchase  one – or, judging by the nation’s ever-widening belt line, several – but most  will do so without knowing all they should know about this popular  sandwich.

Besides high caloric content, there are several other reasons  why you should avoid the McRib, a boneless pork product smothered in BBQ sauce  that famously resembles a rack of ribs, as much as you avoid most of the other  “delicacies” served by this fast-food behemoth. In addition, The Blaze  reports, there are several “fun facts” about the sandwich you may not have  known: A sandwich ‘built’ from scratch?: The McRib is a product of  Rene Arend, who came up with the idea and design of the sandwich. That said,  Richard Mandigo, a professor from the University of Nebraska, who  developed the “restructured meat product” that the McRib is actually made  of.

According to Chicago magazine, citing a 1995 article by  Mandigo, “restructured meat product” is described thusly:
Restructured  meat products are commonly manufactured by using lower-valued meat  trimmings reduced in size by comminution (flaking, chunking, grinding,  chopping or slicing). The comminuted meat mixture is mixed with salt and water  to extract salt-soluble proteins. These extracted proteins are critical to  produce a “glue” which binds muscle pieces together. These muscle pieces may  then be reformed to produce a “meat log” of specific form or  shape. The log is then cut into steaks or chops which, when cooked, are similar  in appearance and texture to their intact muscle counterparts. … Such products  as tripe, heart, and scalded stomachs are high in protein, completely edible,  wholesome, and nutritious, and most are already used in sausage without  objection.
Still hungry?

Packed with calories – and ingredients: In a  time of labeling, when government entities and the public are pushing for more  disclosure, the package for the McRib would have to grow just to list all of its  ingredients.
According to the current box labeling, the sandwich consists  of just five basic components – a pork patty and BBQ sauce with pickle slices,  onions and a sesame bun.

But, as Time magazine points out, a  closer examination of McDonald’s own list of  ingredients reveals that the sandwich contains a total of 70 ingredients,  including azodicarbonamide, a flour-bleaching component that is often used to  produce foamed plastics (think gym mats and the soles of shoes). In fact, “the  compound is banned in Europe and Australia as a food additive,” says Time. Other ingredients include ammonium sulfate and polysorbate  80.

Besides, the sandwich itself contains an incredible amount of  calories – 500 at least – along with 26 grams of fat, 44 grams of carbohydrates  and 980 milligrams of sodium, nearly half the recommended daily amount of about  2,400 milligrams.
Not a good choice for your heart: The  ingredients, combined with a dose of 10 mg of saturated fat (nearly half  of the recommended daily allowance), make the McRib an enemy of a healthy heart,  say the experts.

“Think about that for a second: When you eat a McRib,  you’re eating the same chemical ingredients and compounds in those disgusting  yoga mats at the gym. And that’s on top of the fact that it tastes terrible in  the first place,” writes Rick Paulas, food editor for KCET, a public  television network in southern California. “Which means it’s time to ask: Why  are we still eating this?”
That’s a very valid question. In the meantime,  that sound you hear is the further tightening of the nation’s belt  line.

Source: Silent Crow News

The Unintended Consequences Of The Copyright Alerts System

Since we've learned of the plan for so-called Six Strikes programs by ISPs, there has been protest and warnings from multiple sources about multiple issues. Accordingly, Daily Dot has a nice little piece about what sort of unintended consequences we can expect to come out of this plan. A couple of them are well-traveled ground here at Techdirt, including whether businesses will still offer WiFi when "pirates" naturally flock there to carry out their piratey actions. Likewise, we've discussed the importance of the Open Wireless movement, which will certainly take a massive hit if and when these ISP plans are spun up. All that being said, the third unintended consequence mentioned in the article is probably the most important, since it will render all of this an exercise in futility: greater adoption of privacy tools by the masses.

According to comments Lesser made at an Internet Society meeting in November 2012, the definition of who the CAS is after is extremely narrow, at least for its planned first iteration. It only tracks those who upload the most-popular copyrighted content, like blockbuster movies and best-selling albums, via the peer-to-peer service BitTorrent, and it only identifies them by their Internet protocol (IP) addresses. That's it. So pirates who can avoid BitTorrent, or peer-to-peer altogether, or download without uploading (a major faux pas on some torrent sites), or hide their IP addresses, will avoid detection.

Learning to conceal one’s IP address is already a major point of Internet activism, for reasons that have nothing to do with piracy. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, for instance, suggests bloggers in dangerous parts of the world hide their IP addresses to ensure their anonymity from authoritarian governments.

In other words, these plans will spark an interest in privacy tools designed to get around the "strikes". It's an arms race that essentially cannot be won, because every new tactic simply spurs the growth of interest in counter-tactics and probably leaves the average computer user even more prepared for the next attempt than they would have been otherwise. This type of thing likely creates tech-saavy people where there previously would have been none. Meanwhile, businesses and WiFi device owners will close off access out of fear.

Torrent Freak backs this key point up, noting how few bittorrent users are currently masking their IP addresses and making the case that that number is going to jump after Six Strikes begins.

BitTorrent proxies and VPN services are the preferred way for people to remain anonymous while downloading. These services replace a user’s home IP-address with one provided by the proxy service, making it impossible for tracking companies to identify who is doing the file-sharing. In the U.S. 16% of all file-sharers already hide their IP-address, and this is likely to increase when the copyright alert system goes live.

What's missing from all of this is exactly how any of these plans are going to get previous "pirates" to turn into paying customers for media companies. History suggests they will not do so, will not curb piracy, and will in fact only annoy people who like open WiFi connections and prepare users for the next round of the race all the more. If there were a more perfect definition of a plan that achieves nothing except collateral damage than 6 strikes legislation, I cannot imagine what it'd be.

Source: Techdirt

Draft UN climate report shows 20 years of overestimated global warming, skeptics warn

A preliminary draft of a report by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was leaked to the public this month, and climate skeptics say it contains fresh evidence of 20 years of overstated global warming.

The report -- which is not scheduled for publication until 2014 -- was leaked by someone involved in the IPCC’s review process, and is available for download online. Bloggers combing through the report discovered a chart comparing the four temperature models the group has published since 1990. Each has overstated the rise in temperature that Earth actually experienced.

“Temperatures have not risen nearly as much as almost all of the climate models predicted,” Roy Spencer, a climatologist at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, told FoxNews.com.

“Their predictions have largely failed, four times in a row... what that means is that it's time for them to re-evaluate,” Spencer said.

The IPCC graph shows that the midpoints of the various models predicted that the world would warm by between about 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit and 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit between 1990 and 2012. Actual warming was much less than that: 0.28 F, according the data the IPCC cites. 

'It is evidence that CO2 is not nearly as strong a climate driver as the IPCC has been assuming.'

- Roy Spencer, a climatologist at the University of Alabama at Huntsville

But that doesn’t mean the IPCC models are wrong, others argue.

“It’s important to keep in mind that there are natural short-term variations in global temperature that happen right alongside human-induced warming,” Aaron Huertas, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, told FoxNews.com.

“For instance, it would have been impossible for the IPCC to predict if a volcanic eruption might temporarily cool the Earth, as the Mount Pinatubo eruption did in 1991.”

The IPCC’s climate report draft also notes that “the model projections ... do not fully account for natural variability.”

Other types of natural anomalies include solar variability and weather patterns such as the El Niño southern oscillation.

Scientists include a “margin of error” in their models to account for unpredictable variations like volcanoes and weather patterns. Yet one of the IPCC’s models missed the actual warming trend entirely -- in other words, the actual temperatures were outside its “margin of error.” In the other three models, the actual warming trend fell within the very lower bounds of what they predicted would happen.

At least that’s what the IPCC’s chart shows. One scientist who recently published a study that found that the IPCC predictions were very accurate argues that it is likely wrong.

“The IPCC graph you refer to is just a draft version which still has a number of problems that will be ironed out,” Potsdam University physics professor Stefan Rahmstorf told FoxNews.com.

Skeptics such as Spencer also say that the chart does not mean that global warming is a hoax.

“The IPCC's claim is that they are 90 percent sure that humans have 'contributed to' the observed warming. Hell, even I would agree with that innocuous statement.”

But he says it does indicate that greenhouse gases are having less of an affect on climate than the IPCC thought.

“It is evidence that CO2 is not nearly as strong a climate driver as the IPCC has been assuming. This is the possibility they do not allow to be considered, because it would end all of their policy-changing goals,” he said.

Huertas said that the criticisms “are an attempt to obscure the bigger picture.”

“Climate change is happening, it is due to human activities, and the emissions choices we make today will have the largest influence on the extent of future climate change.”

Source: Fox News

Sweden: A Cautionary Tale About Vaccines

In 2009, the swine flu hit Europe in pandemic levels.  The countries rushed to acquire a vaccine called Pandemrix, made by GlaxoSmithKline in the UK.   The vaccine had been fast-tracked for use due to the human swine flu crisis.

One wealthy nation, Sweden, snapped up a large amount of the Pandemrix vaccine and launched a nationwide campaign, eventually vaccinating 59% of the population against the swine flu.  This may sound familiar - the vaccine was promoted by national health organizations, the main stream news, schools, workplaces and on television to encourage everyone to get the jab.

A few months later a strange medical trend developed.  Medical professionals began seeing case after case of children suffering from narcolepsy.  And these children had one thing in common: they had been injected with the Pandemrix vaccine.  More than 800 children across Europe have been diagnosed with this incurable neurological disorder and the evidence is overwhelming in the implication of the vaccine.

The drug contained squalene which was used as an adjuvant. Squalene is the most likely culprit in the vaccine. (Source)

The Tragic Story of Emelie

_______________________________________

One young girl, Emelie Olsson, has had her life forever devastated as a result of narcolepsy, the onset of which occurred after receiving the swine flu vaccine in 2009.

The 14 year old girl has had her life devastated.

She cannot sleep at night. When she does sleep, she is plagued with nightmares and hallucinations, sometimes waking more than 70 times in the night.

Sometimes when she wakens she is completely paralyzed and unable to breathe well or call out for help.

During the day, she can hardly keep her eyes open because of the lack of sleep.

If she laughs she has something called a cataplexy – when a strong emotion causes sudden muscle weakness that leaves her unable to stand.  When Emelie tries to have fun with friends, the happiness, literally, causes her to collapse to the ground.   ”I can’t laugh or joke about with my friends anymore, because when I do I get cataplexies and collapse,” she said in an interview. “I can not laugh anymore and it makes me very, very sad. It is the worst of all.”

Can you honestly imagine, as a parent, an adult or a human being, having to warn a child – “Stop that!  Don’t laugh!!!!”

But Emelie’s mother has to do just that.  In an interview, Marie Olsson expressed terrible guilt and regret.  (translated from Swedish) “Yes, I feel guilty. We are parents supposed to protect our children and instead I have asked Emelie take this vaccination, which has made her so sick. If I had read on better and questioned more then maybe she had not been vaccinated themselves. Before then, Emelie had been healthy.”

Emelie, age 14,  must now take stimulants during the day, narcotic sleep aids at night and medications that stabilise her emotions so that she can feel neither sadness or joy. She must take these medications for the rest of her life.

Emelie’s struggle is outlined in the documentary “After the Syringe.”

_______________________________________

Lest the pro-vaccine crown think that Emelie’s story is merely anecdotal, there is enough evidence to support claims that GSK’s toxic concoction caused the 800 reported cases of narcolepsy to convince experts like Emmanuel Mignot, of Stanford University, who one of the world’s leading experts on narcolepsy. ”There’s no doubt in my mind whatsoever that Pandemrix increased the occurrence of narcolepsy onset in children in some countries – and probably in most countries.”

Europe’s regulatory board, the European Medicines Agency, has now directed that the vaccine should not be given to anyone under the age of 20.

One public health official in Sweden has gone on the record stating that things should have been different. Goran Stiernstedt, the director for health and social care at the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions, was at the helm of the vaccination campaign across Sweden.  He estimates the vaccine may have saved the lives of 30-60 people, but now over 200 recipients suffer from narcolepsy. (source)

“The big question is was it worth it? And retrospectively I have to say it was not…This is a medical tragedy…Hundreds of young people have had their lives almost destroyed.”

 Some experts say the risk is still worthwhile.

David Salisbury, the UK’s director of immunization, seems to think that the quality of life of 800 children is a small price to pay.

“In the event of a severe pandemic, the risk of death is far higher than the risk of narcolepsy,” he told Reuters. “If we spent longer developing and testing the vaccine on very large numbers of people and waited to see whether any of them developed narcolepsy, much of the population might be dead.”

Salisbury, of course, is neck-deep in his involvement with the very ethically questionable World Health Organization.  He has served as the Chairman of WGO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on vaccines, and as a member of WHO’s Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety.  He is the Co-chairman of the Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Group for the Global Health Security Action Group of G7 countries.

Indeed, his pro-vaccine interest in the “greater good” far outweighs his concern about the risks to children like Emelie.

No Responsibility Taken

No one seems willing to take responsibility for the lifelong damages suffered by these children.

Sweden gave GSK indemnity when they purchased the drug, which means that those affected by the vaccine cannot ask for damages from the manufacturer.

To receive compensation, the state is asking parents to  ”…forever renounce the right to ask anyone to account in court for what has happened. The condition has no counterpart in any other type of insurance, and only have the task of protecting drug manufacturers from lawsuits.”

Margareta Eriksson, President of Narcolepsy Association, responded:

We can never write such a thing. We parents requiring instead that:

● The state clearly take responsibility for our children’s future, and ensure that our children receive full compensation for economic losses without limiting insurance.

● All the vaccine itself and then got narcolepsy should be entitled to compensation – without having to fight for it against the insurer.

The state ran a vaccination campaign that gave our children a life-long severe illness. Now, the state must also take responsibility for the consequences. (translated from Swedish: source)

 Still Pushing Vaccines

One health official inNorway has called the Pandermix tragedy a medical catastrophe.  “Narcolepsy following Pandemrix [vaccination] was completely unexpected and surprising, and a catastrophe.”

“Preben Aavitsland, who was responsible for monitoring contagious diseases at Norway’s Institute of Public Health in 2009 when the Swine Flu hit, cited studies in Finland, Sweden and Ireland.

He told NRK these concluded that children given the Pandemrix vaccine had a 10 times-higher risk of developing narcolepsy than adults, calculations he states that Norwegian experts had not carried out. ” (source)

Despite these statistics, here is still a push for the influenza vaccine in the Scandinavian countries.

The Institute of Public Health declares the current flu vaccine is not the same as the Pandemrix vaccine and urges that those in risk groups such as those over the age of 65 or suffering from other health problems consider vaccination.” (source)

What Can We Learn from This?

There are a few take-home lessons from this tale.

• First of all, something vastly under-tested was brought to the market.
• That vaccine was not merely made available, it was pushed, promoted and practically forced on people using a campaign of fear and guilt.
• Children have been forever damaged by this vaccine.
• No one wants to take financial responsibility for a life sentence of mental suffering, expensive daily medications and serious health issues.
• Officials know these things are true but want you to continue to be vaccinated (and have your children vaccinated) anyway.

This story is a cautionary tale. It tells us (and simply reaffirms for many of us) that we cannot accept anything that Big Pharma and their cohorts at the FDA and the CDC tell us.  If they lied to people in Europe can we really think they are telling us the truth in the United States and Canada?  We cannot accept what the media tells us at face value – who do you think sponsors the news programs?  Pay attention to the ads – you’ll see commercials for over the counter medications, SSRI antidepressants and other Big Pharma goodies interspersed throughout.

Whether the goal is to line their own pockets, to control the masses or to depopulate, this illustrates that our children are seen as nothing more than human laboratory animals.  These medications that are brought to market and all but forced on us are just a big science experiment.  The mind control and brainwashing by the mainstream culture is a psychological game, convincing people that it’s all for their own good.

You can turn on the TV right now and flip through a few channels and see the identical agenda at work in North America, where nearly every newscast mentions at least once during the 30 minute program, where, how or why you should rush out, roll up your sleeve, and get your flu shot.

What happened in Sweden is a direct example of what is going on, RIGHT NOW, across the western world, regarding the flu shot. The tragedy that has afflicted these families could easily occur here.  If you can’t see the correlation between the two, your eyes and mind are willfully closed.

 

Don’t be fooled.  Don’t be brainwashed.  Don’t end up like Emelie and her parents.

Source: The Organic Prepper

An Open Letter to Skype

I’ve known about security concerns related to Skype for quite some time, but I never really understood the details.  Thanks to this letter, signed by a large number of organizations and individuals, I now know quite a bit more.  For those as ignorant as me on this topic, here is some background:

In June 2008, Skype stated it could not eavesdrop on user conversations due to its peer-to-peer architecture and encryption techniques. Additionally, Skype claimed it was not required to comply with expanded CALEA rules on lawful interception as long as it was based in Europe. As a result of the service being acquired by Microsoft in 2011, it may now be required to comply with CALEA due to the company being headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Furthermore, as a US-based communication provider, Skype would therefore be required to comply with the secretive practice of National Security Letters.

Since Skype was acquired by Microsoft, both entities have refused to answer questions about exactly what kinds of user data can be intercepted, what user data is retained, or whether eavesdropping on Skype conversations may take place. In 2012, the FBI stated that it had issued a warrant for chats going back to 2007, and that it had utilized those chats as evidence as the basis for criminal charges. This contradicts Skype’s own policy stating that chats are retained for a maximum of 30 days.

The letter begins as follows:

Thursday January 24th, 2013;
Skype Division President Tony Bates
Microsoft Chief Privacy Officer Brendon Lynch
Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith

Dear Mr. Bates, Mr. Lynch and Mr. Smith,
Skype is a voice, video and chat communications platform with over 600 million users worldwide, effectively making it one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies. Many of its users rely on Skype for secure communications—whether they are activists operating in countries governed by authoritarian regimes, journalists communicating with sensitive sources, or users who wish to talk privately in confidence with business associates, family, or friends.

It is unfortunate that these users, and those who advise them on best security practices, work in the face of persistently unclear and confusing statements about the confidentiality of Skype conversations, and in particular the access that governments and other third parties have to Skype user data and communications.

Read the full Open Letter to Skype.

1.8 gigapixel ARGUS-IS. World's highest resolution video surviellience platform by DARPA.

Withdrawn: $114 Billion From Big U.S. Banks

More than $114 billion exited the biggest U.S. banks this month, and nobody’s quite sure why.

The Federal Reserve releases data on the assets and liabilities of commercial banks every Friday. The most current figures, covering the first full week of 2013, show the largest one-week withdrawals since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Even when seasonally adjusted, the level drops to $52.8 billion—still the third-highest amount on record, and one for which bank experts and analysts were reluctant to give a definitive explanation.

The most obvious culprit is the expiration of the Transaction Account Guarantee program, the extraordinary federal effort to shore up the country’s non-gigantic banks during the 2008 financial crisis. Big banks were considered “too big to fail,” while smaller ones were vulnerable to runs. The TAG program backstopped their deposit bases by temporarily offering unlimited insurance on money kept in non-interest-bearing accounts. That guarantee ended on Dec. 31, so a decrease in deposits would be expected first thing in January.

STORY: Wage Growth May Signal Inflation Ahead—and Fed Action

But hold on: The Fed data show $114 billion leaving the 25 biggest banks—about 2 percent of their deposit base. Only $26.9 billion left all the others, equivalent to 0.9 percent of their deposit base. Experts had predicted that the end of TAG would hurt the nation’s small banks because the big ones are still considered too big to fail. “I think [customers] are going to go back to the mega banks,” the head of a regional bank in Bethesda, Md., told The Washington Post in December. “They’ve been assured by the government that mega banks are too big to fail. It’s a horrible, bad, poorly-thought-out situation.” Small banks fearfully lobbied the Senate to extend TAG, with analysts telling the New York Times that they expected $200 million to $300 million—yes, with an m—to move from affected accounts into money market funds or elsewhere.

So if the missing $114 billion is not the result of the TAG program expiration—or at least not all related to TAG—what’s going on? Paul Miller, a bank analyst with FBR Capital Markets, cautions against reading too much into the Fed’s weekly data. “It’s a noisy database,” he says. Among large U.S. banks, there have been movements of greater than $50 billion (not seasonally adjusted) during 107 different weeks since 2000. It’s not uncommon to see 11-figure swings—that is, tens of billions of dollars—from positive to negative, or vice-versa, one week to the next.

Noise can increase near the start of a year. “The first quarter is always a wacky quarter,” Miller says. And January 2013 has seen an incredible amount of change. First, the fiscal cliff drama had companies shifting dividends and had bank clients guessing what their tax liabilities would be, which might explain the $60.4 billion pumped into the largest banks during the week ending Dec. 26. (Seasonally adjusted, it was the sixth-highest level on record.) Second, the payroll tax just went up, sticking most wage earners with paychecks that are 2 percent smaller.

VIDEO: 'Thank You, America': AIG to Launch This Bailout Ad

Third, ordinary investors may be ready to move out of federally guaranteed accounts and into investments. Stocks did very well in 2012. As Bloomberg Businessweek’s Roben Farzad wrote on Jan. 16, equity mutual funds saw their second-highest inflows on record in the first week of the year. Economists are worrying that market exuberance is getting too high, with one measure of risk aversion at a three-decade low.

“If deposits are really trending down—and at the end of the month, we’ll be smarter than we are now—if that’s the case, it can tell us a few things,” says Dan Geller, executive vice president of Market Rates Insight. “And one thing that it could tell us is that the law of elasticity is finally catching up with deposits.” In other words, contrary to what economic theory predicts, deposits have been piling up at banks ever since the crisis, even though they offer pitiful yields. Geller says that may finally be ending—though like Miller, he says not to put too much stock in just one burst of Fed data.

“One week is just a very thin slice,” he says. Still, $114 billion is a big figure, and it’s one to keep an eye on in order to understand where the economy is headed in 2013.

Anonymous hacks US Sentencing Commission, distributes files

Hacktivist group Anonymous took control of the U.S. Sentencing Commission website Friday, January 25 in a new campaign called "Operation Last Resort."

The first attack on the website was early Friday morning. The second - successful - attack came around 9pm PST that evening. 

By 3am PST ussc.gov was down (it had been dropped from the DNS), yet as of this writing the IP address (66.153.19.162) still returned the defaced site's contents.

Update January 26, 8pm PST: ussc.gov is restored.

It appears that via the U.S. government website, Anonymous had distributed encrypted government files and left a statement on the website that de-encryption keys would be publicly released (thus releasing the as-yet unkonwn information held on the stolen files) if the U.S. government did not comply with Anonymous' ultimatum demands for legal reform.

Anonymous explained that they used this webiste for symbolic reasons.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission sets guidelines for sentencing in United States Federal courts, and on the defaced ussc.gov website Anonymous cited the recent suicide of hacktivist Aaron Swartz as a "line that has been crossed."

The statement suggested retaliation for Swartz's tragic suicide, which many - including the family - believe was a result of overzealous prosecution by the Department of Justice and what the family deemed a "bullying" use of outdated computer crime laws.

• See also: Hacker, activist Aaron Swartz commits suicide

Anonymous has not specified exactly what files they have obtained. The various files were named after Supreme Court Justices.

According to the statement:

Warhead – U S – D O J – L E A – 2013 . A E E 256 is primed and armed. It has been quietly distributed to numerous mirrors over the last few days and is available for download from this website now. We encourage all Anonymous to syndicate this file as widely as possible.

This appears to be Anonymous sending a threatening message to whoever knows what might be on the encrypted files.

Anonymous has encouraged anyone and everyone to distribute the files, so it is unknown who has the files or how many have been distributed. The files are useless without the encryption keys.

The contents are various and we won’t ruin the speculation by revealing them. Suffice it to say, everyone has secrets, and some things are not meant to be public.

At a regular interval commencing today, we will choose one media outlet and supply them with heavily redacted partial contents of the file. Any media outlets wishing to be eligible for this program must include within their reporting a means of secure communications.

Currently two of the mirrors are slow, and one has gone offline completely.

It is possible, as suggested by the file names, that Anonymous may have taken files pertaining to each of the Justices (all of whom were named on filenames at the bottom of the defaced page, such as "Scalia.warhead1") and put them in a file (named "Warhead-US-DOJ-LEA-2013.aes256") and then appended a command to the file that would nuke the file. 

This suggests that Anonymous may have obtained files and nuked the compromised server.

Anonymous Tweeted that the group left a backdoor and made it editable in a way that encourages other hackers to come and shell the server.

Source: ZDNet

Coca-Cola admits Dasani is really just 'purified' tap water

(NaturalNews) As more and more people wake up to the dangers of fluoride, chlorine, pharmaceuticals, and the many other toxic compounds found in municipal water supplies, the market for bottled water has exploded. But in the process, some major food and beverage corporations have unwittingly begun peddling that very same tap water in bottles as "pure," a deceptive labeling term that is the subject of a new trade controversy in Europe.

According to a recent report by Occupy Monsanto, the Dasani water brand, which is owned by beverage giant Coca-Cola, is one such bottled water counterfeit, if you will, that contains purified tap water dressed in fancy-looking bottles. Like many other bottled water brands, Dasani is sold at a premium price, and many people perceive it to be superior to tap water, even though it actually is just tap water.

Even though the majority of the impurities have admittedly been removed from Dasani water, and minerals added back in, many people do not realize that the water contained in Dasani bottles is not actually from a natural spring. If you read closely the labels found on water bottles, it usually spells out the source where the water inside was derived. But this information is often overlooked by consumers who believe they are buying something superior.

"Figures from independent beverage research company Canadean show that at least two out of every five bottles of water sold around the world are, like Dasani, 'purified' waters, rather than 'source' waters which originate from a spring," explains Trevor Datson in an Occupy Monsanto piece. "Most of the supermarket own-label bottled waters consist of treated mains water. In short, they are subjected to many of the same treatments that source waters undergo to satisfy public health requirements after being pumped up from the ground."

The significance of this is that water specifically derived from a natural spring actually is superior to the water supplied by the local tap, at least in most cases. Many people who buy bottled water assume their water comes from a spring, because this is how the bottled water industry got its start. But today, brands like Dasani, Aquafina, and Sparkletts have captured significant market share by engaging in what some would called deceptive advertising.

Back in 2007, PepsiCo Inc., which owns the Aquafina "purified" water brand, announced it would begin printing the words "Public Water Source" on its labels to ensure that customers knew where Aquafina water actually came from. The move came in response to several nationwide campaigns launched at that time to combat deception in bottled water labeling.

Source: Natural News

Study accidentally exposes chemotherapy as fraud - tumors grow faster after chemo!

(NaturalNews) A team of researchers from Washington state had a giant "Oops!" moment recently when it accidentally uncovered the deadly truth about chemotherapy while investigating why prostate cancer cells are so difficult to eradicate using conventional treatment methods. As it turns out, chemotherapy does not actually treat or cure cancer at all, according to the study's findings, but rather fuels the growth and spread of cancer cells, making them much harder to stamp out once chemotherapy has already been initiated.

You might call it the "smoking gun" that proves, once and for all, the complete fraud of the conventional cancer industry. Not only is chemotherapy, the standard method of cancer treatment today, a complete flop, based on the findings, but it is actually detrimental for patients with cancer. Published in the journal Nature Medicine, the shock findings which, not surprisingly, are being ignored by the mainstream scientific community, highlight in full detail how chemotherapy causes healthy cells to release a protein that actually feeds cancer cells and causes them to thrive and proliferate.

According to the study, chemotherapy induces healthy cells to release WNT16B, a protein that helps promote cancer cell survival and growth. Chemotherapy also definitively damages the DNA of healthy cells, a long-term detriment that persists long after chemotherapy treatment is stopped. This combined action of healthy cell destruction and cancer cell promotion technically makes chemotherapy more of a cancer-causing protocol than a cancer-treatment protocol, by definition, a fact that should grab the attention of anyone personally familiar with having, or knowing someone else who has cancer.

"WNT16B, when secreted, would interact with nearby tumor cells and cause them to grow, invade, and importantly, resist subsequent therapy," explained study co-author Peter Nelson from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, about the findings, which he dubbed "completely unexpected." "Our results indicate that damage responses in benign cells ... may directly contribute to enhanced tumor growth kinetics," added the entire team about what they observed.

Avoiding chemotherapy improves health outcomes, suggests research

What this means, for all intents and purposes, is that the entire process of chemotherapy is completely worthless, and is actually highly detrimental for cancer patients. Anyone searching for a real cure will want to avoid chemotherapy, in other words, and pursue an alternate route. This may include investigating alternative treatments like the Gerson Therapy (http://www.naturalnews.com/Gerson.html), or evaluating anti-cancer foods and nutrients like sodium bicarbonate, turmeric, high-dose vitamin C, and vitamin D.

"Whatever manipulations we're doing to tumors can inadvertently do something to increase the tumor numbers to become more metastatic, which is what kills patients at the end of the day," admitted Dr. Raghu Kalluri, author of a similar study published last year in the journal Cancer Cell. This particular study found that cancer drugs, which are typically pushed alongside chemotherapy, cause tumors to metastasize.

Source: Natural News

Google Glasses Beam Sound Into Your Skull without Headphones

Google aims to replace passwords with ID ring

The struggle to remember several long and increasingly complicated passwords simply to carry out everyday web tasks could soon become a thing of the past, if Google gets its way and introduces a ring that can confirm your identity online.

In a research paper, two security experts at the web giant have outlined a future in which the main way of guaranteeing we are who we say we are online will be possession of a physical token, perhaps embedded in smartphones or even jewellery.

They have added to growing claims that passwords are both inherently insecure and increasingly impractical.

To more make them more difficult for criminals to guess, web services have forced people to use longer passwords with different types of characters, but that also makes them more difficult to remember. To add to the headache, experts also advise against using the same password for different services, to reduce the impact if one is hacked.

“Along with many in the industry, we feel passwords and simple bearer tokens such as cookies are no longer sufficient to keep users safe,” said Google vice president of security Eric Grosse and engineer Mayank Upadhyay, in an article to be published in an engineering journal.

Cookies are small text files issued by websites to web browser software to keep visitors logged in once they have entered their password.

Source: The Telegraph

Group Finds More Fake Ingredients in Popular Foods

It's what we expect as shoppers—what's in the food will be displayed on the label.

But a new scientific examination by the non-profit food fraud detectives the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP), discovered rising numbers of fake ingredients in products from olive oil to spices to fruit juice.

"Food products are not always what they purport to be," Markus Lipp, senior director for Food Standards for the independent lab in Maryland, told ABC News.

In a new database to be released Wednesday, and obtained exclusively by ABC News today, USP warns consumers, the FDA and manufacturers that the amount of food fraud they found is up by 60 percent this year.

USP, a scientific nonprofit that according to their website "sets standards for the identity, strength, quality, and purity of medicines, food ingredients, and dietary supplements manufactured, distributed and consumed worldwide" first released the Food Fraud Database in April 2012.

The organization examined more than 1,300 published studies and media reports from 1980-2010. The update to the database includes nearly 800 new records, nearly all published in 2011 and 2012.

Among the most popular targets for unscrupulous food suppliers? Pomegranate juice, which is often diluted with grape or pear juice.

"Pomegranate juice is a high-value ingredient and a high-priced ingredient, and adulteration appears to be widespread," Lipp said. "It can be adulterated with other food juices…additional sugar, or just water and sugar."

Lipp added that there have also been reports of completely "synthetic pomegranate juice" that didn't contain any traces of the real juice.

USP tells ABC News that liquids and ground foods in general are the easiest to tamper with:

• Olive oil: often diluted with cheaper oils
• Lemon juice: cheapened with water and sugar
• Tea: diluted with fillers like lawn grass or fern leaves
• Spices: like paprika or saffron adulterated with dangerous food colorings that mimic the colors

Milk, honey, coffee and syrup are also listed by the USP as being highly adulterated products.

Also high on the list: seafood. The number one fake being escolar, an oily fish that can cause stomach problems, being mislabeled as white tuna or albacore, frequently found on sushi menus.

National Consumers League did its own testing on lemon juice just this past year and found four different products labeled 100 percent lemon juice were far from pure.

"One had 10 percent lemon juice, it said it had 100 percent, another had 15 percent lemon juice, another...had 25 percent, and the last one had 35 percent lemon juice," Sally Greenberg, Executive Director for the National Consumers League said. "And they were all labeled 100 percent lemon juice."

Greenberg explains there are indications to help consumers pick the faux from the food.

"In a bottle of olive oil if there's a dark bottle, does it have the date that it was harvested?" she said. While other products, such as honey or lemon juice, are more difficult to discern, if the price is "too good to be true" it probably is.

"$5.50, that's pretty cheap for extra virgin olive oil," Greenberg said. "And something that should raise some eyebrows for consumers."

Many of the products USP found to be adulterated are those that would be more expensive or research intensive in its production. "Pomegranate juice is expensive because there is little juice in a pomegranate," Lipp said.

Source: ABC News

San Francisco Public Utilities Commission reveals plans to possibly use streetlights for surveillance

An LED streetlight being installed in North Carolina (Image credit: AshevilleNC.gov)

In a request for participants (RFP) issued by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) for a secure wireless control and communication system for San Francisco’s future network of dimmable LED streetlights, it is revealed that the network may also be used for street surveillance, public information broadcasts, gunshot monitoring and much more.

The plans seem quite similar to other streetlight surveillance and broadcasting systems like Intellistreets which boasts behavioral recognition technology, among other features.

While these Big Brother-esque plans might seem strange or frightening to some, it really isn’t all that surprising given that surveillance equipment has already been placed on public buses in San Francisco and elsewhere (see below video for more information).

The RFP, dated June 8, 2012 and released by Public Intelligence on January 21, 2013, reveals that the “integrated wireless communication monitoring and control system” designed at first to remotely manage the city’s future network of LED streetlights, could have many more troubling applications.

While the RFP itself at first glance makes it seem as though the wireless network will be used to transmit street surveillance and other information captured by devices other than the LED streetlights, a report by Rebecca Browe of the San Francisco Bay Guardian makes it clear that the streetlights themselves will do the surveillance.

“Each light has something akin to a smartphone embedded inside of it, and the interconnected network of lights can be controlled by a central command center,” reports Browe, describing technology nearly identical to that in the Intellistreets streetlights (see above linked article for more information).

Some of the “future needs for the secure wireless transmission of data throughout the City may include,” according to the RFP, “electric vehicle charging stations data transmission, electric meter reading, gunshot monitoring, street surveillance, public information broadcasts, street parking monitoring devices, traffic monitoring, traffic signal control, pollution monitoring” and the mysterious need labeled “others.”

According to Browe’s report, a pilot project has already begun in downtown San Francisco on Minna between Fourth and Sixth streets involving 14 streetlights.

As of now, these lights remotely read electric meters owned by the city, wirelessly transmit data from traffic cameras owned by the city’s Municipal Transportation Agency and also transmit data from traffic signals in the area.

Yet many questions are left unaddressed in the implementation of this program.

“Is a system of lighting fixtures that persistently collects data and beams it across invisible networks something San Franciscans really want to be installed in public space?” Browne asks.

“And, if these systems are ultimately used for street surveillance or traffic monitoring and constantly collecting data, who will have access to that information, and what will it be used for?”

Even Sascha Haselmeyer, cofounder of Living Labs Global Award (LLGA), acknowledged that there are some quite notable privacy implications to these types of systems.

“Many cities are deploying sensors that detect the Bluetooth signal of your mobile phone. So, they can basically track movements through the city,” Haselmeyer said.

“Like anything with technology, there’s a huge amount of opportunity and also a number of questions,” Haselmeyer continued. “You have movement sensors, traffic sensors, or the color [of a light] might change” based on a condition or behavior detected by the system.

“There’s an issue about who can opt in, or opt out, of what,” Haselmeyer said.

Indeed, it seems nearly impossible to opt out or in of a city-wide system like this.

Mary Tienken, Project Manager for LED Streetlight Conversion Project for the SFPUC, unsurprisingly attempted to downplay the potential to use the systems for street surveillance.

“The [SFPUC’s] interest is in creating an infrastructure that can be used by multiple agencies or entities … having a single system rather than have each department install its own system,” Tienken said, according to the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

An especially interesting part of Browne’s report is the mention of the interest of Intellistreets in the San Francisco pilot program.

According to the article, Intellistreets CEO Ron Harwood said his company “was a contender for the pilot through LLGA; he even traveled to Rio and delivered a panel talk on urban lighting systems alongside [SFPUC Assistant General Manager Barbara] Hale and a representative from Oracle.”

“Harwood seemed less concerned about the activists who’ve decried his product as a modern day manifestation of Big Brother, and more worried about why his company was not chosen to provide wireless LED streetlights in San Francisco,” according to Browne.

Michael Tardif, Intellistreets Chief Administration Officer, believes this was because of some “inside deal” and declined to discuss why San Francisco had rejected the Intellistreets application.

Perhaps most interesting of all, however, was the SFPUC’s response to a public records request for details on the city’s participation in LLGA submitted last August.

“After a duly diligent search we find that there are no documents responsive to your request,” responded an SFPUC public records coordinator to the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

“The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is not a participant, nor is involved with Living Labs Global Award,” continued the response. “Please know that we take our obligations under the Sunshine Ordinance very seriously.”

While that is clearly a lie, Charles Sheehan, communications manager at SFPUC (referred to only as “Sheehan”) in the article, claimed it was just an honest mistake.

Sheehan told the San Francisco Bay Guardian that in the public records division, “Clearly, nobody had any familiarity with LLGA.”

Did I forget anything or miss any errors? Would you like to make me aware of a story or subject to cover? Or perhaps you want to bring your writing to a wider audience? Feel free to contact me at admin@EndtheLie.com with your concerns, tips, questions, original writings, insults or just about anything that may strike your fancy.

Source

Elderberry Extract: Nature’s “Tamiflu”

The most important weapon against influenza that you can add to your herbal arsenal is elderberry extract.

Whether you are concerned with the seasonal flu or the potential of a deadly strain of influenza becoming pandemic, elderberry extract is a vital addition to your vault of flu remedies.

Unlike the highly touted flu shot, black elderberry has actually been conclusively proven to be effective. It is one of the few natural remedies that has been written up in the medical journals. The studies I’m listing here are based on black elderberry extract (Sambucus nigra L) - name brand Sambucol.

According to PubMed:

Sambucus nigra L. products – Sambucol – are based on a standardized black elderberry extract. They are natural remedies with antiviral properties, especially against different strains of influenza virus. Sambucol was shown to be effective in vitro against 10 strains of influenza virus. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized study, Sambucol reduced the duration of flu symptoms to 3-4 days.

Read more »

Anonymous Calls for Civil War to Overthrow the US Government

In the latest video from Anonymous, they have called for the most aggressive action yet. They're asking the American people to join them in a "call to arms" for the destruction and overthrow of the US Government.

In the statement, Anonymous says the government is calling them "terrorists" because they truly fear a people's uprising.

"The United States Government insists on labeling us as terrorists. The question is, "who do we terrorize?" Is it probable that the United States government is truly afraid of we, the people?"
They are not calling for denial of service attacks on government websites or protests as is their normal modus operandi, but for freedom activists to join them in full-blown war to overthrow the US Government and return it to the control of the people.

"We are not calling upon the collective to deface or use a distributed denial of service attack on a United States government agency website, or affiliate. We are not calling upon the people to once again occupy a city or protest in front of a local building, This has not brought on us any legislative change or alternate law. It has only brought us bloodshed and false criticism. For the last 12 years, voting has been useless. Corporations and lobbyists are the true leaders of this country and are the ones with the power to control our lives, To rebuild our government, we must first destroy it.Our time for democracy is here, Our time for resolution is here, This is America's time for revolution, To restore our constitutional rights, to once again, be free therefore, Anonymous along with the American people have decided to openly declare war on the United States government. This is a call to arms."

The hacktivist collective lists a long train of abuses that can no longer be allowed:

• We refuse to be a police state.
• We refuse to be brutalized and dehumanized by the very people our tax dollars fund to protect our cities and streets.
• We will not allow the government to control our destiny, our right to build a life for ourselves.
• We demand freedom from government control, taxation, repossession and death.
• You will not come to our doors and take our guns, our property, you will not force the citizens of this great country to participate in the unlawful act of government mandated healthcare.
• We the people refuse to put in your control our health, our bodies, our minds, our lives.
• We will not grant permission for the government to deploy drones over our homes and communities. 
• We must end the federal reserve. A private central bank should not issue our currency, set interest rates and run our economy. Rather, we need to return control over the currency to the American people where it belongs.

They claim that all peaceful attempts to affect change within the system have failed and the time for action is now.

"Our peaceful actions, patience and restraint have been demonstrated as we watched and waited for our Congress and Representatives to speak for the American citizens and protect us from the tyrant that sits in the oval office and happily strips the American people of our rights, one by one, executive order by executive order. We have waited long enough."

Google I/O Conference: Project Glass Prototype For Sale

Google's futuristic, Internet-connected glasses -- known, and fantasized about, as Project Glass -- are now real enough, said company co-founder Sergey Brin today, that prototypes will be sold to developers for $1,500.

"This is new technology and we really want you to shape it," Brin said at the Google I/O conference for computer programmers in San Francisco. "We want to get it out into the hands of passionate people as soon as possible." They are not ready for sale to the public.

The glasses -- really a tiny camera, display screen and processor that fit over the upper corner of a pair of glasses -- are meant to display information literally before a user's eyes. The camera would allow people to transmit video or still images of what they're seeing to others wirelessly, allowing them to see your world as you live it.

Google said it had been quietly working on Project Glass for two years. But until now, the outside world had only seen fanciful versions of what the glasses might be able to do. Today, Google said, they're far enough along that programmers are invited to try them out -- and come up with all sorts of ideas for how they might be used.

"Obviously capturing images and video is only one of the things a wearable computer can do," said Brin.

To make the point, Google had parachutists jump out of a blimp over San Francisco, wearing the glasses. The 6,000 programmers and reporters at the meeting saw a live video feed from the skydivers' glasses as they descended, landing on top of the Moscone Center where the I/O conference was taking place.

The applause when the skydivers walked into the convention center was thunderous.

Google this spring had shown a fanciful video of Project Glass, suggesting what might be possible. Look up at the sky, and a weather forecast will appear on the little screen over your eyebrow. Head down the stairs into the subway, and the glasses will show you whether trains are on time. Walk down the street and get turn-by-turn directions. See something you'd like to share with friends, and the images your glasses shoot will go to their Google+ social-media accounts.

Brin said that's just the beginning. Programmers can place orders at this week's meeting, he said, and get a pair early next year. The company is counting on them to come up with new uses for a wearable computer before the glasses are sold generally.

"You have to want to be on the bleeding edge," Brin said.

ABC News

Brien Foerster and the Mystery of the Elongated Skulls

New Glasses Block Facial Recognition Cameras from Identifying You

A great list of new privacy products on the market.