Month: March 2013

DHS Built Domestic Surveillance Technology Into Predator Drones

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Homeland Security’s specifications say drones must be able to detect whether a civilian is armed. Also specified: “signals interception” and “direction finding” for electronic surveillance.

Homeland Security required that this Predator drone, built by General Atomics, be capable of detecting whether a standing human at night is "armed or not."
Homeland Security required that this Predator drone, built by General Atomics, be capable of detecting whether a standing human at night is “armed or not.” (Credit: U.S. Department of Homeland Security)

– DHS built domestic surveillance tech into Predator drones (CNET, March 2, 2013):

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has customized its Predator drones, originally built for overseas military operations, to carry out at-home surveillance tasks that have civil libertarians worried: identifying civilians carrying guns and tracking their cell phones, government documents show.

The documents provide more details about the surveillance capabilities of the department’s unmanned Predator B drones, which are primarily used to patrol the United States’ northern and southern borders but have been pressed into service on behalf of a growing number of law enforcement agencies including the FBI, the Secret Service, the Texas Rangers, and local police.

Homeland Security’s specifications for its drones, built by San Diego-based General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, say they “shall be capable of identifying a standing human being at night as likely armed or not,” meaning carrying a shotgun or rifle. They also specify “signals interception” technology that can capture communications in the frequency ranges used by mobile phones, and “direction finding” technology that can identify the locations of mobile devices or two-way radios.

Read moreDHS Built Domestic Surveillance Technology Into Predator Drones

China Central Bank Says It Is ‘Fully Prepared For Looming Currency War’

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– China Central Bank Says It Is “Fully Prepared For Looming Currency War” (ZeroHedge, March 2, 2013):

Just in case Lagarde (and everyone else except for the Germans, who have a very unpleasant habit of telling the truth), was lying about that whole “no currency war” thing, China is already one step ahead and is fully prepared to roll out its own FX army. According to China Times, “China is fully prepared for a looming currency war should it, though “avoidable,” really happen, said China’s central bank deputy governor Yi Gang late Friday.” We look forward to the female head of the IMF explaining how China is obviously confused and that it is not currency war when one crushes their currency to promote “economic goals.” Of course, that same organization may want to read “Zero Sum for Absolute Idiots” because in this globalized economy any attempt to promote demand (by an end consumer who has no incremental income and stagnant cash flow) through currency debasement has no impact when everyone does it. But then again, this is the IMF – the same organization that declared Europe fixed in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and so on.

More on China’s FX troop deployments:

Read moreChina Central Bank Says It Is ‘Fully Prepared For Looming Currency War’

Anonymous Hacked Bank of America

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And Seemingly Revealed That They Are Spying on Hacktivists

– Anonymous Hacked Bank of America (Vice, Feb 28, 2013):

You’ve probably already heard of Anonymous, the world’s most infamous group of cybertrolling hacktivists. They frequently make headlines for crashing websites and looting corporate and government servers. Usually these hacktivists come together in defense of others, such as Julian Assange, the people of Gaza, victims of police brutality, or even victims of rape. But now, Anonymous has turned its eyes on a personal rival. This enemy has its own cybersquad of secret spies who, according to Anonymous, spend the majority of their time in chat rooms collecting intelligence about them. With this latest release of stolen data, Anonymous has just pulled back the curtain on their foe: the Bank of America.

On February 25 @AnonymousIRC, an Anonymous Twitter account with over 280,000 followers, began posting “teasers” about a massive Bank of America data leak. The first post declared, “If you spy on us, we spy on you.” What followed was 14 gigabytes of private emails, spreadsheets, and a “text analysis and data mining” program called OneCalais. The emails in the release originated from “Cyber Threat Intelligence Analysts” who identified themselves as employees of a company called TEKsystems. The TEKsystems website appears to be nothing more than a staffing agency and seems wholesome enough. There’s definitely nothing that screams “we are cyberspies!” It’s safe to assume these analysts were hired by Bank of America, regardless of their TEKsystems titles, because according to the leaked emails that Anonymous released, each of them were using @bankofamerica.com email addresses while filing their reports.

Read moreAnonymous Hacked Bank of America

And There Goes The Sequester

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– There Goes The Sequester (ZeroHedge, March 1, 2013):

Today is the day when, if one listens to Obama whose idea it was in the first place, an unprecedented $85 billion spending cuts will be sequestered, unleashing famine, pestilence, the apocalypse and grizzly bears (as all park rangers will be dead from starvation). Which is why we applaud the administration’s desire to preempt this tragic for the nation outcome, by issuing, in one day alone: February 28, $80 billion in Treasurys sending debt to (obviously) what is a new all time high $16,687,289,180,215.37.

In other words, the entire apocalyptic impact of the sequester for 2013 was offset by one day’s debt issuance.

Oh, and we didn’t label this post Friday humor because it rightfully falls under the Friday grotesque, surreal tragedy category.

From Debt To The Penny:

Pentagon’s DARPA Researchers Control Rat’s Brain Over Internet

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– Pentagon’s DARPA researchers learn to control rat’s brain over Internet (RT, March 1, 2013):

Government mind control may not be as farfetched as it sounds: after 15 years of research, scientists have found a way to transmit information from one brain to another, thereby controlling the thoughts of its test subject.

Scientists have successfully captured the thoughts of a rat in Brazil and electronically transmitted them through the Internet to the brain of a rat in the US. The Brazilian rat had been energetically running around in a lab. When the American rat received the brain waves of its South American counterpart, it immediately began to mimic the behavior – despite the thousands of miles between them, Reuters reports.

Scientists refer to the technique as a “brain link”. The $26 million study of brain-machine interfaces was funded by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which ultimately hopes to have this technology available to humans.

Read morePentagon’s DARPA Researchers Control Rat’s Brain Over Internet

New Study: BPA Is Deadly To Developing Brains Of Babies In Utero

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– BPA is deadly to the developing brains of babies in utero, new study shows (Natural News, March 1, 2013):

Scientists from Duke University in North Carolina have identified yet another major threat to human health posed by the plastics chemical bisphenol-A (BPA). According to new research, babies exposed to BPA in utero, or during their developmental stages in the womb, could experience inhibited central nervous system development, which in turn could set them up for future stricken with neurodevelopmental problems.

Because it mimics the actions of estrogen, BPA is already known to interfere with the body’s endocrine system, causing a host of potential problems ranging from behavioral and weight abnormalities to reproductive and immune disorders. And while awareness of BPA’s dangers is on the rise all across the globe, there is still a minimal understanding as to how BPA exerts these negative effects, including how the chemical interferes with proper nervous system development.

Read moreNew Study: BPA Is Deadly To Developing Brains Of Babies In Utero

Iowa On Verge Of Legalizing Raw Milk As Resistance To Food Tyranny Is Rising

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– Iowa on verge of legalizing raw milk; resistance to food tyranny is rising (Natural News, March 1, 2013):

Iowa is on the verge of legalizing raw milk sales from dairy farms, and legislation has been introduced for that purpose. Raw milk is currently illegal to sell across most of the United States of America, the “land of the free” where freedom has been systematically crushed by oppressive government. Cuba doesn’t outlaw raw milk. China doesn’t outlaw raw milk. Even North Korea doesn’t outlaw raw milk. Raw milk is legal to buy, sell and drink in Peru, Ecuador, Panama and most Central and South American countries. But in America, the FDA mandates that all milk be pasteurized, and this obscenely ignorant rule has resulted in a pandemic of milk allergies, digestive disorders, milk-caused autoimmune disorders and also the criminalization of raw dairy farmers.

Read moreIowa On Verge Of Legalizing Raw Milk As Resistance To Food Tyranny Is Rising

16 Signs That The Middle Class Is Running Out Of Money

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– Consumer Spending Drought: 16 Signs That The Middle Class Is Running Out Of Money (Economic Collapse, Feb 28, 2013):

Is “discretionary income” rapidly becoming a thing of the past for most American families?  Right now, there are a lot of signs that we are on the verge of a nightmarish consumer spending drought.  Incomes are down, taxes are up, many large retail chains are deeply struggling because of the lack of customers, and at this point nearly a quarter of all Americans have more credit card debt than money in the bank.  Considering the fact that consumer spending is such a large percentage of the U.S. economy, that is very bad news.  How will we ever have a sustained economic recovery if consumers don’t have much money to spend?  Well, the truth is that we aren’t ever going to have a sustained economic recovery.  In fact, this debt-fueled bubble of false hope that we are experiencing right now is as good as things are going to get.  Things are going to go downhill from here, and if you think that consumer spending is bad now, just wait until you see what happens over the next several years.

Read more16 Signs That The Middle Class Is Running Out Of Money

U.S. Senate Rejects Rival Bills To Prevent $85 Billion Sequester Spending Cuts

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– Senate rejects rival bills to prevent $85B sequester spending cuts (The Hill, Feb 28, 2013):

The Senate on Thursday rejected rival proposals to stop the sequester, ensuring the $85 billion in automatic spending cuts will begin on Friday.

A bill crafted by Senate Democrats won 51 votes, while a Republican alternative won only 38 votes. Three Democrats — Sens. Mary Landrieu (La.), Mark Pryor (Ark.) and Kay Hagan (N.C.), who are all up for reelection in 2014 — voted against their party’s bill, which fell 51-49.

Read moreU.S. Senate Rejects Rival Bills To Prevent $85 Billion Sequester Spending Cuts

Italy Is Not Spain … It’s Worse!

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– Italy Is Not Spain – It’s Worse (ZeroHedge, Feb 28, 2013):

With Rajoy quietly gloating at his political fraud being off the front-pages thanks to Italian elections, it seems the more we dig into Italian reality, the weaker the story becomes. The meme of the last few years has been that “at least we’re not as bad as Greece” and rightly so, for as Bloomberg’s Niraj Shah notes today, Greece’s poverty rate is a stunning 31% (against Holland’s 15.7%). However, while all eyes have been focused on Spain’s dismal economy, the sad reality is that Italy is worse than Spain in that its poverty rate is a breath-taking 28.2% (relative to Spain’s 27%) – even though the unemployment rates in the two nations are vastly different (Spain 26% and Italy 11.2%). Given this fact it is perhaps not surprising that the ‘people’ voted against austerity and furthermore, that Italy’s CDS has pushed above Spain’s for the first time in over a year.

Chart: Bloomberg Briefs

Bradley Manning Takes ‘Full Responsibility’ For Giving WikiLeaks Huge Classified Government Data Trove

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– Bradley Manning Takes ‘Full Responsibility’ for Giving WikiLeaks Huge Government Data Trove (Wired, Feb 28, 2013):

FORT MEADE, Md. — Wearing his Army dress uniform, a composed, intense and articulate Pfc. Bradley Manning took “full responsibility” Thursday for providing the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks with a trove of classified and sensitive military, diplomatic and intelligence cables, videos and documents.

In the lengthiest statement to a military tribunal Manning has provided since his nearly three-year long ordeal began, Manning, 25, said WikiLeaks did not encourage him to provide the organization with any information. But he also sketched out his emotionally fraught online interactions with his WikiLeaks handler, a man he knew as “Ox” or “Nathaniel” over Internet Relay Chat and Jabber, and whom the government maintains was Julian Assange.

Manning’s motivations in leaking, he said, was to “spark a domestic debate of the role of the military and foreign policy in general,” he said, and “cause society to reevaluate the need and even desire to engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations that ignore their effect on people who live in that environment every day.” Manning said he was in sound mind when he leaked, and did so deliberately, regardless of the legal circumstances.

Remarkably, Manning said he first tried to take his information to the Washington Post, the New York Times and Politico, before contacting WikiLeaks.

The statement came as Manning pleaded guilty on Thursday to ten of 22 charges the Army has levied against him. Manning admitted to improperly storing classified information; having unauthorized possession of such information; willfully communicating it to an unauthorized person; and other “lesser-included” offenses. Each of the ten offenses to which Manning pleaded guilty carries a sentence of up to two years’ imprisonment, for a total of 20 years in prison.

Read moreBradley Manning Takes ‘Full Responsibility’ For Giving WikiLeaks Huge Classified Government Data Trove

All Of This Whining And Crying About The Sequester Shows Why America Is Doomed

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– All Of This Whining And Crying About The Sequester Shows Why America Is Doomed (Economic Collapse. Feb 27, 2013:

If we can’t even cut federal spending by 2.4 percent without much of the country throwing an absolute hissy fit, then what hope does America have?  All of this whining and crying about the sequester is absolutely disgraceful.  The truth is that even if the sequester goes into effect, the U.S. government will still take in more money than ever before in 2013 and it will still spend more money than ever before in 2013.  So it is a bit disingenuous to call what is about to happen “a spending cut”, but for the sake of argument let’s concede that point.  Even if the budget really was being “cut” by 85 billion dollars, that only would only amount to a “cut” of 2.4 percent to federal spending.  It would barely make a dent in the federal budget deficit for 2013.  The U.S. government would still accumulate about as much new debt in fiscal year 2013 as it did in all the years from the inauguration of George Washington to the inauguration of Ronald Reagan combined.  Our debt to GDP ratio would continue to soar.  The sequester cuts would essentially only be a minor bump on the road to financial oblivion.  But if you listen to Barack Obama and his allies, they would have you believe that we are facing a great national crisis because of these impending cuts.  They would have you believe that hundreds of thousands of people will lose their jobs and that many government agencies will no longer be able to operate effectively.  They would have you believe that “granny won’t get her lunch” and “roofs blown off by Hurricane Sandy won’t get repaired”.  Well, if all of that is true, then what in the world would our country look like if we actually cut a trillion dollars from the federal budget this year and started living within our means?

Read moreAll Of This Whining And Crying About The Sequester Shows Why America Is Doomed

The Draco Kill Shot … The Longest Lasting Gamma Ray Burst Ever Observed

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– Huntsville’s young scientist (WAAYTV, Feb 26, 2013):

HUNTSVILLE, Ala (WAAY)- When William Lucas was 13 years-old he did made a huge discovery before NASA, the US Air Force, or any other scientist around the world; he discovered a massive Gamma Ray burst.

William, a student at Whitesburg Middle, has long had a love for Science.

“It’s fun, it’s interesting, it’s something new, you get to explore new things that haven’t been discovered before,” said William while talking about his love for all things scientific. So when his 13th birthday rolled around in 2011 he had a big decision to make.

“My parents told me for my 13th birthday to either have a dirt bike or a Geiger counter and I chose a Geiger counter for good reasons,” he said while explaining the dirt bikes are a bit too dangerous and with a Geiger counter he could learn more.

Read moreThe Draco Kill Shot … The Longest Lasting Gamma Ray Burst Ever Observed

Will Italy Be The Spark That Sets Off Financial Armageddon In Europe?

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– Will Italy Be The Spark That Sets Off Financial Armageddon In Europe? (Economic Collapse, Feb 26, 2013):

Is the financial collapse of Italy going to be the final blow that breaks the back of Europe financially?  Most people don’t realize this, but Italy is actually the third largest debtor in the entire world after the United States and Japan.  Italy currently has a debt to GDP ratio of more than 120 percent, and Italy has a bigger national debt than anyone else in Europe does.  That is why it is such a big deal that Italian voters have just overwhelmingly rejected austerity.  The political parties led by anti-austerity candidates Silvio Berlusconi and Beppe Grillo did far better than anticipated.  When you combine their totals, they got more than 50 percent of the vote.  Italian voters have seen what austerity has done to Greece and Spain and they want no part of it.  Unfortunately for Italian voters, it has been the promise of austerity that has kept the Italian financial system stable in recent months.  Now that Italian voters have clearly rejected austerity, investors are fearing that austerity programs all over Europe may start falling apart.  This is creating quite a bit of panic in European financial markets right now.  On Tuesday, Italian stocks had their worst day in 10 months, Italian bond yields rose by the most that we have seen in 19 months, and the stocks of the two largest banks in Italy both fell by more than 8 percent.  Italy is already experiencing its fourth recession since 2001, and unemployment has been steadily rising.  If Italy is now “ungovernable”, as many are saying, then what does that mean for the future of Italy?  Will Italy be the spark that sets off financial armageddon in Europe?

Read moreWill Italy Be The Spark That Sets Off Financial Armageddon In Europe?

How A Family Of Four Manages To Live Well On Just $14,000 Per Year

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– How a Family of Four Manages to Live Well on Just $14,000 Per Year (Business Insider, Feb 26, 2013):

In the years since the recession, the median household income in the U.S. has dropped to just over $50,000, while fixed costs like health care, higher education, and housing have only soared. Now imagine trying to support a family of four on a fraction of that income.

It’s a reality that stay-at-home wife and mother of two Danielle Wagasky has lived for the last four years. And, perhaps a little surprisingly, she wouldn’t have it any other way.

Wagasky, 28, lives with her her husband, Jason, 31, and their two young children in a three-bedroom family home in Las Vegas, Nevada. While Jason, a member of the U.S. Army, completes his undergraduate studies, the family’s only source of income is the $14,000 annual cost of living allowance he receives under the G.I. Bill. Despite all odds, the family has barely any credit card debt, no car payment, and no mortgage to speak of.

Read moreHow A Family Of Four Manages To Live Well On Just $14,000 Per Year

Bhutan … First Country To Go 100% Organic

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– Bhutan To Be First Country to Go 100% Organic (Natural Society, Feb 18, 2013):

If there was ever a nation that could see the purpose behind organic, sustainable farming, it would be a nation that is composed mostly of farmers. Such a place does exist, and it soon may be the first nation to go 100% organic, paving the way for others to do the same on a global scale.

The Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan is known for a high level of citizen happiness, but it is doing something even more noteworthy in the near future. With Prime Minister Jigmi Thinley making a major announcement regarding the organic farming project at the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development which took place last month, the move has made national headlines. It’s called the National Organic Policy, and it is fueled by the simple concept that working ‘in harmony with nature’ will yield the most powerful results — all without sacrificing human health or the environment.

What this comes down to is no GMO, no pesticides, no herbicides, no fluoride-based spray products, no Monsanto intrusion at all, and a whole lot of high quality food available for the 700,000 citizens of Bhutan. Food that, at one time, was simply called ‘food’. In the statement to other policy makers, Prime Minister Jigmi Thinley explained the move:

Read moreBhutan … First Country To Go 100% Organic

Peanut Oil In VACCINES Behind Widespread Peanut Allergy Epidemic

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– Peanut oil in vaccines behind widespread peanut allergy epidemic (Natural News, Feb 7, 2013):

Editor’s Note: Since the publishing of this article, Dr. O’Shea now claims that he never wrote The Doctor Within, even though the book is directly attributed to him at the following website, and even lists his name as the direct contact: http://www.thedoctorwithin.com/. If any further developments come from this story, we will create a timely update for our readers.

More than one million children living in America today suffer from peanut allergy, and a significant percentage of these have such severe symptoms that they must carry around self-injectable epinephrine just in case they accidentally become exposed to the wrong food. According to available records, however, virtually nobody had peanut allergy prior to 1900 despite the fact that people have been eating peanuts for ages, which begs the question, why do so many people have peanut allergy today, and from where did this potentially-deadly allergic condition emerge?

Read morePeanut Oil In VACCINES Behind Widespread Peanut Allergy Epidemic