There are stories that have come to light, over the years, that make the Central Intelligence Agency look like a collection of Looney Tunes shorts. The violence, the slapstick, and the over-the-top ridiculousness of the experiments that have been conducted over the years boggle the mind. They came from the (slightly-boggled) mind of one man: Sidney Gottlieb.
Top image via National Geographic
Sidney Gottlieb proved to the world that there are few things more dangerous than a chemist with a metaphysical streak - especially if he collects a few thwarted ambitions. Born in 1918, he was deemed physically unfit for duty in the Second World War. Instead of going to war, he went to the University of Wisconsin, and graduated with a degree in chemistry. His degree didn't help him into the army, but it did interest the CIA.
The Central Intelligence Agency, barreling into the Cold War, was trying to devise new ways to get an advantage over the enemy. Old warfare strategies wouldn't work. They had to brainstorm new ones. It's said that there are no bad ideas in brainstorming. The CIA, at the time, seemed set out to prove that there were no bad ideas at all. And Gottlieb was just the guy to try to help them.
20111129
Every crazy CIA plot you've heard of originated with one man
The Copyright Industry – A Century Of Deceit
It is said that those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it. In the case of the copyright industry, they have learned that they can get new monopoly benefits and rent-seeker’s benefits every time there is a new technology, if they just complain loudly enough to the legislators.
The past 100 years have seen a vast array of technical advances in broadcasting, multiplication and transmissions of culture, but equally much misguided legislators who sought to preserve the old at expense of the new, just because the old was complaining. First, let’s take a look at what the copyright industry tried to ban and outlaw, or at least receive taxpayer money in compensation for its existence:
It started around 1905, when the self-playing piano was becoming popular. Sellers of note sheet music proclaimed that this would be the end of artistry if they couldn’t make a living off of middlemen between composers and the public, so they called for a ban on the player piano. A famous letter in 1906 claims that both the gramophone and the self-playing piano will be the end of artistry, and indeed, the end of a vivid, songful humanity.
20111128
Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks Undisclosed $13B
The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing.
The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.
Saved by the bailout, bankers lobbied against government regulations, a job made easier by the Fed, which never disclosed the details of the rescue to lawmakers even as Congress doled out more money and debated new rules aimed at preventing the next collapse.
20111127
Prosecutor: Reagan, Bush not criminally liable
WASHINGTON (AP) — One of the prosecutors who investigated the Iran-Contra affair concluded two decades ago that neither Ronald Reagan nor George H.W. Bush was criminally liable in the scandal that tarnished the presidencies of both men, according to reports made public Friday.
Associate independent counsel Christian Mixter reached that conclusion in 1991 even though he found that President Reagan was briefed in advance about every weapons shipment sold to Iran in the arms-for-hostages deals in 1985-86. In a separate report on Bush, Mixter wrote that the then-vice president was chairman of a committee that recommended mining the harbors of Nicaragua in 1983.
Mixter's reports were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request from the National Security Archive, a nonprofit research group, which released them on the 25th anniversary of the Iran-Contra scandal. At a Nov. 25, 1986, White House news conference, Reagan and then-Attorney General Edwin Meese disclosed that money from the arms sales to Iran had been diverted to the Contra guerrillas fighting the leftist government of Nicaragua after Congress had cut off military aid to the rebels.
20111126
New Drone Sensor Could Instantly Spot Any Shooter
Opening fire on American troops could mean an instant death sentence for insurgents, if an ambitious new Air Force plan works out. The flying branch has asked industry to develop a new heat and motion sensor capable of detecting enemy gunfire from 25,000 feet over the battlefield — and then swiftly directing a bomb or missile onto the shooter.
Installed on the Air Force’s existing fleet of Reaper drones, the gunfire-detection system would make attacking U.S. troops a highly risky proposition. The Air Force wants to link the fire-detector with other Wide Field-of-View (WFOV) sensors like the Gorgon Stare, which uses a bundle of cameras to watch over miles at a time. The sensors entered service on Reapers this year. “The goal of this effort is to provide an event (enemy and friendly weapons fire) detection system that can provide real-time notification that can be overlaid on WFOV motion imagery by sensor operators,” the Air Force solicitation reads.
Gunfire-detection systems already exist — though previous versions were acoustic instead of heat- and motion-based. Combining aerial shot-detection with full-motion video poses huge technological challenges. The sensor must be able to tell the difference between a gunshot and, say, a campfire — and between good guys and bad. “The determination of military utility of a hostile-fire sensor will be heavily dependent on its capacity to distinguish between friendly and hostile fire in order to avoid fratricide,” the solicitation cautions.
JASON Advisory Group Holds Fall Meeting
The JASON defense advisory panel held its fall meeting last weekend with briefings on a range of national security topics. A copy of the program from the closed meeting is posted here.
The JASONs completed at least seven studies this year for various government agencies with titles such as “Solar EMP” and “Domestic Nuclear Surge Operations.” Secrecy News has requested review of those studies for public release.
Palantir, the War on Terror's Secret Weapon
In October, a foreign national named Mike Fikri purchased a one-way plane ticket from Cairo to Miami, where he rented a condo. Over the previous few weeks, he’d made a number of large withdrawals from a Russian bank account and placed repeated calls to a few people in Syria. More recently, he rented a truck, drove to Orlando, and visited Walt Disney World by himself. As numerous security videos indicate, he did not frolic at the happiest place on earth. He spent his day taking pictures of crowded plazas and gate areas.
None of Fikri’s individual actions would raise suspicions. Lots of people rent trucks or have relations in Syria, and no doubt there are harmless eccentrics out there fascinated by amusement park infrastructure. Taken together, though, they suggested that Fikri was up to something. And yet, until about four years ago, his pre-attack prep work would have gone unnoticed. A CIA analyst might have flagged the plane ticket purchase; an FBI agent might have seen the bank transfers. But there was nothing to connect the two. Lucky for counterterror agents, not to mention tourists in Orlando, the government now has software made by Palantir Technologies, a Silicon Valley company that’s become the darling of the intelligence and law enforcement communities.
The day Fikri drives to Orlando, he gets a speeding ticket, which triggers an alert in the CIA’s Palantir system. An analyst types Fikri’s name into a search box and up pops a wealth of information pulled from every database at the government’s disposal. There’s fingerprint and DNA evidence for Fikri gathered by a CIA operative in Cairo; video of him going to an ATM in Miami; shots of his rental truck’s license plate at a tollbooth; phone records; and a map pinpointing his movements across the globe. All this information is then displayed on a clearly designed graphical interface that looks like something Tom Cruise would use in a Mission: Impossible movie.
Convicted RFK assassin Sirhan Sirhan seeks prison release
Los Angeles (CNN) -- Sirhan Sirhan, convicted of the 1968 assassination of presidential candidate Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, should be freed from prison or granted a new trial based on "formidable evidence" asserting his innocence and "horrendous violations" of his rights, defense attorneys said in federal court papers filed this week.
In a U.S. District Court brief, Sirhan's lawyers also say that an expert analysis of recently uncovered evidence shows two guns were fired in the assassination and that Sirhan's revolver was not the gun that shot Kennedy.
Attorneys William F. Pepper and Laurie D. Dusek also allege that fraud was committed in Sirhan's 1969 trial when the court allowed a substitute bullet to be admitted as evidence for a real bullet removed from Kennedy's neck.
9/11 Ted Olson - Barbara Walters Interview September 14, 2001 - YouTube
FBI records indicate these calls never happened.
http://www.911myths.com/index.php/Barbara_Olson_calls
"Duration = 0"
20111125
Maltego CaseFile Beta released
We are proudly releasing Maltego CaseFile Beta today. Yup - after some time we feel CaseFile is ready to see the light. And best of all - it's free - no registration, no silly forms or CAPTCHAs - just download and go.CaseFile is aimed at analysts that do not necessarily use open sources of intelligence (or even the Internet for that matter). Think of it as Maltego without transforms but with tons of new features. Adding/attaching photos, documents and annotations to nodes, graph merging, better integration with browsers, passwords on graphs, and tons of new useful entities - and this is just a few of the goodies we've added into CaseFile.
StopIranWar.com
Stopiranwar.com is a site devoted to creating awareness on a variety of topics related to Iran and the conflicts that surround this country. The fact that the middle east is a very volatile region is far from being a secret; therefore we have considered that our site has a very important role in terms of informing all those who want to know more about what is going on in this region. We have taken special interest in Iran, in its president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and in the Israel and Iran prolonged issues. Being this such a complex area, full of religious, ethnical and political differences, we have decided that the best approach to this very sensitive topic is by reporting simply the facts instead of expressing opinions on the different chapters that will be reviewed here. Our readers will have the chance to get all the right details to decide by themselves what to believe in terms of Israel and Iran, and the conflicts that for many experts have the region on the edge of an imminent war between these two nations. In recents years, Iran has begun to explore the nuclear power science, which has many political analysts very worried about Iran Nuclear efforts and the negative implications that could arise if they really developed a nuclear weapon program. Even though international organisms have made very clear statements in terms of sanctions and pressure to Iran, they have insisted in ignoring them and have moved on with their Iran nuclear ambitions. Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has become known for emitting extremely controversial public statements such as the one given at a university in the U.S where he guaranteed that Iran did not suffer from the western disease called homosexuality, for example, and the repeated challenges to the international community have added more instability to the region.
Muckrock: Freedom of Information, finally made easy.
You didn't get into this business for the paperwork. You got into it because you wanted to change something. Not to be chained to your desk, filing redundant forms, chasing down elusive bureaucrats and cutting your fingers on hundreds of pieces of paper. Your time is important, and every minute you spend doing this muck work, you're not doing the things that matter to you: Investigating, analyzing, reporting. Maybe even spending time with your family.
Remember them?
MuckRock makes it easy for you to quickly file Freedom of Information requests, taking out the hassle and only updating you with the results. No need to stamp an envelope, look up an agency address or learn how to properly draft a legal demand: Just type what you're interested in, click submit and then receive your documents scanned, searchable and sharable. We'll even help you analyze them.
MuckRock acts as a request proxy, e-mailing, faxing or even snail mailing the request on your behalf, with the documents returning to our offices to be prepared for your convenience. Working on a big scoop? An intuitive embargo system ensures that your documents are for your eyes only until you're ready to publish.
The Doomsday Project and Deep Events: JFK, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and 9/11
Peter Dale Scott
I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency [the National Security Agency] and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return."
-- Senator Frank Church (1975)
I would like to discuss four major and badly understood events – the John F. Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and 9/11. I will analyze these deep events as part of a deeper political process linking them, a process that has helped build up repressive power in America at the expense of democracy.
In recent years I have been talking about a dark force behind these events -- a force which, for want of a better term, I have clumsily called a “deep state,” operating both within and outside the public state. Today for the first time I want to identify part of that dark force, a part which has operated for five decades or more at the edge of the public state. This part of the dark force has a name not invented by me: the Doomsday Project, the Pentagon’s name for the emergency planning “to keep the White House and Pentagon running during and after a nuclear war or some other major crisis.”1
My point is a simple and important one: to show that the Doomsday Project of the 1980s, and the earlier emergency planning that developed into it, have played a role in the background of all the deep events I shall discuss.
Key senators push bill to allow 9/11 victims' lawsuits
Key senators push bill to allow 9/11 victims' lawsuits
- 11/19/11 02:22 PM ETA bipartisan group of senators proposed legislation this week that would overturn a court interpretation of current law that has blocked a lawsuit brought by 9/11 victims against Saudi Arabia for supporting al Qaeda.
The bill introduced by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) would amend the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) and the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) to clarify that victims of terrorist acts in the U.S. can hold the foreign sponsors of those attacks responsible in U.S. courts. Co-sponsoring the bill are Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), and Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).
Bush and Blair found guilty of war crimes for Iraq attack
(Credit: AP)
(updated below)
A tribunal in Malaysia, spearheaded by that nation’s former Prime Minister, yesterday found George Bush and Tony Blair guilty of “crimes against peace” and other war crimes for their 2003 aggressive attack on Iraq, as well as fabricating pretexts used to justify the attack. The seven-member Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal — which featured an American law professor as one of its chief prosecutors — has no formal enforcement power, but was modeled after a 1967 tribunal in Sweden and Denmark that found the U.S. guilty of a war of aggression in Vietnam, and, even more so, after the U.S.-led Nuremberg Tribunal held after World War II. Just as the U.S. steadfastly ignored the 1967 tribunal on Vietnam, Bush and Blair both ignored the summons sent to them and thus were tried in absentia.
The tribunal ruled that Bush and Blair’s name should be entered in a register of war criminals, urged that they be recognized as such under the Rome Statute, and will also petition the International Criminal Court to proceed with binding charges. Such efforts are likely to be futile, but one Malaysian lawyer explained the motives of the tribunal to The Associated Press: “For these people who have been immune from prosecution, we want to put them on trial in this forum to prove that they committed war crimes.” In other words, because their own nations refuse to hold them accountable and can use their power to prevent international bodies from doing so, the tribunal wanted at least formal legal recognition of these war crimes to be recorded and the evidence of their guilt assembled. That’s the same reason a separate panel of this tribunal will hold hearings later this year on charges of torture against Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and others.
20111122
9/11 Woman Waving In The North Tower Hole (Edna Cintron)
"Yes the "fuel fires" were SO INTENSE that this lady could stand at the plane entry hole waving for attention."
-dobberdoss
How Supermarkets Trick You Into Spending More Money
How many times have you made a quick stop by the grocery store for a couple of simple items like milk and bread, only to wander out in a daze almost an hour later with an entire basketful of random items, junk food and 2-for-1 deals?
Perhaps you walked in with a mission and a list, only to be dazzled and delighted by the delicious smells in the bakery, shiny towers of fruits and vegetables, free samples of tasty dishes and the incredible deals – well, at least they looked like deals. But supermarkets are employing a wide variety of psychological tricks to encourage you to buy more than you need, which not even the most astute shopper can resist.
Discover the following tricks that supermarkets commonly use to entice shoppers to shell out, and you will be able to resist their sneaky methods and save your money for what you really want.
- Shopping carts: Invented in the 1930s to help shoppers tote their purchases, shopping carts are often grabbed automatically on the way into the store – and then filled along the way out. Don’t absentmindedly go for a cart. Instead, choose a small handled basket, or only buy what you can carry in your arms, especially on those quick runs for one or two items.
- Bakery, floral & produce near the entrance: As soon as you walk in a supermarket, your senses are lambasted into happiness with the aroma of baking bread or fresh cut flowers and the colorful sights of the produce department. The shot of dopamine (and salivation) you get from these joyful sensations will make you more likely to impulse spend; enjoy the pleasure but remember your list!
- Dairy in the back: The #1 item bought at most supermarkets is milk, which is almost always in the very back of the store, past shelves of high mark-up products, new items and enticing endcaps. If milk is your mission, it is easy to lose focus and grab extra items on the path to the back of the store.
- Misty produce: Most supermarkets mist their fruits and vegetables every so often, despite the fact that it makes the produce rot faster. Why? Because humans like shiny things. We equate a dewy mist with being fresh, and consider shininess to always add value, from hair to cars and laptops to produce. Shinier = Better. Those misters are only there to make your brain think the produce is fresher and more valuable than it actually is.
- Tiny aisles & slow music: Ever notice that supermarket aisle barely provide enough room for two carts to pass? That’s no accident – stores want you to go through them as slowly as possible. Slow music also makes you move slower, and the more stops you make, the more items you will buy. Shop at non-crowded times of the day (like early morning) to lessen this effect.
- Endcaps with no sales: Featured items are always located on the endcaps or the ends of aisles with a huge price sign, but often these products are not on sale at all. The special location makes shoppers think that the price has been lowered, but in reality the endcap’s prime real estate is used to sell products with a higher markup – not lower.
- Sales signs with no $: We all know the $.99 trick ($.99 seems to cost much less than a penny than $1.00), which uses our subconscious desires to trump our logical brains that know better. Another version of this trick is to remove the almighty dollar sign, which makes us think about spending money. Numbers alone make us think about saving money. Your brain processes $2.99 as more expensive that 2.99 – and supermarkets all over are following this trend of dropping the dollar sign.
- “Limit 10 per customer”: Limiting the number of items you can buy makes the product seem scarcer and therefore more valuable. You might think everyone else is buying the limit and you will be left with none. Whenever you see a limit placed on the number of items that can be purchased, the grocery store is trying to tweak your brain.
- Free samples: Would you like to try some cheesy poofs? Free samples not only slow you down even more, but also engage the reciprocity factor in your mind. When someone gives you a gift, you want to give them one too – and this works with free samples very well. You may buy a box of poofs just to “even the score” and uphold your side of this psychological force. Don’t fall for it!
- Eye level: Expensive name brand items are always at eye level, with cheaper brands and generics on the top or bottom of the shelves where you are less likely to see them. One exception: The sugary cereal aisle, where the most expensive products are placed at children’s eye level and are likely to catch kids’ eyes.
- Understaffed checkout lines: Do the check stands at your supermarket seem to always have lines no matter when you go? Grocery stores don’t want you zooming through the checkout stands, because this is where overpriced, impulse items like candy, soda, magazines and DVDs are located. While you’re waiting you may get hungry, thirsty or bored – all of which work in favor of grabbing a stimulating magazine or candy bar. Be aware that you are being stalled for a reason, and resolve not to add to your cart in the checkout line.
MK-ULTRA Victim Testimony (Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE)
Executive_Order_12891
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-1994-01-20/html/94-1531.htm
http://www.hss.doe.gov/healthsafety/ohre/roadmap/achre/index.html The Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advisory_Committee_on_Human_Radiation_Experiments
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/radiation/ History of Bioethics Commissions
http://www.bioethics.gov/cms/history
We're way past theory...
20111120
The Surveillance Catalog
Documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal open a rare window into a new global market for the off-the-shelf surveillance technology that has arisen in the decade since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The techniques described in the trove of 200-plus marketing documents include hacking tools that enable governments to break into people’s computers and cellphones, and "massive intercept" gear that can gather all Internet communications in a country.
The documents—the highlights of which are cataloged and searchable here—were obtained from attendees of a secretive surveillance conference held near Washington, D.C., last month. Read more about the documents.
How Many Neutrinos Does It Take to Screw Up Einstein?
Results from a second experiment uphold the observation that neutrinos are moving faster than the speed of light. The OPERA collaboration, which first reported the superluminal neutrinos in September, has rerun the experiment and detected 20 new neutrinos breaking Einstein’s theoretical limit.
The findings are heartening to anyone hoping to see a major physics revolution in their lifetime. But scientists, as ever, are being cautious, and it will take an independent replication of the results by another team to even begin convincing many of them.
Texas county police buys drone that can carry weapons
The police in Montgomery County -- and area north of Houston, Texas -- is the first local police in the United States to deploy a drone that can carry weapons; the police says it will be used in chases of escaping criminals and tracking drug shipments
Vanguard's ShadowHawk UAV helicopter // Source: hilavitkutin.com
The police in Montgomery County – and area north of Houston, Texas – is the first local police in the united States to deploy a drone that can carry weapons.
The ShadowHawk from Vanguard Defense Industries is a pilot-less helicopter remotely controlled by an operator using a game console-like, laptop size device. The drone was purchased with a $300,000 grant from DHS.
The Montgomery police says it will be used in chases of escaping criminals and tracking drug shipments.
20111119
OODA explained
Image from Wikimedia.OODA stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. It describes the decisionmaking process followed by opposing dogfighters in combat. As one competing dogfighter takes an action, the battlespace changes, and the competing dogfighter's OODA Loop begins. He must Observe the action, Orient to the new battlespace this creates, Decide how to respond, and execute an Action in response. And the other dogfighter's OODA Loop now begins.
This also describes the decisionmaking process followed by opposing organizations battling for marketshare. Every dogfighter's OODA Loop is different, as is every organization's.
A War Crimes Trial - Bush Jr/Blair
On November 19-22, 2011, the trial of George W Bush [ former U.S. President ] and Anthony L Blair [ former British Prime Minister ] will be held in Kuala Lumpur - this is the first time that war crimes charges will be heard against the two former heads of state in compliance with proper legal process.
George W. Bush/Anthony L. Blair Flickr
The trial of George W Bush (former U.S. President) and Anthony L Blair (former British Prime Minister) will be held in Kuala Lumpur - this is the first time that war crimes charges will be heard against the two former heads of state in compliance with proper legal process.
The trial will be held in an open court on November 19-22, 2011 at the headquarters of the Al- Bukhary Foundation at Jalan Perdana, Kuala Lumpur.
Charges are being brought against the accused by the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (KLWCC) following the due process of the law. The Commission, having received complaints from war victims in Iraq in 2009, proceeded to conduct a painstaking and an in-depth investigation for close to two years, and in 2011, constituted formal charges on war crimes against Bush, Blair, and their associates.
U.S. reserves right to meet cyber attack with force
(Reuters) - The United States reserves the right to retaliate with military force against a cyber attack and is working to sharpen its ability to track down the source of any breach, the Pentagon said in a report made public on Tuesday.
The 12-page report to Congress, mandated by the 2011 Defense Authorization Act, was one of the clearest statements to date of U.S. cybersecurity policy and the role of the military in the event of a computer-borne attack.
"When warranted, we will respond to hostile attacks in cyberspace as we would to any other threat to our country," the report said. "We reserve the right to use all necessary means - diplomatic, informational, military and economic - to defend our nation, our allies, our partners and our interests."
The Goldman Sachs Goodfellas
It is no secret that Goldman Sachs runs Wall Street. Even Ray Charles could see that that Goldman Sachs runs our government as evidenced by the former Goldman Sachs gangsters who have run our economy into the ground (e.g., Clinton’s Secretary of Treasury Goldman Sachs’ Rubin, Bush’s Secretary of Treasury Goldman Sachs’ “too big to fail” Paulson, etc.).
Goldman Sachs dominates the Federal Reserve. Goldman Sachs dominates the World Bank. Goldman Sachs dominates the IMF. And now Goldman Sachs is running the European financial system into the ground as another Goldman Sachs boy, “Super” Mario Monti, has taken over Italy to finish off what is left of the Italian financial system. Monti is also the head of the European Trilateral Commission as well as a Bilderberger. And yet another Goldman Sachs boy is finishing off the job in Greece.
Today’s events parallel the imperialists of the early 20thcentury which resulted in World War I. The Wall Street led depression of the 1930’s led to the rise of political extremism and ultimately to World War II. Today, Goldman Sachs and their fellow Wall Street cronies are currently running, or dare I say ruining the global economy and the consequences are going to result in the culmination of World War III from which these same gangster bankster’s will profit from the buildup, the death and destruction of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of innocent people as well as the lucrative clean up which follows every war. However, the ultimate prize for the coming war will be the ruination of the planet in order that it can reconstructed in a true fascist model that Hitler and Mussolini could only dream about. Remember, as the globalists like to say in reference to their favorite Hegelian Dialectic quote, “Out of chaos comes order.” Mind you, it won’t be Goldman Sachs money that pays for the destruction of humanity in the coming war. This war’s blood money will be your money and my money. Mind you, it won’t be Goldman Sachs children who are pressed into military service and will be sacrificed in the coming conflict. It will be your children and my children who will be sacrificed in the name of furthering the bottom line of the Goldman Sachs Mafia and the rest of the Wall Street gangsters. Meanwhile, the Goldman Sachs children will be safely tucked away attending private schools on your nickel and on the blood of your children as the devastation begins to unfold.
Why America's NSA and Britain's GCHQ Had Gareth Williams Assassinated
The National Security Agency's new Director in 1999, Air Force General Michael Hayden, had a long career in its surveillance operations but his primary qualification for office was his adherence to the Catholic Charismatic Renewal movement - one which sought direct religious experience with Christ through pentacostal and evangelical experience. It was a millinarian type of religious group, reminiscent of the crusading orders of the Middle Ages, and best exemplified in the modern world by the Knights of Malta, the great recruiting agency of many of today's New World Order people. Its capacity to find essential professionals, and fit them into key government positions goes far beyond what Yale University's Skull and Bones Society can accomplish. While Hayden was attending Pittsburgh's Duquesne University, he studied American history - getting an M.A. on the impact of the Marshall Plan upon Europe, the first step in the West's renewal after the catastrophic collapse in WWII. "Like many of his religious and conservative classmates," James Bamford wrote, "Hayden rejected the antiwar movement and the social revolution and instead would embrace the military." (1)CIA Director George Tenet became interested in Hayden's potential to ignite NSA in an fightback against the continuing stalemate over Palestine, and growing Muslim hostility toward America. "The CIA chief liked what he heard and Hayden flew back to Korea virtually assured that he had the job as director of the NSA." (2) It recalled Henry Kissinger's hiring of lowly Major Alexander Haig as his military aide as the Nixon administration was gearing up to pull off a surprising victory in the Vietnam War despite the apparent hopelessness of the struggle, and all the campaign rhetoric about negotiating peace with the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong. Despite appearances, both military men were well versed in the operation of America's covert government, whatever was required at a given moment. It looked like new Tonkin Gulf incidents were required if any new initiative was to be established.
Former 9/11 commission director talks at lecture
As the crowd of students, professors and Houstonians brushed off the cold, Philip Zelikow stepped to the podium in The Honors College Commons on Thursday to discuss the US government’s defense against terrorism.
Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, an executive on the President Intelligence Advisory Board and a history professor at the University of Virginia, focused his lecture, “The Twilight of War,” on America’s resiliency and his experience with the horrific events of 9/11.
“It’s my job to make meaning of 9/11,” Zelikow said.
Special Ops Wants Commandos to Have Invisible Faces
Special ops commandos are already the savviest, most covert of all soldiers: They fly in stealth helicopters, wear high-tech camo suits and use nothing but the best face paint Pentagon cash can buy. But they’ve still got weak points. Most importantly, their own body heat and even the swiftest of movements can give them away.
That’ll change if U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) gets its way. The agency in April announced that “invisibility” equipment for commandos was one of their top priorities. Already, commandos have uniforms that can block most of the heat they emit. But as SOCOM notes in their latest round of small-business solicitations, they’ve gotta be able to “breathe, see and hear,” making it tough to keep their faces concealed from sensors. Now, SOCOM is asking for proposals that’d “reduce the warfighter’s facial signature” in marine environments, to minimize their risk of heat-based detection by infrared sensors or motion-based spotting via electro-optical surveillance.
Sounds crazy, but they just might have a shot. In 2008, the Army Military Research Office boasted that they were a mere two or three years away from developing metamaterials that could deflect light to conceal a given object. Since then, experts at various institutions have made impressive progress. Researchers from the University of Texas at Dallas have shown off an invisibility cloak that harnesses the “mirage effect,” defense company BAE Systems has developed a system that renders vehicles invisible to the entire infrared spectrum and physicists from St. Andrews University broke new ground with a meta-material that comes even closer to all-out undetectability.
SOCOM wants prototypes to zero in on what scientists already know about creating undetectability: The University of Texas’ device works best in water, for example, while metamaterials are optimal at night. So SOCOM’s after just those attributes: Something that works in aquatic scenarios, including open ocean, surf or on the beach, and is effective in various nighttime lighting conditions. The prototype should also work year-round, in freezing or scorching temps.
And if commandos are gonna make it ashore, a successful prototype will need to be nearly as discreet as they are. The solicitation notes that “an operator’s ability to swim” is a top consideration in the finished product’s design.
Photo: U.S. Marine Corps
20111116
Why Is China Building These Gigantic Structures In the Middle of the Desert?
This is crazy. New photos have appeared in Google Maps showing unidentified titanic structures in the middle of the Chinese desert. The first one is an intricate network of what appears to be huge metallic stripes. Is this a military experiment?
They seem to be wide lines drawn with some white material. Or maybe the dust have been dug by machinery.
It’s located in Dunhuang, Jiuquan, Gansu, north of the Shule River, which crosses the Tibetan Plateau to the west into the Kumtag Desert. It covers an area approximately one mile long by more than 3,000 feet wide.
20111114
Hollywood's New War on Software Freedom and Internet Innovation
This is the third in our series (Part 1, Part 2) breaking down the potential effects of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), an outrageous and grievously misguided bill now working its way through the House of Representatives. This post discusses dangerous software censorship provisions that are new in this bill, as well as the DNS censorship provisions it inherited from the Senate's COICA and PIPA bills. Please help us fight this misguided legislation by contacting Congress today.
In this new bill, Hollywood has expanded its censorship ambitions. No longer content to just blacklist entries in the Domain Name System, this version targets software developers and distributors as well. It allows the Attorney General (doing Hollywood or trademark holders' bidding) to go after more or less anyone who provides or offers a product or service that could be used to get around DNS blacklisting orders. This language is clearly aimed at Mozilla, which took a principled stand in refusing to assist the Department of Homeland Security's efforts to censor the domain name system, but we are also concerned that it could affect the open source community, internet innovation, and software freedom more broadly:
- Do you write or distribute VPN, proxy, privacy or anonymization software? You might have to build in a censorship mechanism — or find yourself in a legal fight with the United States Attorney General.
- Even some of the most fundamental and widely used Internet security software, such as SSH, includes built-in proxy functionality. This kind of software is installed on hundreds of millions of computers, and is an indispensable tool for systems administration professionals, but it could easily become a target for censorship orders under the new bill.
- Do you work with or distribute zone files for gTLDs? Want to keep them accurate? Too bad — Hollywood might argue that if you provide a complete (i.e., uncensored) list, you are illegally helping people bypass SOPA orders.
- Want to write a client-side DNSSEC resolver that uses multiple servers until it finds a valid signed entry? Again, you could be in a fight with the U.S. Attorney General.
20111113
The CIA slips onto campus to conduct 'a Model U.N. for the intelligence community.'
The scenario: The government of North Korea has collapsed following the death of Kim Jong Il. Three factions are struggling to fill the power vacuum. The threat of civil war looms.
The assignment: Sort through the raw intelligence and prepare a half-page brief outlining the situation and suggesting a course of action. You have three hours.
Those are the basics of the first PIPS-CIA Crisis Simulation Competition held at William & Mary in February. Thirteen intelligence analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency came to campus to conduct the event, which pitted eight five-student teams in an intellectual and analytical experience that one participant said made him feel as if his head would explode.
How The CIA Uses Social Media to Track How People Feel
How stable is China? What are people discussing and thinking in Pakistan? To answer these sorts of question, the U.S. government has turned to a rich source: social media.
The Associated Press reports that the CIA maintains a social-media tracking center operated out of an nondescript building in a Virginia industrial park. The intelligence analysts at the agency's Open Source Center, who other agents refer to as "vengeful librarians," are tasked with sifting through millions of tweets, Facebook messages, online chat logs, and other public data on the World Wide Web to glean insights into the collective moods of regions or groups abroad. According to the Associated Press, these librarians are tracking up to five million tweets a day from places like China, Pakistan and Egypt:
Mirage effect helps researchers hide objects
Ali Aliev and coworkers at The University of Texas at Dallas, US, have demonstrated that transparent carbon nanotube sheets, which can have the density of air and the specific strength of steel, can be used to make objects invisible. This invisibility for light oblique to the nanotube sheets is caused by the mirage effect, in which a thermally generated refractive index gradient bends light away from a hidden object.
20111112
US Prosecutors Seeking to Prevent Dirty Secrets of Drug War From Surfacing in Cartel Leader's Case
US Government Using National Security to Conceal Evidence, Attorneys for Narco-Trafficker Zambada Niebla Claim
The criminal case of accused Sinaloa drug organization leader Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla is straying even further into the path of a cover-up under the guise of national security, if pleadings filed by his attorneys are to be believed.
Lawyers for the alleged Mexican narco-trafficker, son of one of the top figures in the Sinaloa “cartel,” recently filed a motion asking the court to block U.S. prosecutors’ efforts to exclude the defense from discussions with the judge over the treatment of evidence deemed classified material. Zambada Niebla’s attorneys contend they must be part of those discussions since the supposed classified material goes to the heart of their client's claims in the case.
The information the US government is seeking to withhold from Zambada Niebla’s attorneys, they believe, is likely related to a key figure in the case, an informant, Mexican attorney Humberto Loya Castro, who served as an intermediary between the Sinaloa Cartel leadership and US government agents seeking to obtain information on rival narco-trafficking organizations.
Understanding 9/11: A Television News Archive
The events of September 11th, 2001 affected the entire world.
The 9/11 Television News Archive is a library of news coverage of the events of 9/11/2001 and their aftermath as presented by U.S. and international broadcasters. A resource for scholars, journalists, and the public, it presents one week of news broadcasts for study, research and analysis.
Television is our pre-eminent medium of information, entertainment and persuasion, but until now it has not been a medium of record. This Archive attempts to address this gap by making TV news coverage of this critical week in September 2001 available to those studying these events and their treatment in the media.
Explore 3,000 hours of international TV News from 20 channels over 7 days, and select analysis by scholars.
20111106
Global Terrorism Database
The Global Terrorism Database (GTD) is an open-source database including information on terrorist events around the world from 1970 through 2010 (with annual updates planned for the future). Unlike many other event databases, the GTD includes systematic data on domestic as well as international terrorist incidents that have occurred during this time period and now includes more than 98,000 cases. Learn more
20111105
7 indicted in connection with Bhutto assassination
Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- Seven men, including two senior police officers, were indicted Saturday for conspiracy to commit murder in the killing of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, a defense attorney told CNN.
Bhutto was assassinated on December 27, 2007.
The two indicted police officers have been accused of security breaches and covering up evidence by hosing down the crime scene.
Malik Muhammad Rafique, a senior defense attorney for the officers, Saud Aziz and Khurram Shahzad, said there was "no evidence connecting the two men to criminal conspiracy to assassinate Bhutto."
Sergeant denies killing Afghan civilians, admits to cutting off fingers
Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington (CNN) -- An Army staff sergeant accused of leading a rogue "kill squad" charged with murdering three Afghan civilians took the stand Friday during his court martial and denied carrying out the killings. Yet he admitted to cutting off body parts as part of what prosecutors called a gruesome practice of keeping battlefield "trophies."
Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs' surprise testimony came a week after his court martial began. It is the first time Gibbs has publicly presented his version of what happened with the platoon he led from the Army's 5th Stryker Brigade.
He is the highest-ranking soldier charged in what prosecutors say was a rogue "kill squad" that allegedly targeted Afghan civilians and made it look like they'd been insurgents.
Gibbs has pleaded not guilty.
Syria Crackdown Gets Italy Firm’s Aid With U.S.-Europe Spy Gear
As Syria’s crackdown on protests has claimed more than 3,000 lives since March, Italian technicians in telecom offices from Damascus to Aleppo have been busy equipping President Bashar al-Assad’s regime with the power to intercept, scan and catalog virtually every e-mail that flows through the country.
Employees of Area SpA, a surveillance company based outside Milan, are installing the system under the direction of Syrian intelligence agents, who’ve pushed the Italians to finish, saying they urgently need to track people, a person familiar with the project says. The Area employees have flown into Damascus in shifts this year as the violence has escalated, says the person, who has worked on the system for Area.
Area is using equipment from American and European companies, according to blueprints and other documents obtained by Bloomberg News and the person familiar with the job. The project includes Sunnyvale, California-based NetApp Inc. (NTAP) storage hardware and software for archiving e-mails; probes to scan Syria’s communications network from Paris-based Qosmos SA; and gear from Germany’s Utimaco Safeware AG (USA) that connects tapped telecom lines to Area’s monitoring-center computers.
CIA Analysts Comb Social Media For Trouble Spots
In an anonymous industrial park, CIA analysts who jokingly call themselves the "ninja librarians" are mining the mass of information people publish about themselves overseas, tracking everything from common public opinion to revolutions.
The group's effort gives the White House a daily snapshot of the world built from tweets, newspaper articles and Facebook updates.
The agency's Open Source Center sometimes looks at 5 million tweets a day. The analysts are also checking out TV news channels, local radio stations, Internet chat rooms — anything overseas that people can access and contribute to openly.
Teen who protested drone strikes killed in US attack
WANA (Online) – A Pakistani teenager, who recently joined a protest rally against US drone strikes, was killed in an attack by the CIA-operated spy planes in North Waziristan tribal region, a campaigner against the missile strikes said on Tuesday.Sixteen-year-old Muhammad Tariq of North Waziristan had joined hundreds of tribesmen in the rally against drone strikes in the Pakistani capital on Friday. The protesters had called for an immediate end to the strikes, saying they killed many civilians, reported Rediff.com.
Tariq was killed with his cousin Waheed, 12, in a US drone strike on Monday night near Mirali, a key town in the restive North Waziristan tribal agency, said Karim Khan, who is leading a campaign against the missile attacks.
Khan, who belongs to Mirali, had lost his son in a drone attack last year.
20111103
Piracy problems? US copyright industries show terrific health
Pity the poor people who work in the US "copyright industries." Battered by a decade of digital piracy and facing even more of it thanks to cheap computers, fast Internet, P2P file-sharing, and online file lockers, the US creative industries teeter on the verge of collapse. You can tell because the industry:
- Pays better than most American jobs
- Has outperformed the US economy through a horrific recession
- Sells record-setting amounts of product overseas, earning more foreign revenue than the entire US food sector or US pharmaceutical companies
Things are going so "badly" that a major new report commissioned by copyright holders says that these "consistently positive trends solidify the status of the copyright industries as a key engine of growth for the US economy as a whole."
20111102
Piracy May Boost Sales, Judge Concludes
A Spanish judge came to an interesting conclusion in a case dealing with a seller of pirated copies. According to the judge the defendant doesn’t have to pay compensation to the rightsholders because it is not possible to determine to what extent piracy actually decreases sales. On the contrary, the judge suggests that piracy may even boost sales.
Anyone who says that piracy is only helping or hurting content creators is wrong.
Piracy has a different effect in each unique case. Not only does it differ between the gaming, music, book and games industries, but also between the relative popularity of the artists and the characteristics of their audiences.
As we’ve pointed out repeatedly in the past, there are plenty of cases where piracy may have a positive effect on sales. Research has shown that “pirates” are the music industry’s best customers, something EMI’s new music boss Douglas Merrill confirmed earlier this year.
20111101
Twenty years of fMRI
Functional magnetic resonance imaging, better known as fMRI, is 20 years old this week. October’s NeuroPod marks the celebrations by looking back at the brain scanning technology, it’s successes, and its troublesome teenage years.
The imaging technique was first announced in a 1991 study published in Science that announced how a standard MRI scanner could be used to used to track where oxygenated and deoxygenated blood flowed in the brain.
The technique takes advantage of the fact that haemoglobin, the iron containing protein that carries oxygen to essential tissues in the body, is differently magnetic when it is carrying oxygen, in comparison to when it is oxygen depleted.
OODA explained
Image from Wikimedia.OODA stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. It describes the decisionmaking process followed by opposing dogfighters in combat. As one competing dogfighter takes an action, the battlespace changes, and the competing dogfighter's OODA Loop begins. He must Observe the action, Orient to the new battlespace this creates, Decide how to respond, and execute an Action in response. And the other dogfighter's OODA Loop now begins.
This also describes the decisionmaking process followed by opposing organizations battling for marketshare. Every dogfighter's OODA Loop is different, as is every organization's.
Let's say, for example, you have decision-making authority in Sales or Business Development at Tek Systems, an IT-focused division of the Allegis Group staffing and recruiting firm. Your industry is very sales-focused; that's just the nature of the business model. It also has somewhat limited capital requirements, meaning fairly low barriers to entry. In other words, you're in sales mode all the time, and you have an abundance of competitors, who are also in sales mode all the time.