The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Weekend Edition
July 22 / 24, 2011
The GOP's Uncivil War
By SAM SMITH, Counterpunch
Weekend Edition
July 22 / 24, 2011
The Enemy is Washington
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS, Counterpunch
Thanks to: Jack Kaplan.
Why Banks Aren’t Lending: The Silent Liquidity Squeeze
by Ellen Brown
Global Research, July 15, 2011
EXTRACT
Paying interest on reserves was intended to prevent “inflation,” but it is having the opposite effect, contracting the money and credit that are the lifeblood of a functioning economy. The whole economic model is wrong. The fear of price inflation has prevented governments from using their sovereign power to create money and credit to serve the needs of their national economies. Instead, they must cater to the interests of a private banking industry that profits from its monopoly power over those essential economic tools.
Whether by accident or design, federal policymakers still have not got it right.
I recall that Viet-Nam era secret writing was blown by an Admiral in his memoirs, causing all future terrorists and secret police to photocopy incoming and outgoing mail. This appears to be publicity we could have done without.
Meet the ‘Keyzer Soze’ of Global Phone-Tracking
Spencer Ackerman
WIRED, July 18, 2011
‘The capability of doing mass tracking is possible.’
EXTRACT
Around the world, TruePosition markets something it calls “location intelligence,” or LOCINT, to intelligence and law enforcement agencies. As a homeland security tool, it’s enticing. Imagine an “invisible barrier around sensitive sites like critical infrastructure,” such as oil refineries or power plants, TruePosition’s director of marketing, Brian Varano, tells Danger Room. The barrier contains a list of known phones belonging to people who work there, allowing them to pass freely through the covered radius. “If any phone enters that is not on the authorized list, [authorities] are immediately notified.”
Press contact: Suzanne Struglinski, NRDC, 202-289-2387 or sstruglinski@nrdc.org
If you are not a member of the press, please write to us at nrdcinfo@nrdc.org or see our contact page
Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida Lead List of “Toxic 20” States with Most Toxic Air Pollution from Power Plants
Worst States: OH, PA, FL, KY, MD, IN, MI, WV, GA, NC, SC, AL, TX, VA, TN, MO, IL, WI, NH, IA
WASHINGTON (July 20, 2011) — Residents of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida live in states with the most toxic air pollution from coal- and oil-fired power plants, according to an analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The study used publicly-available data in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). The analysis, entitled “Toxic Power: How Power Plants Contaminate Our Air and States” was jointly released today by NRDC and Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR).
Among the key findings:
Koko Observes (in American Sign Language): The above is an excellent example of isolated concern that is going nowhere–never mind the blatant corruption of Congress. If it were combined with a 360 degree toxicity survey showing food poisoning, toxic chemicals in everyday materials, and so on, this would be a great deal more useful. If all of that were integrated into a true cost global game (or in this case, national game), there would be a compellingly useful basis for public outrage one district at a time.
Whizz kids deserting the spy world as threat of attacks increases
GCHQ is losing “whizz kid” specialists to Google, Microsoft, and Amazon because they can triple their pay, the head of the agency has warned.
Duncan Gardham
The Telegraph, 20 July 2011
The CIA's Secret Sites in Somalia
The Nation, 1-8 August 2011
EXTRACT
As part of its expanding counterterrorism program in Somalia, the CIA also uses a secret prison buried in the basement of Somalia’s National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters, where prisoners suspected of being Shabab members or of having links to the group are held. Some of the prisoners have been snatched off the streets of Kenya and rendered by plane to Mogadishu. While the underground prison is officially run by the Somali NSA, US intelligence personnel pay the salaries of intelligence agents and also directly interrogate prisoners. The existence of both facilities and the CIA role was uncovered by The Nation during an extensive on-the-ground investigation in Mogadishu.
Phi Beta Iota: Contributing Editor DefDog also recommended these two stories.
Top Five Linux Contributor: Microsoft
By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | July 17, 2011
In a Linux Weekly News story, currently only available to subscribers, an analysis of Linux 3.0 contributors reveals that Microsoft was the fifth largest corporate contributer to Linux 3.0. While only 15h overall, that still puts Microsoft behind only Red Hat, Intel, Novell, and IBM in contributing new code to this version of Linux.
To be exact, Microsoft developer K. Y Srinivasan gets the credit for helping to improve Linux. Of course, as you might guess, neither Srinivasan nor Microsoft are doing this due to any particular love tor Linux per se.
The vast bulk of Microsoft’s contributions has been to its own Hyper-V virtualization hypervisor drivers. Hyper-V is Microsoft’s 64-bit hypervisor-based virtualization system. It’s Microsoft’s answer to VMware and Linux’s own native Kernel-based Virtualization Manager (KVM).
Phi Beta Iota: This is interesting–and disappointing. Microsoft could be doing so much more. OpenBTS, Open Data Access, Open Spectrum, and Open Source Intelligence (now M4IS2) are rapidly approaching take-off points that will see them join Free/Open Source Software and Open Hardware. Microsoft could be central to all of this, but it evidently chooses not to. It recent waste of Sir Richard Branson in delivering platitudes to their huge event is a real let-down.
See Also:
How Big Pharma got Americans hooked on anti-psychotic drugs.
James Ridgeway, 12 July 2011
Al Jazeera
Has America become a nation of psychotics? You would certainly think so, based on the explosion in the use of antipsychotic medications. In 2008, with over $14 billion in sales, antipsychotics became the single top-selling therapeutic class of prescription drugs in the United States, surpassing drugs used to treat high cholesterol and acid reflux.
Phi Beta Iota: The industrialization of agriculture, and the industrialization of “medicine,” have poisoned the Western population, the USA most of all. The degree to which toxins and other poisons are allowed by law is now criminally insane.
