Category: Corruption

Posted on

Berto Jongman: Nullify NSA Movement Grows – Utah Legislation Could Cut Off All Water to the NSA Data Center

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Military
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Utah — Achilles' Heel of the Surveillance State

Justin Raimondo

OpEdNews, 2/15/2014

The movement to end the Surveillance State is finally getting serious. With the failure by Congress to rein in the NSA — although the heroic Rep. Justin Amash nearly succeeded in doing so — activists on the state level are mounting a campaign that promises to hit Big Brother where it really hurts — by cutting off the NSA's water supply at its Bluffdale, Utah, Data Center.

A bill introduced in the Utah legislature by state representative Marc Roberts (R-Santaquin) would cut off the water supply to the NSA's massive facility which will gobble up 1.7 million gallons of water per day — in a state already hit hard by a region-wide drought.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Nullify NSA Movement Grows – Utah Legislation Could Cut Off All Water to the NSA Data Center”

Posted on

Eagle: Consumer manipulation pace set by casinos with confusion by design; addictiveness by design; and use of play money

Commerce, Corruption
300 Million Talons...
300 Million Talons…

Casinos’ worrying knack for consumer manipulation

The spread of machine gambling offers a portent of other economic developments

Tim Harford, Undercover Economist

What if the future of capitalism is not to be found in Shenzhen, Abu Dhabi or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab – but in the Nevada desert? Natasha Dow Schüll, an anthropologist, has spent 15 years conducting field research in Las Vegas, culminating in a disturbing book, Addiction by Design. We are used to thinking of Vegas as a city of gaudy spectacle and the green baize of poker, blackjack and roulette tables. It is now a city of slot machines, which have grown like weeds because they are fantastically profitable. And the spread of machine gambling offers a worrisome portent of developments elsewhere in the economy.

Three slot-machine innovations stand out: first, confusion by design; second, addictiveness by design; third, the use of play money. All have been made possible by the digital automation of the machine itself, which in Las Vegas as elsewhere eliminates the skilled service jobs of croupiers and replaces them with highly paid jobs in interface design and low-paid work as a security guard or waitress.

Continue reading “Eagle: Consumer manipulation pace set by casinos with confusion by design; addictiveness by design; and use of play money”

Posted on

SchwartzReport: NSA Spies on US Law Firms Representing Foreigners

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Law Enforcement, Military
Stephan A. Schwartz
Stephan A. Schwartz

Further dimensions of the growing surveillance state that is placing the world under scrutiny. If you think this is just about terrorism you haven't been paying attention. This is a growing information matrix whose purpose is to allow a small virtual corporate state elite that, in turn, controls the U.S. and other governments, to control the world. It sounds like some loony conspiracy tale — but it i! s true. Its very size makes in seem implausible. Once again we owe a vote of thanks to Edward Snowden.

Spying by N.S.A. Ally Entangled U.S. Law Firm
JAMES RISEN and LAURA POITRAS – The New York Times

Posted on

Jim Fetzer: 9/11 – World Swirling in Volcano of Lies

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement, Media, Military, Officers Call
Jim Fetzer
Jim Fetzer

9/11 – World Swirling in Volcano of Lies

by Dennis Cimino with Jim Fetzer

Veterans Today, 14 February 2014

BREAKING NEWS: We have found a resolution that validates and integrates three apparently inconsistent positions (on the use of big nukes, small nukes and nanothermite) from respected experts on 9/11.

The contentious debate over how the Twin Towers were destroyed has pitted those favoring large (“basement”) nukes against those identifying small nukes distributed in the elevator shafts throughout the buildings against those promoting thermite (or “nanothermite”).

Some of the most interesting and important research on the mode of destruction of the World Trade Center (WTC) on 9/11 has come from “the Anonymous Physicist”, who has endorsed the use of mini or micro nukes but has also suggested that a mix of devices was employed.

Having devoted several articles to the destruction of the Twin Towers and perhaps also of WTC-7 (“Building 7″) using mini or micro nukes, I regard it as of scientific value to review the bidding from time to time, in case something significant may have been overlooked.

The Anonymous Physicist has drawn a parallel between the efforts that have been made to obfuscate and confound the public about the death of JFK, which has been comparable to what has been done in relation to 9/11.  As he observes,

Continue reading “Jim Fetzer: 9/11 – World Swirling in Volcano of Lies”

Posted on

Stephen E. Arnold: Google Continues to Capture and Pollute World of Knowledge

Commerce, Corruption, IO Technologies
Stephen E. Arnold
Stephen E. Arnold

The Growth of Google’s Knowledge Graph

The article titled How a Database of the World’s Knowledge Shapes Google’s Future on MIT Technology Review is an explanation of Google’s Knowledge Graph and the progress made in compiling information to feed into it. The Knowledge Graph began as a database built by Metaweb, which Google acquired in 2010. The article is an interview with Metaweb cofounder and Google employee John Giannandrea, who explains the Knowledge Graph through an analogy with maps.

Read full post.

The Google Revenue Railroad: Whoo Whoo

I don’t pay much attention to mobile anything. I am nosing near 70, and I find life works just fine without checking a mobile device every few minutes.

I read “New Android OEM Licensing Terms Leak; “Open” Comes with a Lot of Restrictions.” The main point is that open does not mean “open.” Since the artful explanation of the meaning of “is,” most of the words used by folks possess fluid definitions.

“Open” is a good example. Open invokes images of free and open source software. As my columns in Online Searcher document, open is usually closed. For software, open is a way to open the door to consulting services.

Open in the Google context is similar. The monetization angle is different. Google has a huge appetite for revenue. The system Google has constructed over the last 13 or so years is an expensive puppy to operate, upgrade, and maintain.

Read full post.

Phi Beta Iota: Google is the Standard Oil or Monsanto equivalent to the world of knowledge. As admirable as their computational mathematics are, they are evil polluters and manipulators of information. Google — like NSA — is not a public service operating in the public interest. It is a monopoly, a predatory monopoly with zero ethics that will eventaully have to be shut out and routed around by alternatives such as the Autonomous Internet.

See Also:

Google @ Phi Beta Iota

Posted on

SchwartzReport: Four Ways Human Health is Destroyed by Unethical Corporations and the Governments they Bribe

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 07 Health, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Government

Democracy by design is a zero sum game. Elections are revolutions without the guns. Part of the problem faced by social progressives is that all too many of us have a gut rejection of reality when it is negative. In my view you can't fight a battle if you are unwilling to accurately assess the truth of the battlefield. Here is some truth.

Climate Disaster: Big Oil Is Winning the War for the Future
MICHAEL T. KLARE, Professor of Peace and World security Studies at Hampshire College – Salon

Yet another story are the corruption of our food system. I have begun to think of much of the food in the U.S. as a toxin to be avoided.

Five Messed-Up Things That Are in Your Food
MARTHA ROSENBERG – Truthout

1. Azodicarbonamide in Bread
2. Plastic Microbeads in Fish and Waterways
3. Brominated Vegetable Oil in Soft Drinks and Beverages
4. High Fructose Corn Syrup and Artificial Sweeteners in Soft Drinks
5. Transglutaminase Also Known as “Meat Glue”

Finally, it is becoming impossible to deny that the industrial chemicals that pollute every aspect of our lives are the source many illnesses. Everything shouts to us that we must make national wellness, from the individual to the planet our first priority. Whether we can hear these cries is not clear, at least to me.

Scientists Name 6 More Toxins Affecting Developing Brains
DELTHIA RICKS – Newsday

Where I live about half the women I know live on Gluten-free diets. Here is the back story. It is another tale of corners cut in the name of increased profit and decreased national wellness. Happily the story not only explains something, it provides a solution.

Could This Baker Solve the Gluten Mystery?
TOM PHILPOTT – Mother Jones