DARPA is working on an embryonic project that would store your every verbal conversation on an Internet server, creating a searchable chat database that would represent the ultimate privacy killer.
Having failed to establish its infamous Total Information Awareness system, although the project was continued under numerous different guises, DARPA is attempting to create a world in which your every utterance is stored in perpetuity.
But don’t worry, the servers on which your conversations are stored will be owned by the individual or their employer, and the government promises to never access the information using their vast new $2 billion dollar spying hub in the middle of the Utah desert. Honest.
This is the latest on an important downward trend: the collapse of American media. A healthy Fourth Estate is essential to the running of a healthy democracy. I have written about this a number of times in the past, but this trend is gaining momentum, and should be of concern to every citizen.
This is the best assessment of the distorted behavior of Washington corporate media I have seen in some time. It explains why it is almost impossible, when you turn on the television, or open your paper, to get serious substantive news from American reporters, particularly those within the Beltway of Washington. And why I get so many of the reports I use in SR from overseas sources.
Forbes, Feb. 20, 2013: […] Last week one of the authors of the study from last year, Daniel J. Madigan from Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station—along with five other scientists— published a new follow-up study. The main question that this new study wanted to answer: Would the migratory Bluefin tuna show up again a year later off the coast of California carrying radiation from Fukushima? The answer was yes. That means, ultimately, that there is still a high level of radiation in the waters near the Fukushima plant most likely because, as marine chemist, Ken Buessler, asserts, the plant is still leaking radiation into the ocean nearly two years later. […]
After the North American governments refused to fund testing, oceanographer Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist at the non-profit Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Mass, along with Nicholas Fisher, a marine sciences professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and other concerned scientists, managed to secure private funding for a Pacific research voyage. The results?
Cesium levels in the Pacific had initially gone up an astonishing 45 million times above pre-accident levels. The levels then declined rapidly for a while, but after that, they unexpectedly levelled off.
In July, cesium levels stopped declining and remained stuck at 10,000 times above pre-accident levels.
This means the ocean isn’t diluting the radiation as expected. If it had been, cesium levels would have kept falling.
The finding suggests that radiation is still being released into the ocean long after the accident in March, 2011.
From: “Bill McKibben
Reply-To: <organizers@350.org>
Date: Fri, 01 Mar 2013
Subject: Breaking news on Keystone XL
Friends,
Yesterday Time Magazine declared that Keystone had become the Stonewall and the Selma of the climate movement — and today we got a reminder of just how tough those fights were, and how tough this one will be.
On a Friday afternoon, with Secretary of State John Kerry half a world away and D.C. focused on the budget fight, the State Department released a new environmental impact statement for the pipeline. Like the last such report, it found that approving a 800,000 barrel-a-day fuse to one of the planet¹s biggest carbon bombs was ³unlikely to have a substantial impact² on the tar sands or the climate.
That, in a word, is nonsense — some of our most important climate scientists in the U.S. have written the State Department to explain exactly how dangerous Keystone is. Just yesterday Europe¹s top climate diplomat
pointed out that it would send a truly terrible signal to the rest of the world.
In light of cuts in US gov't spending, Israeli ambassador says J'lem will try to safeguard funding for Iron Dome, Arrow.
Jerusalem is working to salvage some of the military aid the US provides Israel, after US President Barack Obama was forced to approve $85 billion in automatic government budget cuts on Friday night.
These cuts are expected to shave off up to $729 million annually from American aid to Israel, as well as funding for missile-defense systems such as Iron Dome, Arrow and David’s Sling.
Obama formally ordered broad cuts in US government spending after he and congressional Republicans failed to reach a deal to avert automatic reductions that could dampen economic growth and curb military readiness.
“The Israeli Embassy still doesn’t know what will be the extent of the sequester,” Ambassador to the US Michael Oren told Globes on Friday. “The aid to Israel is included in the federal budget.
Just as this budget is cut, so can the aid to Israel.”
The idea of patenting life forms, I think, is morally repugnant and, as this case illustrates, naturally leads to grotesque outcomes like trying to control the world's food supply. Think about it: this is a kind of mythic evil.
Because we have not had proper accountability for the financial crisis, the same ethical standards continue to obtain. One can see the result in the behavior of large banks in payday loans, as well as student loans. Both demonstrate that these banks have become essentially above-the-law criminal operations.
The cycles and processes of nature are always interconnected and interdependent, and this is an excellent example of what I mean. Poisons are killing honey bees, affecting wild bees, and climate change is breaking down the stasis of our food ecology. Unless this is reversed the results will be devastating.
The sense of persecution that is part of the DNA of Christianity begins here. I have to admit this story stunned me. Perhaps like you I had seen the early Christian period as a time of persecution and martyrdom. But I spent some time looking into this, and I think Professor Candida Moss! 9; work is solid, and is destined to be the accepted view. We need to reconsider this period through a very different prism.
