Adam Lanza, the purported Sandy Hook School shooter, is the subject of an ongoing investigation in Connecticut. No, it’s not a police probe, it’s about “mental health.”
The investigation is all about Lanza’s medical history, what diagnoses were made, who the doctors were, what psychiatric drugs they prescribed Lanza.
The Governor of Connecticut is ultimately in charge, in order to make recommendations about improving “mental health” in the state and preventing future violent tragedies.
Sysadmins of the world, unite! a call to resistance
Finally, the world is aware of the threat of mass surveillance and control, but we still have a fight on our hands, and that fight is both technical and political. Global democracy is not going to protect itself. There has never been a higher demand for a politically-engaged hackerdom. Jacob Appelbaum and Julian Assange discuss what needs to be done if we are going to win. The first part of this talk will discuss the WHAT? and the WHY?: the historical challenge we face, and how we are called to resistance. We are living in a defining historical moment.
Phi Beta Iota: Activist organizations have grown by 30% — we are at the end of the second era of national “intelligence” as covert action and sustained idiocy. We are at the beginning of ethical citizen activism empowered by digital access superior to that of the retarded industrial-era governments and corporations. Below is 31:38 – a primer on how this generation of digital literati is thinking about non-violent revolution.
Remarks by the President on Review of Signals Intelligence
(if he had told the truth)
Department of Injustice
Washington, D.C.
11:15 a.m. EST
Who Am I? Who Are We?
THE PRESIDENT: A small, secret surveillance committee of goons and thugs hiding behind the mask of patriotism was established in 1908 in Washington, D.C. The group was led from 1924 until 1972 by J. Edgar Hoover, and during his reign it became known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation. FBI agents spied upon and infiltrated labor unions, political parties, radical groups—especially those led by African-Americans—anti-war groups and the civil rights movement in order to discredit anyone, including politicians such as Henry Wallace, who questioned the power of the state and big business. Agents burglarized homes and offices, illegally opened mail and planted unlawful wiretaps. Bureau leaders created blacklists. They destroyed careers and sometimes lives. They demanded loyalty oaths. By the time they were done, our progressive and radical movements, which had given us the middle class and opened up our political system, were dead. And while the FBI was targeting internal dissidents, our foreign intelligence operatives were overthrowing regimes, bankrolling some of the most vicious dictators on the planet and carrying out assassinations in numerous countries, such as Cuba and the Philippines and later Iran, Guatemala, Vietnam, Chile, Iraq and Afghanistan.
“I am now convinced that the simplest approach… to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Research shows that just giving people a few hundreds or thousands of dollars can lift them out of poverty more effectively than welfare. Furthermore, giving everyone a basic poverty-level annual income could shift the whole dynamics of economics towards greater quality of life and sustainability. It is high time for more of us to seriously consider this approach, which has had support from across the political spectrum, from Nixon to Martin Luther King, Jr.; from neoliberal economists to Green Parties…
Dear friends,
Imagine what would happen if poor people were just given a sizable chunk of money to do with as they pleased – or even if every citizen were granted a basic poverty-level income with no strings attached.
It turns out that such wild ideas are not as far-fetched as they sound – and could have some potent transformational impact.
Remember a researcher named Gilles-Eric Seralini, his 2012 GMO study, and the controversy that swirled around it?
He fed rats GMOs, in the form of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready corn, and they developed tumors. Some died. The study was published in the journal, Food and Chemical Toxicology. Pictures of the rats were published.
A wave of biotech-industry criticism ensued. Pressure built. “Experts” said the study was grossly unscientific, its methods were unprofessional, and Seralini was biased against GMOs from the get-go. Monsanto didn’t like Seralini at all.
The journal which published the Seralini study caved in and retracted it.
Why? Not because Seralini did anything unethical, not because he plagiarized material, not because he was dishonest in any way, but because:
He used rats which (supposedly) had an inherent tendency to develop tumors (the Sprague-Dawley strain), and because he used too few rats (10). That’s it. Those were Seralini’s errors.
Well, guess what? Eight years prior to Seralini, Monsanto also did a rat-tumor-GMO study and published it in the very same journal. Monsanto’s study showed there were no tumor problems in the rats. But here’s the explosive kicker. Monsanto used the same strain of rats that Seralini did and same number of rats (10). And nobody complained about it.
Michael Hansen, senior scientist at Consumer’s Union, explains in an interview with Steve Curwood at loe.org:
Here are the views of a former high ranking NSA official. They remind me of Richard Clarke.
Just because authority at this point only intrudes to a small degree does not mean it cannot go much further. The information will be there to work with. And there are thousands of laws.
I am always concerned I may seem alarmist about a trend but, really I'm just reporting the data, the emerging information. President Obama's comment today that this network of agencies is made up of our neighbors is patently disingenuous.
Click through to see the actual powerpoint slides that document this piece.
