Category: Threats

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Eagle: Half of Americans Cannot Afford Rent or Mortgage

03 Economy, 06 Family, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society
300 Million Talons...
300 Million Talons…

Half of Americans can’t afford their house

Over half of Americans (52%) have had to make at least one major sacrifice in order to cover their rent or mortgage over the last three years, according to the “How Housing Matters Survey,” which was commissioned by the nonprofit John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and carried out by Hart Research Associates. These sacrifices include getting a second job, deferring saving for retirement, cutting back on health care, running up credit card debt, or even moving to a less safe neighborhood or one with worse schools.

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SchwartzReport: NSA Collects Millions of Facial Images — and Images of Human Interactions — Each Day

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Corruption, Idiocy, Military
Stephan A. Schwartz
Stephan A. Schwartz

And the surveillance state just keeps oozing out across our lives like a toxic smog. It will soon be possible to track any person, almost anywhere. There is already no problem turning on your phone's camera, or microphone. Moving through any public space will result in multiple images, which are keyed to every electronic interaction you have.

Report: NSA Collects Millions of Facial Images Per Day
DANA FORD – CNN

The National Security Agency is reportedly capturing millions of images per day to feed facial recognition programs. Citing top-secret documents obtained by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the New York Times reported the agency ‘s reliance on such technology has grown in recent years.

New software allows the NSA to “exploit the flood of images included in emails, text messages, social media, videoconferences and other communications,” the newspaper said. “The agency intercepts ‘millions of images per day' – including about 55,000 ‘facial recognition quality images' – which translate into ‘tremendous untapped potential,'” the newspaper reported, citing documents from 2011.

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Matt Taibi: The Divide – American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap — Legal Immunity for the 1%, Criminalization of Everything for the 99%

01 Poverty, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement
Amazon Pagae
Amazon Page

A scathing portrait of an urgent new American crisis
 
Over the last two decades, America has been falling deeper and deeper into a statistical mystery:

Poverty goes up. Crime goes down. The prison population doubles.

Fraud by the rich wipes out 40 percent of the world’s wealth. The rich get massively richer. No one goes to jail.

In search of a solution, journalist Matt Taibbi discovered the Divide, the seam in American life where our two most troubling trends—growing wealth inequality and mass incarceration—come together, driven by a dramatic shift in American citizenship: Our basic rights are now determined by our wealth or poverty. The Divide is what allows massively destructive fraud by the hyperwealthy to go unpunished, while turning poverty itself into a crime—but it’s impossible to see until you look at these two alarming trends side by side.

Continue reading “Matt Taibi: The Divide – American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap — Legal Immunity for the 1%, Criminalization of Everything for the 99%”

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Penguin: Obama and Vets — Neglect & Hyposcricy

07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Ineptitude, Officers Call
Who, Me?
Who, Me?

Politics at its worst — zero credibility.

Obama: ‘I Will Not Stand For' Misconduct At Veterans Affairs Hospitals

Phi Beta Iota: There is no lack of substantive information about what needs to be done, nor is there a lack of integrity among those who actually believe our veterans should receive the best of which America the Beautiful is capable. What we lack in Washington is the integrity to spend on behalf of the humans in our system instead of the financial system commoditizing and disrespecting our humans.

Republicans for Obama Memorandum to the Campaign (August 2008)

Soldiers: Back in the Day (1980's)

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SchwartzReport: Water Denial as War Measure

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 12 Water
Stephan A. Schwartz
Stephan A. Schwartz

That water is destiny is becoming clear to all but the dimmest minds. By the end of this decade we will be seeing water wars.

UN Decries Water as Weapon of War in Military Conflicts
THALIF DEEN – Common Dreams/Reader Supprted News

The United Nations, which is trying to help resolve the widespread shortage of water in the developing world, is faced with a growing new problem: the use of water as a weapon of war in ongoing conflicts.

The most recent examples are largely in the Middle East and Africa, including Iraq, Egypt, Israel (where supplies to the occupied territories have been shut off) and Botswana.

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Neal Rauhauser: Fire & Ice — Arctic Melts, Forest Fires, and an India-Pakistan Worst Case Scenario

03 Environmental Degradation, 04 Inter-State Conflict
Neal Rauhauser
Neal Rauhauser

Fire & Ice

The two biggest melts for Greenland were in 1889 and 2012. We didn't know why the entire surface of Greenland turned to slush in a 96 hour period back when it happened, but now we know it was warm, ash laden air and that a similar event happened in 1889. This is double the normal maximum summer melt area.

Greenland melting is an issue on a scale of centuries to maybe a whole millennium, but there are other icy places that are much closer to fires. The Himalayas, which translates into The Abode of Snow, are commonly called Asia’s water tower. I have already mentioned the Kashmir Conflict, which affects the headwater’s of the Indus river valley at the far western end of the range. The Ganges and the Brahmaputra also originate in the Himalayas and well over a billion people depend on the mountain glaciers as a buffer for precipitation.

Click on Image to Enlarge
Click on Image to Enlarge

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