Newz from Limbo

2012-01-27T09:42:00.001-08:00

Which conspiracy theory is right?
Rick Santorum has his answers
Rick Santorum chooses his conspiracy theories with care. The presidential candidate and energy company consultant sees a conspiracy of liberals to push their agenda via a global warming "hoax" but condemns the notion that the government was untruthful about what occurred on Sept. 11, 2001.

Santorum's conspiracy theory: "They don’t trust you to allocate resources in a way that they believe is best, and so they want to have a system that forces you to do what they think you should do in running your business and your lives."

He reiterated that position during last night's presidential debate in Florida, blasting rivals Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich for buying into "the global warming hoax."

Though Santorum, recently on the payroll of Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, was not registered as a lobbyist for Consol Energy, based in his home state of Pennsylvania, he nevertheless received a $142,500 consultancy fee from the firm.

Santorum, in a previous debate, stood behind Washington's story line about the events of 9/11 as he attacked Ron Paul thus: “On your website, on 9/11, you had a blog post that basically blamed the United States for 9/11– on your website yesterday," adding, "You said that it was our actions that brought about the actions of 9/11.”

Calling that position “irresponsible,” Santorum said a presidential candidate “should not be parroting what Osama Bin Laden said on 9/11,” as the attacks are not a result of our behavior, but because “we have a civilization that is antithetical to the civilization of the jihadists.”

It is not clear what Santorum meant by bin Laden's comments. The first comments attributed to bin Laden disclaimed any responsibility for the attacks.

At any rate, Paul replied that U.S. meddling in other nation's affairs stirred up resentments and that that's what he was getting at.

He has also strongly denied believing that 9/11 was an inside job, calling the notion "nonsense."

In this respect, either Paul has not done any real homework on the subject, or he -- like other politicians -- is intimidated by the media's ability to throw ridicule on those who publicly question the government on this matter.

However, rather than ducking there is an effective counterattack: Focus on the fact that scientists have been highly skeptical of the FBI's anthrax conclusions; if someone other than Bruce Ivins was involved, the possibility of a coverup of a conspiracy within the Pentagon looms large.

A McClatchy report on the anthrax probe
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/05/19/114467/fbi-lab-reports-on-anthrax-attacks.html#ixzz1MtQ2uCZH

Newz from Limbo is a news site and, the hosting mechanism notwithstanding, should not be defined as a web log or as 'little more than a community forum'... Write News from Limbo at Krypto78=at=gmail=dot=com... The philosophical orientation of Newz from Limbo is best described as libertarian... For anti-censorship links: http://veilside78.blogspot.com/2010/12/anti-censorship-spectrum_23.html (If link fails, cut and paste it into the url bar)... You may reach some of Paul Conant's other pages through the sidebar link or at http://paulpages.blogspot.com/

2012-01-25T09:03:00.001-08:00

One journalist's pointed question
broke habeus corpus teleblockade
Commentary:

Kudos to Kelly Evans, a Wall Street Journal columnist, for bringing up the issue of peremptory detention of Americans during the South Carolina presidential debate on Jan. 17.

The fact that she had the gumption to raise the issue is commendable. But her question does not diminish by much the fact of the enormous media brown-out on such a tremendously important matter. There was little or no mention of the reactions of Romney, Paul or Santorum in followup coverage. Broadcast coverage of the issue has been virtually nil.

To his credit, the hawkish Santorum stood up for the right of a detained citizen to reach out to a lawyer and appeal his detention via federal court. Paul of course is strongly opposed to the detention law.

Romney rejected the basic right of an American to resort to the courts if he is deemed by the Pentagon to be a bad person.

Here is the relevant excerpt of the debate:

EVANS: Governor Romney, when President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law, he enacted a provision allowing him to indefinitely detain American citizens in U.S. military custody, many, including Congressman Paul, have called it unconstitutional. At the same time the bill did provide money to continue funding U.S. troops.

Governor Romney, as president, would you have signed the National Defense Act as written?

ROMNEY: Yes, I would have. And I do believe that it is appropriate to have in our nation the capacity to detain people who are threats to this country, who are members of al Qaeda.

Look, you have every right in this country to protest and to express your views on a wide range of issues but you don't have a right to join a group that has killed Americans, and has declared war against America. That's treason. In this country we have a right to take those people and put them in jail.

And I recognize, I recognize that in a setting where they are enemy combatants and on our own soil, that could possibly be abused. There are a lot of things I think this president does wrong, lots of them, but I don't think he is going to abuse this power and I that if I were president I would not abuse this power. And I can also tell you that in my view you have to choose people who you believe have sufficient character not to abuse the power of the presidency and to make sure that we do not violate our constitutional principles.

But let me tell you, people who join al Qqaeda are not entitled to rights of due process under our normal legal code. They are entitled instead to be treated as enemy combatants.

EVANS: Senator Santorum...

[Romney interjects a criticism of the Pentagon budget.]

EVANS: Senator Santorum, 30 seconds to you, sir. Same question: would you have signed, as president would you have signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law as written?

[Minor chatter.]

SANTORUM:

First off, I would say this, what the law should be and what the law has been is that if you are a United States citizen and you are detained as an enemy combatant, then you have the right to go to federal court and file a habeas corpus position and be provided a lawyer. That was the state of the law before the National Defense Authorization Act and that should be the state of the law today.

You should not have -- you should not have -- if you are not an American citizen, that's one thing. But if you are a citizen and you are being held indefinitely, then you have the right to go to a federal court -- and again, the law prior to the National Defense Authorization Act was that you had the right to go to a court, and for that court to determine by a preponderance of the evidence whether you could continue to be held. That is a standard that should be maintained and I would maintain that standard as president.

[More minor chatter.]

PAUL: I think we are going in the wrong direction for the protection of our liberties here at home. They are under deep threat. The Patriot Act has eliminated the fourth amendment. We now have a policy of preemptive war; you don't have to declare war and you don't even have to have an enemy. We can start the wars, that's what preemptive war is all about.

Now with the military appropriations defense act, this -- this is -- this is major. This says that the military can arrest an American citizen for under suspicion, and he can be held indefinitely, without habeas corpus, and be denied a lawyer indefinitely even in a prison here.

Let me give you one statistic. You're worrying about all these -- all these -- where we're going to try people, where are they going to do it, we have to do it secretly, because our rule of law is so flawed. We have arrested 362 people related to Al Qaida-type operation; 260 of them are in prison. They've been tried and convicted. So don't give up on our American judicial system so easily, I beg of you.

Just wondering...
why Google's cached pages are no longer highlighted, thus reducing their value in quickly searching for relevant data. Am I missing some technical change? Why would Google reduce the effectiveness of its service? Or is some software program masking out the highlights?

I had no trouble with Yahoo's cached pages.

I don't bother to follow all the latest internet arcana, and so it's possible I'm missing some new wiggle. If you know what's going on, shoot me an email to krypto78@gmail.com.

Newz from Limbo is a news site and, the hosting mechanism notwithstanding, should not be defined as a web log or as 'little more than a community forum'... Write News from Limbo at Krypto78=at=gmail=dot=com... The philosophical orientation of Newz from Limbo is best described as libertarian... For anti-censorship links: http://veilside78.blogspot.com/2010/12/anti-censorship-spectrum_23.html (If link fails, cut and paste it into the url bar)... You may reach some of Paul Conant's other pages through the sidebar link or at http://paulpages.blogspot.com/

2012-01-24T15:43:00.000-08:00

Major media black out Paul's effort
to repeal law on interning Americans
Presidential candidate Ron Paul's bill calling for repeal of a just-enacted law giving the president and the Pentagon authority to detain Americans indefinitely on mere suspicion was ignored by the mainstream media, as a Google news search (below) shows.

No major media touched the story. Previously such media went to extreme lengths to avoid the controversy, which has raised the hackles of people on the right and left of the political spectrum.

Major media similarly played down -- to the point of brown-out -- the Stop Online Privacy Act controversy and only relented when the new media, in the form of Wikipedia and Google, mobilized netizens to contact lawmakers.

One of the things that the old media hold against Paul is his effective use of the new media, which -- to their commentators -- doesn't strike them as legitimate for a presidential contender.

Although Newt Gingrich played to a debate audience about being abused by the press, it is Paul who is consistently chiseled and maligned by the old-line media. Gingrich, on the other hand, got into an ethics uproar over taking an outlandishly large book advance from media mogul Rupert Murdoch, known for his proclivity for manipulating lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic.

News for ron paul repeal
Ology
1. Ron Paul introduces bill to repeal NDAA indefinite detention clause
  
  Openglobe‎ - 15 hours ago
  Republican Representative and presidential candidate Ron Paul took a day off from campaigning in the primary voting state of South Carolina to return to ...
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2. Ron Paul Introduces Bill To Repeal Unconstitutional Section of NDAA
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Ron Paul Introduces Bill to Repeal NDAA's Indefinite Detention
thenewamerican.com/.../10608-ron-paul-introduces-bill-to-repeal-nd...
4 days ago – GOP presidential contender Ron Paul introduced legislation to overturn the indefinite detention provision in the National Defense Authorization ...
Ron Paul Moves To Repeal NDAA Police State Provisions Alex ...
www.infowars.com/ron-paul-moves-to-repeal-ndaa-police-state-prov...
5 days ago – Ron Paul stepped aside from his 2012 presidential campaign today to fight directly for all of our freedoms, by introducing legislation to repeal ...
Ron Paul proposes bill to repeal indefinite detention provision | The ...
www.rawstory.com/.../ron-paul-proposes-bill-to-repeal-indefinite-det...
5 days ago – Ron Paul (R-TX) introduced legislation to the U.S House on Wednesday that would repeal Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization ...
Ron Paul calls for repeal of detainee rules, slams Lindsey Graham ...
thehill.com/.../204811-ron-paul-slams-sen-graham-calls-on-house-to-...
6 days ago – Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul (R-Texas) took to the House floor Wednesday morning to call on his colleagues to support his new ...
AllGov - News - Ron Paul Introduces Bill to Repeal Indefinite ...
www.allgov.com/.../Ron_Paul_Introduces_Bill_to_Repeal_Indefinite...
4 days ago – The wording of the act, although carefully phrased, allows the president of the United States to imprison whomever he chooses.
Ron Paul Introduces Bill To Repeal Unconstitutional Section of ...
www.dailypaul.com › Forums › Ron Paul 2012
3 days ago – Ron Paul took time off from his campaign schedule to introduce legislation to repeal section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act for ...

Newz from Limbo is a news site and, the hosting mechanism notwithstanding, should not be defined as a web log or as 'little more than a community forum'... Write News from Limbo at Krypto78=at=gmail=dot=com... The philosophical orientation of Newz from Limbo is best described as libertarian... For anti-censorship links:http://veilside78.blogspot.com/2010/12/anti-censorship-spectrum_23.html (If link fails, cut and paste it into the url bar)... You may reach some of Paul Conant's other pages through the sidebar link or athttp://paulpages.blogspot.com/

2012-01-19T11:53:00.001-08:00

Paul warns colleagues of peril

of indefinite detention measure

We have to go to Russian media to get a story on Ron Paul fighting indefinite detention of Americans.

RT.com

Ron Paul took a day off from the campaign trail yesterday, not to pause from politics, but to urge his colleagues on Capitol Hill to overturn the provision in the National Defense Authorization Act that allows indefinite detention for Americans.

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, or the NDAA, was inked by President Barack Obama on New Year’s Eve, despite immense opposition from Americans who were concerned by vague language that could allow the commander-in-chief to use military forces to domestically police the United States. Under Section 1021 of the NDAA, any person, US citizen or not, can be held without trial by American armed forces if they are suspected of being engaged in hostilities against the country by al-Qaeda or associated forces.

Opponents of the act — and there are many — have questioned the language of the specific section, as it could be written to allow the president to enforce the law to imprison anyone suspected of any crime that could be considered by the right person in office to be an act of terror. President Obama said that he would not abide by this rule, but despite a signing statement that his administration won’t act in that manner, it does not mean that the promise will be upheld.

ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero called Obama’s approval of the legislation is "a blight on his legacy,"insisting that “he will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law,” and the Council on American-Islamic Relations called the bill an “ill-conceived and un-American legislation” that will “forever be seen as a stain on our nation’s history — one that will ultimately be viewed with embarrassment and shame.” Additionally, this week RT reported that noted journalist Chris Hedges has filed a lawsuit against the White House over the legislation, questioning the legality of the authorization and calling it “a catastrophic blow to civil liberties.”

On Wednesday this week, however, Ron Paul spoke from Capitol Hill, not South Carolina where the rest of his Republican Party rivals were campaigning before the state’s primary scheduled for this weekend. While in Washington to vote against raising the debt ceiling, Congressman Ron Paul also used the opportunity to go after Obama for signing the NDAA and offered a proposal that, if passed, would strike Section 1031 off the Act.

The move makes Paul not just the first frontrunner in the race for the GOP nomination to speak out against the act, but the first congressman to openly offer a solution to the legislation since it was authorized into law.

Paul began his address on Wednesday by noting that the National Defense Authorization Act was “quietly signed into law by the president on New Year’s Day,” sarcastically saluting it by adding, “and what a way to usher in a New Year.”

“Section 1021 provides for the possibility of the US military acting as a kind of police force on US soil, apprehending terror suspects – including Americans — and whisking them off to an undisclosed location indefinitely,” said Paul.

“No right to attorney, no right to trial, no day in court.”

While GOP contender Mitt Romney said during a debate from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina last week that he would have also authorized such legislation, Congressman Paul went over his time limit on stage in urging Americans to pay attention to the dangerous provisions included in the Act. In front of the debate crowd, Paul told the US not to lose faith in the country’s judicial system. From Washington only a week later, Congressman Paul asked his peers to think about America’s past once more, asking, “Have we not tried in civilian court and won convictions of hundreds of individuals for terrorist or related activities?” He added to his fellow legislature that this transformation away from a country founded on the ideals of the Constitution would soon lead America on the road to a place no one would wish it goes.

“This is precisely the kind of egregious distortion of justice that Americans have always ridiculed in so many dictatorships overseas,” said Paul, comparing it to the gulag system of the Soviet Union.

“Is this really the kind of United States we want to create in the name of fighting terrorism?” asked the congressman from Texas.

“Some have argued that nothing in Section 1021 explicitly mandates holding Americans without trial, but it employs vague language radically expanding the detention authority to include anyone who has ‘substantially supported’ certain terrorist groups or ‘associated forces,’” said Paul. “No one has defined what those two terms mean. What is an ‘associated force’?” he asked.

In a statement explaining his lawsuit against the president, Chris Hedges addressed the same concern earlier this week, calling into question the countless conversations he has had with people that the US government has labeled as terrorists. As a foreign correspondent, Hedges says, he met regularly with leaders from groups such as Hamas, the Islamic Jihad in Gaza, the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Revolutionary Guard in Iran.

“What would this bill have meant if it had been in place when I and other Americans traveled in the 1980s with armed units of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua or the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front guerrillas in El Salvador? What would it have meant for those of us who were with the southern insurgents during the civil war in Yemen or the rebels in the southern Sudan?” asked Hedges. “I have had dinner more times than I can count with people whom this country brands as terrorists. But that does not make me one.”

While Hedges attacked Obama in drafting his explanation of the lawsuit, Paul spoke from the Capitol that his own peers in Congress are just as responsible for crafting the NDAA and corrupting others lawmakers into signing it, even as they themselves openly acknowledged the dangers of the act.

“Sadly, too many of my colleagues are too willing to undermine our Constitution to support such outrageous legislation,” said Paul. “One senator even said about American citizens picked up under this section of the NDAA, ‘When they say, “I want my lawyer,” you tell them, “Shut up. You don't get a lawyer.”’ Is this acceptable in someone one who has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution?” he asked. The congressman in question was Senator Lindsay Graham, who did indeed have such vile words in encouraging others to sign the Act. “For those American citizens thinking about helping al-Qaeda, please know what will come your way: death; detention; prosecution,” explained Senator Graham while the Act was originally up for discussion.

Sadly, prosecution could very well be the last step in an instance where an American is imprisoned under the NDAA. In Section 1031, citizens can indeed be held indefinitely, and as we’ve learned with the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that term of detainment could easily extend a decade, if not longer, without a trial ever being ordered. Over 170 prisoners are still held at Gitmo, including some that have been there without charge since the US began installing suspected war criminals there more than ten years ago. Under Section 1031, your neighbor, uncle or yourself could be the next person to don an orange jumpsuit and Ron Paul recognized how detrimental this is to American liberty.

In his closing remarks Wednesday, Paul explained that he was without a doubt opposed to acts of terrorism. “I recognize how critical it is that we identify and apprehend those who are suspected of plotting attacks against Americans. But why do we have so little faith in our justice system?” he asked.

Paul added that he wished to continue going after terrorists, but said, “let us not abandon what is so unique and special about our system of government in the process.”

“I hope my colleagues will join my effort to overturn the shameful Section 1021,” concluded the congressman.

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Newz from Limbo is a news site and, the hosting mechanism notwithstanding, should not be defined as a web log or as 'little more than a community forum'... Write News from Limbo at Krypto78=at=gmail=dot=com... The philosophical orientation of Newz from Limbo is best described as libertarian... For anti-censorship links:http://veilside78.blogspot.com/2010/12/anti-censorship-spectrum_23.html (If link fails, cut and paste it into the url bar)... You may reach some of Paul Conant's other pages through the sidebar link or athttp://paulpages.blogspot.com/

2012-01-15T12:18:00.001-08:00

Spooky coincidence

On Sept. 7, Jeb readied martial law

as general spoke of trade center hit

On Sept. 7, 2001, Gen. Tommy Franks told intelligence staff members that his greatest fear was that a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center would result in martial law against American citizens, he says in his autobiography, American Soldier. Meanwhile, on the same day Florida Governor Jeb Bush prepared for martial law.

http://books.google.com/books?id=k-oMypXyzi4C&lpg=PA236&ots=YG51ZAImI1&dq=tommy%20franks%20sept.%207%2C%202001&pg=PA236#v=onepage&q=tommy%20franks%20sept.%207,%202001&f=false

Franks, who wrote that he instantly assumed that Osama bin Laden was the culprit upon learning of the first strike on the World Trade Center, evidently found a need to include the Sept. 7 incident in his book, written with Malcolm McConnell, after he was questioned about it during a classified session of the 9/11 commission in April 2004.

http://books.google.com/books?id=UabGPLhbGckC&lpg=PT874&ots=KDTs-OLCMZ&dq=tommy%20franks%20sept.%207%2C%202001&pg=PT874#v=onepage&q=tommy%20franks%20sept.%207,%202001&f=false

On the day Franks, chief of the U.S. Central Command, gave that assessment at MacDill Air Force Base, Governor Bush promulgated an executive order giving him authority to prepare for martial law, which he quietly implemented on Sept. 11.

In his book, Franks talks about the "excesses of Reconstruction after the Civil War, which had resulted in the enactment of Posse Comitatus, the law that prevents military forces from serving as policemen within the United States."

His comment in the 2004 book is reflected by similar comments found on the proLiberty web page reproduced below. This reporter was unable to verify the date of the posting of the "historical note" below but the url makes it appear to have been posted in 2001.

From the October 2001 Idaho Observer:

Bush brother declares martial law in Florida

“I hereby declare that a state of emergency exists in the state of Florida...The Authority to suspend the effect of any statute or rule governing the conduct of state business, and further authority to suspend the effect of any order or rule of any government entity...The authority to seize and utilize any and all real or personal property as needed to meet this emergency...The authority to order the evacuation of any or all persons from any location in the State...The authority to regulate the return of the evacuees to their home comunities...I hereby order the Adjutant General to activate the Florida National Guard for the duration of this emergency.” ~Florida Governor Jeb Bush, September 11, 2001

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Florida Governor Jeb Bush signed Executive Order 01-261 September 7, 2001, four days before the WTC tragedy of Sept. 11, which paves the way for a declaration of martial law in his state. The governor, in his EO, delegated to, “...the Adjutant General of the state of Florida all necessary authority....to order members of the Florida National Guard into Active Service.”
Immediately after the second WTC tower fell, Governor Bush signed EO 01-262 to make Florida the first state to declare a state of emergency though his state did not experience any terrorist events that day. Governor Bush is reportedly the only governor in the U.S. outside of NY and D.C. to make a declaration of martial law in the wake of the WTC tragedy. Interestingly, Governor Bush's declaration came before authorities in New York or Washington, D.C. declared states of emergency.
The text (see italics above) of the little reported declared state of emergency that exists in Florida leaves little doubt that the state is currently functioning under martial law.
The Florida national Guard, like the national guard units in the several states, is operated under the authority of the state government. The national guard can also be called up under the orders of the federal government.
There is no sunset clause to this EO. Jeb Bush, the son of former President Bush and the brother of current President Bush, has signed an EO that will keep Florida in a perpetual state of martial law until the EO has been revoked.
***
Historical note:
During the Civil War and the era known as Reconstruction, President Abraham Lincoln had declared a state of martial law. The authority President Lincoln gave himself at that time through executive order was not unlike the authority Governor Bush gave to himself September 11, 2001.
President Lincoln and his military government arrested and tried civilians in both military and civilian courts (which were operating under similar if not identical rules). The writ of habeas corpus was suspended.
The flagrant abuses of unchecked authority during the Civil War era led to the passage of the Posse Comitatus Act. The Act was intended to prohibit the use of federal military forces in domestic law enforcement.
The Posse Comitatus Act was hotly debated during the infamous siege at Waco. Janet Reno's Department of Justice rationalized itself out of being subject to the act because of alleged drug violations by the Branch Davidians.
The government theorizes that with a declared “war” on drugs, the military can be used in domestic actions.
We can see how these precedents have been used to justify the placement of armed and uniformed federal troops at airports all over the nation.

History has shown that declarations of martial law and the suspension of due process are followed by heinous abuses of that authority.

The following copy of the order is found on the Prison Planet website.

EXECUTIVE ORDER NUMBER
01-261 WHEREAS, the Florida National Guard has the statutory responsibility to provide support to law-enforcement personnel and emergency-management personnel in the event of civil disturbances or natural disasters; and

WHEREAS, the Florida National Guard has the responsibility to provide training support to law-enforcement personnel and community-based organizations relating to counter drug operations; and
WHEREAS, the Florida National Guard must train to meet such responsibilities; and
WHEREAS, the Florida National Guard is funded for any such training by budgetary appropriation or grants before any such training; and
WHEREAS, the Florida National Guard must conduct such training in active service of the state, as defined by Section 250.27, Florida Statutes (also known as active military service and state active duty) for members of the Florida National Guard to be covered by Section 250.34, Florida Statutes; and
WHEREAS, as Governor, I may delegate the authority contained in Section 250.06(4), Florida Statutes, to order training to help respond to civil disturbances, natural disasters, and counter drug operations to The Adjutant General of the State of Florida; and
WHEREAS, it is in the best interest of the State of Florida that I delegate such authority, so that the Florida National Guard is adequately trained to meet its obligation to help respond to civil disturbances, natural disasters, and counter drug operations and so that members of the Florida National Guard performing such training are covered by Section 250.34, Florida Statutes; and
WHEREAS, the Governor may order the Florida National Guard to provide extraordinary support to law enforcement upon request and such a request has been received from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) to assist FDLE in performing port security training and inspections.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, JEB BUSH, as Governor of Florida, by virtue of the authority vested in me by Article IV, Section 1(a) of the Florida Constitution, and by Section 250.06(4), Florida Statutes, and all other applicable laws, do hereby promulgate the following Executive Order, to take immediate effect:
Section 1.
Based upon the foregoing, I hereby find that the public welfare requires that the Florida National Guard train to support law-enforcement personnel and emergency-management personnel in the event of civil disturbances or natural disasters and to provide training support to law-enforcement personnel and community-based organizations relating to counter drug operations.
Section 2.
I hereby delegate to The Adjutant General of the State of Florida all necessary authority, within approved budgetary appropriations or grants, to order members of the Florida National Guard into active service, as defined by Section 250.27, Florida Statutes, for the purpose of training to support law-enforcement personnel and emergency-management personnel in the event of civil disturbances or natural disasters and to provide training support to law-enforcement personnel and community-based organizations relating to counter drug operations.
Section 3.
The Florida National Guard may order selected members on to state active duty for service to the State of Florida pursuant to Section 250.06(4), Florida Statutes, to assist FDLE in performing port security training and inspections. Based on the potential massive damage to life and property that may result from an act of terrorism at a Florida port, the necessity to protect life and property from such acts of terrorism, and inhibiting the smuggling of illegal drugs into the State of Florida, the use of the Florida National Guard to support FDLE in accomplishing port security training and inspections is "extraordinary support to law enforcement" as used in Section 250.06(4), Florida Statutes.
Section 4.
The Adjutant General shall not place members of the Florida National Guard into active service for longer than necessary to accomplish the purposes declared herein.
Section 5.
This Executive Order supersedes Executive Order Number 01-17. Executive Order Number 01-17 is hereby revoked.
Section 6.
This Executive Order shall remain in full force and effect until the earlier of its revocation or June 30, 2003.

IN TESTIMONY WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and have caused the Great Seal of the State of Florida to be affixed at Tallahassee, the Capitol, this 7th day of September 2001.

Newz from Limbo is a news site and, the hosting mechanism notwithstanding, should not be defined as a web log or as 'little more than a community forum'... Write News from Limbo at Krypto78=at=gmail=dot=com... The philosophical orientation of Newz from Limbo is best described as libertarian... For anti-censorship links: http://veilside78.blogspot.com/2010/12/anti-censorship-spectrum_23.html (If link fails, cut and paste it into the url bar)... You may reach some of Paul Conant's other pages through the sidebar link or at http://paulpages.blogspot.com/

2012-01-06T11:24:00.001-08:00

More and more school kids
sentenced to years of prison
By Danny Weil, Project Censored
A new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) indicates that children in poor urban neighborhoods need more chances for old-fashioned playtime in their daily lives.

A number of experts in the report have raised concerns that in the current climate of treating youth not as if they were at risk, but as the risk themselves, children have little time for unstructured play — which, AAP says, is important for kids’ physical and mental development. Perhaps the lack of play is due to the fact that more and more students are spending all day in school classes, hunched over desks preparing for standardized tests under the corporatized Obama educational policy, Race to the Top. The (AAP) report seemed to think this was the case noting that even U.S. suburban children are “over-scheduled” with formal classes and lessons, leaving them little time for simple play (Poor kids miss out on playtime, pediatricians say, http://bit.ly/udH1U2 Pediatrics, online December 26, 2011).

A 2009 report by the Alliance for Childhood surveyed kindergartens in New York City and Los Angeles and found that children had less than 30 minutes a day, on average, of “choice” time, in which kids could do whatever they wanted. Kids in L.A. had only about 19 minutes of free time each day. The rest of the kindergarten day was filled with the tyranny of functionalist learning and standardized test preparation. According to the American Association for the Child’s Right to Play, as many as 40 percent of school districts in the United States have reduced recess in the aftermath of the No Child Left Behind act, which emphasizes testing scores over anything else. ((Pappas, S. (August 14, 2011). As Schools cut recess, Kids’ learning will suffer, experts say. Live Science. http://www.livescience.com/15555-schools-cut-recess-learning-suffers.html).

In Belmont, Massachusetts, on November 3, 2011, Superintendent Thomas Kingston closed playgrounds at the Daniel Butler Elementary School, and the town’s Recreation Department closed the playground near Winn Brook Elementary School. The recent closing of two elementary school playgrounds in Boston for safety reasons has exasperated parents and exposed a bigger problem in Belmont, one which exists throughout the nation — chronic under-funding of playgrounds for children (or no funding at all) that leave schools unable to maintain play equipment without hefty parental fundraising and out of pocket expenses, local officials and residents say (Evan, A (November 13, 2011) Playground closings bare larger issue: Schools rely on parents to raise funds for upkeep. Boston.com. http://articles.boston.com/2011-11-13/news/30394828_1_playground-parental-involvement-school-budget).

Part of the problem is that there is simply no money for playground equipment due to austerity measures designed to bail out Wall Street banksters, hedge fund operators and financial capitalists who have now turned to working people to belly up money or shoulder cuts in social services to pay for the banksters’ crime sprees. The Wall Street criminals are now going through our children’s pockets. Our children are being asked to sacrifice public space devoted to childhood play and physical education to assure that Wall Street investors and banksters suffer no loss of their own “play time” — gambling in the casino economy they created for us to we live in.

For poor children who do not live in suburbs but reside mainly in cities in particular, they complain they experience problems such as a lack of safe places to play, parents who are busy trying to pay for housing and other basics and schools that are cutting out recess and physical education to make more time for the ubiquitous and mind numbing standardized testing. Although schools nationwide have been reducing time for recess and physical education for many years, those students in poor areas, in particular, are feeling pressure by administrators and politicians to labor to narrow disparities in student performance and this means they must give up playtime for the “chain gang” of testing. The attack on youth extends to denying them the kernel of the very essence their childhood.

In close to one-third of schools with the highest poverty rates, recess has actually been completely eliminated. That AAP study also found that kids who lacked regular recess time were more likely to be black, low-income and live in large cities, versus kids who routinely had recess (Poor kids miss out on playtime, pediatricians say, http://bit.ly/udH1U2 Pediatrics, online December 26, 2011).

Despite the increasing amount of ‘forced, tube feeding’ now called ‘learning’, schools are trying to cram into their day (a 2008 study published in The Elementary School Journal reported that up to a quarter of elementary schools don’t even schedule recess regularly for all grade levels), some humane advocates are now advocating expenditures designed to improve kids’ playground experiences (Pappas, S. (August 14, 2011). As Schools cut recess, Kids’ learning will suffer, experts say. Live Science. http://www.livescience.com/15555-schools-cut-recess-learning-suffers.html).

For the AAP, playtime is vital for children’s development (Poor kids miss out on playtime, pediatricians say, http://bit.ly/udH1U2 Pediatrics, online December 26, 2011). Yet, Children’s free playtime has dropped over the years, replaced by structured activities and screen time, including television and computer use. A 2003 report by the Kaiser Family Foundation revealed that a quarter of kids under age 6 watched TV for at least two hours a day; these same kids spent 30 minutes less per day playing outside than kids who didn’t spend so much time in front of a screen (Pappas, S. (August 14, 2011). As Schools cut recess, Kids’ learning will suffer, experts say. Live Science. http://www.livescience.com/15555-schools-cut-recess-learning-suffers.html).

At a time when unstructured childhood time is vanishing in favor forced regimentation and militarization, a pair ofUniversityofMarylandstudies of children’s time use found that in 1981, kids ages 6 to 12 had about 57 hours of free time per week. By 2003, kids had only 48 hours in which to choose their own activities. Time spent outdoors was especially hard-hit as children were ‘benched’ in the new learning incarceration (ibid).

Of course if Newt Gingrich has his way, children at public schools would be busy cleaning toilets, mopping floors, and otherwise doing janitorial work in their early ages which would mean playtime would be replaced with forced child labor.

Dr. Milteer, of AAP, also indicated that unstructured play has its own unique benefits, like sparking children’s imaginations, and teaching them social skills and “negotiation (Poor kids miss out on playtime, pediatricians say, http://bit.ly/udH1U2 Pediatrics, online December 26, 2011). Arne Duncan and the venture capitalists and hedge fund operators who now work assiduously, paid for by your tax money, to privatize public schools, close public schools and force desk time over play time seem to disagree. The Dickensian miscreants wish to steal not just taxpayer funds in their unquenchable quest to privatize schools; they also wish to steal childhood itself. These ‘businessmen’ are not interested in ‘sparkling children’s imagination’ but instead advocate tethering students to the carpet loom of structured, functionalist-based testing where imagination suffers capital punishment. All of this while obesity rates rise, child poverty increases and opportunities to even access public spaces such as playgrounds or public parks shrink.

In fact, more and more schools seem to resemble such Super-maximum security prisons like Pelican Bay, where prisoners are let out in the ‘yard’ for only one hour per day. At least high-max prisoners get one hour a day of exercise; many children, the majority of them minority and lower class youth, don’t even get this.

Newz from Limbo is a news site and, the hosting mechanism notwithstanding, should not be defined as a web log or as 'little more than a community forum'... Write News from Limbo at Krypto78=at=gmail=dot=com... The philosophical orientation of Newz from Limbo is best described as libertarian... For anti-censorship links: http://veilside78.blogspot.com/2010/12/anti-censorship-spectrum_23.html (If link fails, cut and paste it into the url bar)... You may reach some of Paul Conant's other pages through the sidebar link or at http://paulpages.blogspot.com/

2011-12-29T10:35:00.001-08:00

Press avoids defense of Paul
from Texas NAACP official
A Texas NAACP official who knows Ron Paul well is on record defending the GOP presidential candidate's positions, citing maneuvering by moneyed interests to misrepresent the newsletter issue. The mainstream press has avoided quoting this Paul defender.

Meanwhile, mainstream media are making an issue of the candidate's refusal to discuss further the newsletter matter, while themselves refusing to discuss the Israel lobby crusade to defeat him. Paul favors leaving both Israel and Iran to fend for themselves.

Paul has disavowed some of the editorial content of the newsletters, saying he hadn't been paying strict attention.

Speaking out against the charges when they first surfaced during the last Republican primary in 2007, Nelson Linder, president of the Austin branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said he has personally known Paul for 20 years and heard him speak out against police oppression in minority communities, racial biases in mandatory drug sentencing, and favorably about the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“Knowing Ron Paul’s intent, I think he is trying to improve this country but I think also, when you talk about the Constitution and you constantly criticize the federal government versus state I think a lot of folks are going to misconstrue that," Linder said, adding that "I think it’s very easy for folks who want to to take his position out of context and that’s what I’m hearing.” Linder told talk radio host Alex Jones during a January 2008 interview.

“Knowing Ron Paul and having talked to him, I think he’s a very fair guy I just think that a lot of folks do not understand the Libertarian platform,” Linder told talk radio host Alex Jones during a January 2008 interview.

“I’ve read Ron Paul’s whole philosophy, I also understand what he’s saying from a political standpoint and why people are attacking him,” said Linder.

“If you scare the folks that have the money, they’re going to attack you and they’re going to take it out of context,” he added.

“What he’s saying is really really threatening the powers that be and that’s what they fear,” the the NAACP president said.

At another point, Linder is quoted: “There are quite a few folks who don’t understand the libertarian philosophy,” Linder said, adding the ideology is one African-Americans should more open to -- though Linder did not endorse Paul and went on to support Barack Obama.

“The two-party system has failed America,” Linder said.

“I hope that more folks in the other parties develop the courage to join him in addressing that, I think, will decide the fate of this country in the future.”

Linder's opinion might lend support to the idea that Paul wasn't keeping track of everything in his newsletters.

A commentary in a 1992 Ron Paul Political Report on the Los Angeles riots was titled “A Special Issue on Racial Terrorism.” Among other things, it said: “The criminals who terrorized our cities — in riots and on every non-riot day — are not exclusively young black males, but they largely are.” It went on to say: “Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began.”

This opinion is highly insensitive, but it should be taken in light of the great indignation across the nation over the rioting.

Paul's enemies, who remain shielded by mainstream media, include the defense industry lobby, which sees his positions as threatening welfare for the arms merchants, and the neoconservatives, who believe that American and Israeli foreign policy should be joined at the hip.

The neocons in government and the press are a major source of the continuing confrontationalism with Iran, as they were with Iraq. A published plan that they endorsed had the United States invade Iraq and from there also neutralize Iran and Syria, thus pacifying all Israel's major enemies. Much of neocon frustration with President Obama stems from the fact that he did not continue a major presence in Iraq so as to more easily carry out the neocon agenda.

The other GOP candidates fear to cross the neocon war party by making peace-like noises.

The New York Times last week ran a long article on the newsletter controversy without making a strong case for anti-Semitism, while other passages cited may have been politically insensitive, but a great many readers would have identified with them.

The Times report set off the term neocon in quotation marks, as if it was a term used by fringe groups, without identifying who the neoconservatives are and their close ties to pro-Israel militants.

In fact, the Times cited the New Republic and the Weekly Standard for publishing excerpts from the newsletters, without mentioning their militantly pro-Israel background.

The hawkish Weekly Standard, owned by media magnate Rupert Murdoch, was established as the voice of the neocon movement.

The New Republic's owner, the leftist Martin Peretz, has himself been embroiled in controversies over ethnically charged comments.

On September 4, 2010, Peretz drew media attention and controversy when he posted an editorial which concluded:

"But, frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse."

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof denounced Peretz's comments, asking: "Is it possible to imagine the same kind of casual slur tossed off about blacks or Jews?"

Amid the controversy, Harvard University canceled Peretz's scheduled speech on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Harvard's Social Studies Department where Peretz once taught. The Atlantic's James Fallows summarized Peretz's reputation on Sept. 25, concluding that if his legacy were settled that day, despite being "beloved by many students and respected by some magazine colleagues," in his 70s he would be considered a bigot.

Jefferson Morley, a Peretz friend, who worked at The New Republic from 1983 to 1987, told Jack Shafer of Slate, "I could never reconcile this intellectual strength with his racism and unpleasant attempts to play the bully."

And as for problems of editorial control, during Peretz's tenure at the New Republic, the magazine faced one of journalism's most notorious fabrication scandals. One of the magazine's writers, Stephen Glass, was found to have fabricated portions or all of 27 of 41 stories he wrote for the magazine.

CNN commentator David Frum branded Paul an "ignoramous" and a "cracker" while being interviewed for a news spot. CNN simply lists Frum as a "conservative." However, the former Bush speechwriter is on the board of directors of the Republican Jewish Coalition, which has "hosted leadership trips to Israel for Members of Congress, governors, and other political leaders," among other activities.

During the 1990s Frum is reported to have attended "three or four" Bilderberg Group meetings as a guest of Conrad Black, at the time a militantly pro-Israel media tycoon whose Daily Telegraph went on to become a major proponent of invading Iraq.

Black, since imprisoned on financial fraud charges, kept Washington Post writer George Will on his payroll. Will served on an informal board of advisors to Hollinger International, a newspaper company controlled by Black. The board met once a year and Will received an annual payment of $25,000. The board was disbanded in 2001. In March 2003, Will wrote a syndicated column which praised a speech by Black and did not disclose their previous business relationship.

This reporter has tried to review copies of the Paul newsletters termed inflammatory, but hasn't succeeded in getting online access. Much of the criticism coming from such outlets as CNN talks vaguely about "racism," "anti-Semitism" and so on without giving exact quotations.

Newz from Limbo is a news site and, the hosting mechanism notwithstanding, should not be defined as a web log or as 'little more than a community forum'... Write News from Limbo at Krypto78=at=gmail=dot=com... The philosophical orientation of Newz from Limbo is best described as libertarian... For anti-censorship links: http://veilside78.blogspot.com/2010/12/anti-censorship-spectrum_23.html (If link fails, cut and paste it into the url bar)... You may reach some of Paul Conant's other pages through the sidebar link or at http://paulpages.blogspot.com/

2011-12-22T10:16:00.001-08:00

Skeptical of censorship, scientist

points to ease of low-tech bioterror

Ron A.M. Fouchier, lead researcher in a study of an altered avian flu virus, told a New York Times interviewer that a federal proposal to censor his team's work appeared to be overzealous and that low-tech bioterrorism would be much easier than trying to replicate his team's work.

Reproduction of the virus "is not very easy," he told the Times. "You need a very sophisticated specialist team and sophisticated facilities to do this. And in our opinion, nature is the biggest bioterrorist. There are many pathogens in nature that you could get your hands on very easily, and if you released those in the human population, we would be in trouble."

He added, "And therefore we think that if bioterror or biowarfare would be a problem, there are so many easy ways of doing it that nobody would take this H5N1 virus and do this very difficult thing to achieve it.

"You could not do this work in your garage if you are a terrorist organization. But what you can do is get viruses out of the wild" and grow them, he said. "There are terrorist opportunities that are much, much easier than to genetically modify H5N1 bird flu virus that are probably much more effective."

Comment: The problem with aerosol pathogens (such as flu viruses passed via sneezing and coughing) is that the terrorists and their families could well become victims. Food-borne pathogens would seem to pose more of a threat from terrorists.

Newz from Limbo is a news site and, the hosting mechanism notwithstanding, should not be defined as a web log or as 'little more than a community forum'... Write News from Limbo at Krypto78=at=gmail=dot=com... The philosophical orientation of Newz from Limbo is best described as libertarian... For anti-censorship links: http://veilside78.blogspot.com/2010/12/anti-censorship-spectrum_23.html (If link fails, cut and paste it into the url bar)... You may reach some of Paul Conant's other pages through the sidebar link or at http://paulpages.blogspot.com/

2011-12-21T07:56:00.000-08:00

Internet engineers alarmed

at SOPA censorship peril

Open letter to members of Congress

We, the undersigned, have played various parts in building a network called the Internet. We wrote and debugged the software; we defined the standards and protocols that talk over that network. Many of us invented parts of it. We're just a little proud of the social and economic benefits that our project, the Internet, has brought with it.

Last year, many of us wrote to you and your colleagues to warn about the proposed "COICA" copyright and censorship legislation. Today, we are writing again to reiterate our concerns about the SOPA and PIPA derivatives of last year's bill, that are under consideration in the House and Senate. In many respects, these proposals are worse than the one we were alarmed to read last year.

If enacted, either of these bills will create an environment of tremendous fear and uncertainty for technological innovation, and seriously harm the credibility of the United States in its role as a steward of key Internet infrastructure. Regardless of recent amendments to SOPA, both bills will risk fragmenting the Internet's global domain name system (DNS) and have other capricious technical consequences. In exchange for this, such legislation would engender censorship that will simultaneously be circumvented by deliberate infringers while hampering innocent parties' right and ability to communicate and express themselves online.

All censorship schemes impact speech beyond the category they were intended to restrict, but these bills are particularly egregious in that regard because they cause entire domains to vanish from the Web, not just infringing pages or files. Worse, an incredible range of useful, law-abiding sites can be blacklisted under these proposals. In fact, it seems that this has already begun to happen under the nascent DHS/ICE seizures program.

Censorship of Internet infrastructure will inevitably cause network errors and security problems. This is true in China, Iran and other countries that censor the network today; it will be just as true of American censorship. It is also true regardless of whether censorship is implemented via the DNS, proxies, firewalls, or any other method. Types of network errors and insecurity that we wrestle with today will become more widespread, and will affect sites other than those blacklisted by the American government.

The current bills -- SOPA explicitly and PIPA implicitly -- also threaten engineers who build Internet systems or offer services that are not readily and automatically compliant with censorship actions by the U.S. government. When we designed the Internet the first time, our priorities were reliability, robustness and minimizing central points of failure or control. We are alarmed that Congress is so close to mandating censorship-compliance as a design requirement for new Internet innovations. This can only damage the security of the network, and give authoritarian governments more power over what their citizens can read and publish.

The US government has regularly claimed that it supports a free and open Internet, both domestically and abroad. We cannot have a free and open Internet unless its naming and routing systems sit above the political concerns and objectives of any one government or industry. To date, the leading role the US has played in this infrastructure has been fairly uncontroversial because America is seen as a trustworthy arbiter and a neutral bastion of free expression. If the US begins to use its central position in the network for censorship that advances its political and economic agenda, the consequences will be far-reaching and destructive.

Senators, Congressmen, we believe the Internet is too important and too valuable to be endangered in this way, and implore you to put these bills aside.

Signed,

•Vint Cerf, co-designer of TCP/IP, one of the "fathers of the Internet", signing as private citizen

•Paul Vixie, author of BIND, the most widely-used DNS server software, and President of the Internet Systems Consortium

•Tony Li, co-author of BGP (the protocol used to arrange Internet routing); chair of the IRTF's Routing Research Group; a Cisco Fellow; and architect for many of the systems that have actually been used to build the Internet

•Steven Bellovin, invented the DNS cache contamination attack; co-authored the first book on Internet security; recipient of the 2007 NIST/NSA National Computer Systems Security Award and member of the DHS Science and Technology Advisory Committee

•Jim Gettys, editor of the HTTP/1.1 protocol standards, which we use to do everything on the Web

•Dave Kristol, co-author, RFCs 2109, 2965 (Web cookies); contributor, RFC 2616 (HTTP/1.1)

•Steve Deering, Ph.D., invented the IP multicast feature of the Internet; lead designer of IPv6 (version 6 of the Internet Protocol)

•David Ulevitch, David Ulevitch, CEO of OpenDNS, which offers alternative DNS services for enhanced security.

•Elizabeth Feinler, director of the Network Information Center (NIC) at SRI International, administered the Internet Name Space from 1970 until 1989 and developed the naming conventions for the internet top level domains (TLDs) of .mil, .gov, .com, .org, etc. under contracts to DoD

•Robert W. Taylor, founded and funded the beginning of the ARPAnet; founded and managed the Xerox PARC Computer Science Lab which designed and built the first networked personal computer (Alto), the Ethernet, the first internet protocol and internet, and desktop publishing

•Fred Baker, former IETF chair, has written about 50 RFCs and contributed to about 150 more, regarding widely used Internet technology

•Dan Kaminsky, Chief Scientist, DKH

•Esther Dyson, EDventure; founding chairman, ICANN; former chairman, EFF; active investor in many start-ups that support commerce, news and advertising on the Internet; director, Sunlight Foundation

•Walt Daniels, IBM’s contributor to MIME, the mechanism used to add attachments to emails

•Nathaniel Borenstein, Chief Scientist, Mimecast; one of the two authors of the MIME protocol, and has worked on many other software systems and protocols, mostly related to e-mail and payments

•Simon Higgs, designed the role of the stealth DNS server that protects a.root-servers.net; worked on all versions of Draft Postel for creating new TLDs and addressed trademark issues with a complimentary Internet Draft; ran the shared-TLD mailing list back in 1995 which defined the domain name registry/registrar relationship; was a root server operator for the Open Root Server Consortium; founded coupons.com in 1994

•John Bartas, was the technical lead on the first commercial IP/TCP software for IBM PCs in 1985-1987 at The Wollongong Group. As part of that work, developed the first tunneling RFC, rfc-1088

•Nathan Eisenberg, Atlas Networks Senior System Administrator; manager of 25K sq. ft. of data centers which provide services to Starbucks, Oracle, and local state

•Dave Crocker, author of Internet standards including email, DKIM anti-abuse, electronic data interchange and facsimile, developer of CSNet and MCI national email services, former IETF Area Director for network management, DNS and standards, recipient of IEEE Internet Award for contributions to email, and serial entrepreneur

•Craig Partridge, architect of how email is routed through the Internet; designed the world's fastest router in the mid 1990s

•Doug Moeller, Chief Technology Officer at Autonet Mobile

•John Todd, Lead Designer/Maintainer - Freenum Project (DNS-based, free telephony/chat pointer system), http://freenum.org/

•Alia Atlas, designed software in a core router (Avici) and has various RFCs around resiliency, MPLS, and ICMP

•Kelly Kane, shared web hosting network operator

•Robert Rodgers, distinguished engineer, Juniper Networks, signing as a private citizen

•Anthony Lauck, helped design and standardize routing protocols and local area network protocols and served on the Internet Architecture Board

•Ramaswamy Aditya, built various networks and web/mail content and application hosting providers including AS10368 (DNAI) which is now part of AS6079 (RCN); did network engineering and peering for that provider; did network engineering for AS25 (UC Berkeley); currently does network engineering for AS177-179 and others (UMich)

•Blake Pfankuch, Connecting Point of Greeley, Network Engineer

•Jon Loeliger, has implemented OSPF, one of the main routing protocols used to determine IP packet delivery; at other companies, has helped design and build the actual computers used to implement core routers or storage delivery systems; at another company, installed network services (T-1 lines and ISP service) into Hotels and Airports across the country

•Jim Deleskie, internetMCI Sr. Network Engineer, Teleglobe Principal Network Architect

•David Barrett, Founder and CEO, Expensify

•Mikki Barry, VP Engineering of InterCon Systems Corp., creators of the first commercial applications software for the Macintosh platform and the first commercial Internet Service Provider in Japan

•Peter Rubenstein,helped to design and build the AOL backbone network, ATDN.

•David Farber, distinguished Professor CMU; Principal in development of CSNET, NSFNET, NREN, GIGABIT TESTBED, and the first operational distributed computer system; EFF board member

•Bradford Chatterjee, Network Engineer, helped design and operate the backbone network for a nationwide ISP serving about 450,000 users

•Gary E. Miller Network Engineer specializing in eCommerce

•Jon Callas, worked on a number of Internet security standards including OpenPGP, ZRTP, DKIM, Signed Syslog, SPKI, and others; also participated in other standards for applications and network routing

•John Kemp, Principal Software Architect, Nokia; helped build the distributed authorization protocol OAuth and its predecessors; former member of the W3C Technical Architecture Group

•Christian Huitema, worked on building the Internet in France and Europe in the 80’s, and authored many Internet standards related to IPv6, RTP, and SIP; a former member of the Internet Architecture Board

•Steve Goldstein, Program Officer for International Networking Coordination at the National Science Foundation 1989-2003, initiated several projects that spread Internet and advanced Internet capabilities globally

•David Newman, 20 years' experience in performance testing of Internet

infrastructure; author of three RFCs on measurement techniques (two on firewall performance, one on test traffic contents)

•Justin Krejci, helped build and run the two biggest and most successful municipal wifi networks located in Minneapolis, MN and Riverside, CA; building and running a new FTTH network in Minneapolis

•Christopher Liljenstolpe, was the chief architect for AS3561 (at the time about 30% of the Internet backbone by traffic), and AS1221 (Australia's main Internet infrastructure)

•Joe Hamelin, co-founder of Seattle Internet Exchange (http://www.seattleix.net) in 1997, and former peering engineer for Amazon in 2001

•John Adams, operations engineer at Twitter, signing as a private citizen

•David M. Miller, CTO / Exec VP for DNS Made Easy (IP Anycast Managed Enterprise DNS provider)

•Seth Breidbart, helped build the Pluribus IMP/TIP for the ARPANET

•Timothy McGinnis, co-chair of the African Network Information Center Policy Development Working Group, and active in various IETF Working Groups

•Richard Kulawiec, 30 years designing/operating academic/commercial/ISP systems and networks

•Larry Stewart, built the Etherphone at Xerox, the first telephone system working over a local area network; designed early e-commerce systems for the Internet at Open Market

•John Pettitt, Internet commerce pioneer, online since 1983, CEO Free Range Content Inc.; founder/CTO CyberSource & Beyond.com; created online fraud protection software that processes over 2 billion transaction a year

•Brandon Ross, Chief Network Architect and CEO of Network Utility Force LLC

•Chris Boyd, runs a green hosting company and supports EFF-Austin as a board member

•Dr. Richard Clayton, designer of Turnpike, widely used Windows-based Internet access suite; prominent Computer Security researcher at Cambridge University

•Robert Bonomi, designed, built, and implemented, the Internet presence for a number of large corporations

•Owen DeLong, member of the ARIN Advisory Council who has spent more than a decade developing better IP addressing policies for the internet in North America and around the world

•Baudouin Schombe, blog design and content trainer

•Lyndon Nerenberg, Creator of IMAP Binary extension (RFC 3516)

•John Gilmore, co-designed BOOTP (RFC 951), which became DHCP, the way you get an IP address when you plug into an Ethernet or get on a WiFi access point; current EFF board member

•John Bond, Systems Engineer at RIPE NCC maintaining AS25152 (k.root-servers.net.) and AS197000 (f.in-addr-servers.arpa. ,f.ip6-servers.arpa.); signing as a private citizen

•Stephen Farrell, co-author on about 15 RFCs

•Samuel Moats, senior systems engineer for the Department of Defense; helps build and defend the networks that deliver data to Defense Department users

•John Vittal, created the first full email client and the email standards still in use today

•Ryan Rawdon, built out and maintains the network infrastructure for a rapidly growing company in our country's bustling advertising industry; was on the technical operations team for one of our country's largest residential ISPs

•Brian Haberman, has been involved in the design of IPv6, IGMP/MLD, and NTP within the IETF for nearly 15 years

•Eric Tykwinski, Network Engineer working for a small ISP based in the Philadelphia region; currently maintains the network as well as the DNS and server infrastructure

•Noel Chiappa, has been working on the lowest level stuff (the IP protocol level) since 1977; name on the 'Birth of the Internet' plaque at Stanford); actively helping to develop new 'plumbing' at that level

•Robert M. Hinden, worked on the gateways in the early Internet, author of many of the core IPv6 specifications, active in the IETF since the first IETF meeting, author of 37 RFCs, and current Internet Society Board of Trustee member

•Alexander McKenzie, former member of the Network Working Group and participated in the design of the first ARPAnet Host protocols; was the manager of the ARPAnet Network Operation Center that kept the network running in the early 1970s; was a charter member of the International Network Working Group that developed the ideas used in TCP and IP

•Keith Moore, was on the Internet Engineering Steering Group from 1996-2000, as one of two Area Directors for applications; wrote or co-wrote technical specification RFCs associated with email, WWW, and IPv6 transition

•Guy Almes, led the connection of universities in Texas to the NSFnet during the late 1980s; served as Chief Engineer of Internet2 in the late 1990s

•David Mercer, formerly of The River Internet, provided service to more of Arizona than any local or national ISP

•Paul Timmins, designed and runs the multi-state network of a medium sized telephone and internet company in the Midwest

•Stephen L. Casner, led the working group that designed the Real-time Transport Protocol that carries the voice signals in VoIP systems

•Tim Rutherford, DNS and network administrator at C4

•Mike Alexander, helped implement (on the Michigan Terminal System at the University of Michigan) one of the first EMail systems to be connected to the Internet (and to its predecessors such as Bitnet, Mailnet, and UUCP); helped with the basic work to connect MTS to the Internet; implemented various IP related drivers on early Macintosh systems: one allowed TCP/IP connections over ISDN lines and another made a TCP connection look like a serial port

•John Klensin, Ph.D., early and ongoing role in the design of Internet applications and coordination and administrative policies; former IAB Chair and former AT&T Internet Architecture VP

•L. Jean Camp, former Senior Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories, focusing on computer security; eight years at Harvard's Kennedy School; tenured Professor at Indiana Unviersity's School of Informatics with research addressing security in society.

•Louis Pouzin, designed and implemented the first computer network using datagrams (CYCLADES), from which TCP/IP was derived

•Carl Page, helped found eGroups, the biggest social network

of its day, 14 million users at the point of sale to Yahoo for around $430,000,000, at which point it became Yahoo Groups

•Phil Lapsley, co-author of the Internet Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP), RFC 977, and developer of the NNTP reference implementation

•Jack Haverty (MSEE, BSEE MIT 1970), Principal Investigator for several DARPA projects including the first Internet development and operation; Corporate Network Architect for BBN; Founding member of the IAB/ICCB; Internet Architect and Corporate Founding Member of W3C for Oracle Corporation

•Glenn Ricart, Managed the original (FIX) Internet interconnection point

•Ben Laurie, Apache Software Foundation founder, OpenSSL core team member, security researcher. Over half the secure websites on the Internet are powered by his software.

•Chris Wellens President & CEO InterWorking Labs

•Chris Morrow Network Security Engineer at Google, and previously at UUNET. Involved in several IETF routing and security working groups.

•Dave Shambley, entrepreneur and IEEE member

•Bill Jennings, who was VP of Engineering at Cisco for 10 years and responsible for building much of the hardware and embedded software for Cisco's core router products and high-end Ethernet switches

•Bernie Cosell coauthored the original IMP code, Terminal-IMP [TIP] and monitoring code for the NOC.

•Leonard Kleinrock, one of the "fathers of the Internet", created the mathematical theory of packet networks, ran the UCLA lab that served as the first node of the ARPANET, and supervised the transmission of its first message.

•Rebecca Hargrave Malamud, helped advance many large-scale Internet projects, and have been working the web since its invention.

In first, U.S. presses journals to censor bird flu studies

The science journals Nature and Science are resisting a first-time request from a U.S. bioterror unit to censor data on a laboratory-made version of bird flu on grounds the pathogen might be used as a weapon, according to a report in the Guardian.

The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity asked the two journals to publish redacted versions of studies by two research groups that created forms of the H5N1 avian flu that showed signs of being able to infect humans.

The journals are objecting to the request, saying it would restrict access to information that might advance the cause of public health, the Guardian reports.

The request was a first for the expert panel, formed after a series of anthrax attacks on U.S. targets in 2001, the paper said.

E. coli mystery raises terrorism issue
http://conantcensorshipissue.blogspot.com/2011/06/e.html

Deadly E. coli outbreak latest in parade of woes
http://conantcensorshipissue.blogspot.com/2011/06/deadly-e_12.html

Newz from Limbo is a news site and, the hosting mechanism notwithstanding, should not be defined as a web log or as 'little more than a community forum'... Write News from Limbo at Krypto78=at=gmail=dot=com... The philosophical orientation of Newz from Limbo is best described as libertarian... For anti-censorship links: http://veilside78.blogspot.com/2010/12/anti-censorship-spectrum_23.html (If link fails, cut and paste it into the url bar)... You may reach some of Paul Conant's other pages through the sidebar link or at http://paulpages.blogspot.com/

2011-12-14T13:16:00.000-08:00

Shills run interference for Fed,
besieged professor charges
L. Randall Wray, an economics professor whose students tallied $29 trillion in Federal Reserve bailouts, says he and his students are on the receiving end of a campaign to discredit them carried out by Federal Reserve allies.

Wray, a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and senior scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, N.Y.

Wray says Fed allies are misreading the study http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_698.pdf and trying to play down the Fed's chronic overnight lending on easy terms to banks which for months on end could not or would not function properly.

Aside from accusing the study's authors of rabble rousing, said Wray, critics appear to be sticking with "talking points" rather than focusing on the exessive longterm emergency brorrowing.

Paul breaks with pack, blasts 'martial law' bill
http://rt.com/usa/news/defense-ron-paul-detention-745/

The GOP presidential candidates have been playing dumb about the detention measure that puts Americans at risk of being held in internment camps on suspicion of ties to terrorism. President Obama is likely to sign the bill this shortly, it has been reported.

Ron Paul however spoke with a reporter about the subject. The story appeared in alternative media.

Mainstream media are remaining silent about the subject, having only given the matter cursory coverage.

Newz from Limbo is a news site and, the hosting mechanism notwithstanding, should not be defined as a web log or as 'little more than a community forum'... Write News from Limbo at Krypto78=at=gmail=dot=com... The philosophical orientation of Newz from Limbo is best described as libertarian... For anti-censorship links: http://veilside78.blogspot.com/2010/12/anti-censorship-spectrum_23.html (If link fails, cut and paste it into the url bar)... You may reach some of Paul Conant's other pages through the sidebar link or at http://paulpages.blogspot.com/

2011-12-13T09:15:00.001-08:00

Endless war on liberty,
Bland Blather reporting
The end of the Iraq war has been informally declared, though Sen. Rand Paul's measure to formally declare it over was defeated. This is WLN News, Bland Blather reporting. I have here a script that was prepared for me but I've decided to depart from it.

[Gasps in background of set of Whole Lotta Nothing News]

I was wondering what Americans think about the fact that so many of their fellow Americans and fellow human beings in Iraq died after it was exposed that the reason for the war was bogus: not only were there no weapons of mass destruction but it was definitively demonstrated that the case for WMDs was hyped up -- or, as they say in Britain, sexed up -- by both American and British authorities cherry-picking so-called facts to create a desired impression.

[Hey!!! Shut him off!!!]

Why was it necessary to continue the war so long once it was determined that there was no WMD threat? Unless, of course, the WMD threat was simply a means to justify a war that Americans had initially been highly skeptical of.

It's now a decade since the attacks of 9/11, and America is suddenly on the brink of a draconian detention law that could easily be abused for political reasons. In fact, the introduction of such a law 10 years after the fact is grounds for suspicion. I and my colleagues in television media have been muzzled on this subject, though we all recognize what a danger it is.

[We're trying to shut it off!!! There's some kind of override!!!]

There are various theories about why such a conspiracy is occurring among mainstream media and the powers that be to throttle public discussion and general awareness of such an important matter. Some observers have noted that the detention measure -- in which the military could pick up Americans in America and detain them indefinitely without trial or disclosure of evidence -- comes just as the Iraq war is ending and Pentagon funding prospects are in decline.

There is considerable confusion about whether President Obama is for or against this measure, with reports that he had threatened veto. On the other hand, the bill's co-sponsor, Sen. Carl Levin, claimed that Obama had actually asked for such powers. However, with the press prevented from covering this matter as a running story, professional reporters aren't doing any digging, it seems.

The Iraq war is over but the endless war with al Qaeda -- or anyone who can make bombs -- means that our basic American liberties need never be fully restored, as Sen. Paul has noted.

[You're going to have to go on the set and physically remove him!!!]

Have to go now.

[Burly men pull Blather off the set.]

[Kill that story Blather was doing on Ron and Rand Paul!!!]

[What happened to him? Did he go off his meds?]

What's wrong with detention measure, by Rand Paul

TRANSCRIPT:

James Madison, father of the Constitution, warned, “The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become instruments of tyranny at home.”

Abraham Lincoln had similar thoughts, saying “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter, and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

During war there has always been a struggle to preserve Constitutional liberties. During the Civil War the right of habeas corpus was suspended. Newspapers were closed down. Fortunately, these rights were restored after the war.

The discussion now to suspend certain rights to due process is especially worrisome given that we are engaged in a war that appears to have no end. Rights given up now cannot be expected to be returned. So, we do well to contemplate the diminishment of due process, knowing that the rights we lose now may never be restored.

My well-intentioned colleagues ignore these admonitions in defending provisions of the Defense bill pertaining to detaining suspected terrorists.

Their legislation would arm the military with the authority to detain indefinitely – without due process or trial – SUSPECTED al-Qaida sympathizers, including American citizens apprehended on American soil.

I want to repeat that. We are talking about people who are merely SUSPECTED of a crime. And we are talking about American citizens.

If these provisions pass, we could see American citizens being sent to Guantanamo Bay.

This should be alarming to everyone watching this proceeding today. Because it puts every single American citizen at risk.

There is one thing and one thing only protecting innocent Americans from being detained at will at the hands of a too-powerful state – our constitution, and the checks we put on government power. Should we err today and remove some of the most important checks on state power in the name of fighting terrorism, well, then the terrorists have won.

Detaining citizens without a court trial is not American. In fact, this alarming arbitrary power is reminiscent of Egypt’s “permanent” Emergency Law authorizing preventive indefinite detention, a law that provoked ordinary Egyptians to tear their country apart last spring and risk their lives to fight.

Recently, Justice Scalia affirmed this idea in his dissent in the Hamdi case, saying:

“Where the Government accuses a citizen of waging war against it, our constitutional tradition has been to prosecute him in federal court for treason or some other crime.”

He concluded: “The very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the Executive

Justice Scalia was, as he often does, following the wisdom of our founding fathers.

As Franklin wisely warned against, we should not attempt to trade liberty for security, if we do we may end up with neither. And really, what security does this indefinite detention of Americans give us?

The first and flawed premise, both here and in the badly misname patriot act, is that our pre-911 police powers were insufficient to combat international terrorism.

This is simply not borne out by the facts.

Congress long ago made it a crime to provide, or to conspire to provide, material assistance to al-Qaida or other listed foreign terrorist organizations. Material assistance includes virtually anything of value – including legal or political advice, education, books, newspapers, lodging or otherwise. The Supreme Court sustained the constitutionality of the sweeping prohibition.

And this is not simply about catching terrorists after the fact, as others may insinuate. The material assistance law is in fact forward-looking and preventive, not backward-looking and reactive.

Al-Qaida adherents may be detained, prosecuted and convicted for conspiring to violate the material assistance prohibition before any injury to an American. Jose Padilla, for instance, was convicted and sentenced to 17 years in prison for conspiring to provide material assistance to al-Qaida. The criminal law does not require dead bodies on the sidewalk before it strikes at international terrorism.

Indeed, conspiracy law and prosecutions in civilian courts have been routinely invoked after 9/11, to thwart embryonic international terrorism.

Michael Chertoff, then head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and later Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, testified shortly after 9/11 to the Senate Judiciary Committee. He underscored that, “the history of this government in prosecuting terrorists in domestic courts has been one of unmitigated success and one in which the judges have done a superb job of managing the courtroom and not compromising our concerns about security and our concerns about classified information.”

Moreover, there is no evidence that criminal justice procedures have frustrated intelligence collection about international terrorism. Suspected terrorists have repeatedly waived both the right to an attorney and the right to silence. Additionally, Miranda warnings are not required at all when the purpose of interrogation is public safety.

The authors of this bill errantly maintain that the bill would not enlarge the universe of detainees eligible for indefinite detention in military custody. This is simply not the case.

The current Authorization for Use of Military Force confines the universe to persons implicated in the 9/11 attacks or who harbored those who were.

The detainee provision would expand the universe to include any person said to be “part of” or “substantially” supportive of al-Qaida or Taliban.

These terms are dangerously vague. More than a decade after 9/11, the military has been unable to define the earmarks of membership in or affiliation to either organization.

Some say that to prevent another 9/11 attack we must fight terrorism with a war mentality and not treat potential attackers as criminals. For combatants captured on the battlefield, I tend to agree.

But 9/11 didn’t succeed because we granted the terrorists due process. 9/11 attacks did not succeed because al-Qaida was so formidable, but because of human error. The Defense Department withheld intelligence from the FBI. No warrants were denied. The warrants weren’t requested. The FBI failed to act on repeated pleas from its field agents, agents who were in possession of laptop with information that might have prevented 9/11.

These are not failures of laws. They are not failures of procedures. They are failures of imperfect men and women in bloated bureaucracies. No amount of liberty sacrificed on the altar of the state will ever change that.

A full accounting of our human failures by 9/11 Commission would have proven that enhanced cooperation between law enforcement and the intelligence community, not military action or vandalizing liberty at home, is the key to thwarting international terrorism.

We should not have to sacrifice our Liberty to be safe. We cannot allow the rules to change to fit the whims of those in power. The rules, the binding chains of our constitution were written so that it didn’t MATTER who was in power. In fact, they were written to protect us and our rights, from those who hold power without good intentions. We are not governed by saints or angels. Our constitution allows for that. This bill does not.

Finally, the detainee provisions of the defense authorization bill do another grave harm to freedom: they imply perpetual war for the first time in the history of the United States.

No benchmarks are established that would ever terminate the conflict with al-Qaida, Taliban, or other foreign terrorist organizations. In fact, this bill explicitly states that no part of this bill is to imply any restriction on the authorization to use force. No congressional review is allowed or imagined. No victory is defined. No peace is possible if victory is made impossible by definition.

To disavow the idea that the exclusive congressional power to declare war somehow allows the President to continue war forever at whim, I will also be offering an amendment this week to de-authorize the Iraq War.

Use of military force must begin in congress with its authorization. And it should end in congress with its termination. Congress should not be ignored or an afterthought in these matters, and must reclaim its constitutional duties.

The detainee provisions ask us to give up consist rights as an emergency or exigency but make no room for expiration. Perhaps the Emergency Law in Egypt began with good intentions in 1958 but somehow it came to be hated, to be despised with such vigor that protesters chose to burn themselves alive rather allow continuation of indefinite detention.

Today, someone must stand up for the rights of the American people to be free. We must stand up to tyranny disguised as security. I urge my colleagues to reject the language on detainees in this bill, and to support amendments to strip these provisions from the defense bill.

Paul, of course, voted against the detention measure.

Feinstein explains her detention maneuvering

The following letter appeared on the internet and appears to be credible.

Thank you for writing to express your concerns about the detention provisions in the “National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012.” I appreciate knowing your views and welcome the opportunity to respond.

This year’s defense authorization bill would, among other things, authorize funding for the U.S. Department of Defense. As you know, section 1031 would authorize the U.S. government to detain suspected terrorists until the end of hostilities, and section 1032 would require that certain suspected terrorists connected to al-Qaeda be automatically detained in military custody when apprehended.

Like you, I oppose these provisions. Section 1031 is problematic because it authorizes the indefinite detention of American citizens without due process. In this democracy, due process is a fundamental right, and it protects us from being locked up by the government without charge. For this reason, I offered an amendment to prohibit the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without trial or charge. Unfortunately, on December 1, 2011, this amendment failed by a vote of 45-55.

I was, however, able to reach a compromise with the authors of the defense bill to state that no existing law or authorities to detain suspected terrorists are changed by this section of the bill. While I would have preferred to have restricted the government’s ability to detain U.S. citizens without charge, this compromise at least ensures that the bill does not expand the government’s authority in this area.

I also oppose section 1032 of the defense bill, which creates a presumption that individuals associated with al-Qaeda will be held in military custody, as opposed to being processed through the criminal justice system. I disagree with this approach, and believe that the President should be able to hold captured terrorists in the military or the criminal justice systems based on the individual facts and evidence of each case. Accordingly, I offered an amendment to clarify that under section 1032, the presumption of U.S. Armed Forces detention only exists for an individual captured abroad. Unfortunately, on December 1, 2011, this amendment also failed on a vote of 45-55..." (Final formalities omitted.)

Nevertheless, Feinstein relented and voted for the detention measure.

Newz from Limbo is a news site and, the hosting mechanism notwithstanding, should not be defined as a web log or as 'little more than a community forum'... Write News from Limbo at Krypto78=at=gmail=dot=com... The philosophical orientation of Newz from Limbo is best described as libertarian... For anti-censorship links: http://veilside78.blogspot.com/2010/12/anti-censorship-spectrum_23.html (If link fails, cut and paste it into the url bar)... You may reach some of Paul Conant's other pages through the sidebar link or at http://paulpages.blogspot.com/

2011-12-11T10:54:00.001-08:00

Fed said to have committed

$29 trillion to bank bailouts
How much money was involved in the Federal Reserve bailout of troubled banks? "The bottom line: a Federal Reserve bailout commitment in excess of $29 trillion," is what a new study says. That statement is found in the synopsis of a paper by James Felkerson published by the Levy Institute.

http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_698.pdf

The paper's abstract:

There have been a number of estimates of the total amount of funding provided by the Federal Reserve to bail out the financial system. For example, Bloomberg recently claimed that the cumulative commitment by the Fed (this includes asset purchases plus lending) was $7.77 trillion. As part of the Ford Foundation project “A Research and Policy Dialogue Project on Improving Governance of the Government Safety Net in Financial Crisis,” Nicola Matthews and James Felkerson have undertaken an examination of the data on the Fed’s bailout of the financial system—the most comprehensive investigation of the raw data to date. This working paper is the first in a series that will report the results of this investigation. The extraordinary scope and magnitude of the recent financial crisis of 2007–09 required an extraordinary response by the Fed in the fulfillment of its lender-of-last-resort function. The purpose of this paper is to provide a descriptive account of the Fed’s response to the recent financial crisis. It begins with a brief summary of the methodology, then outlines the unconventional facilities and programs aimed at stabilizing the existing financial structure. The paper concludes with a summary of the scope and magnitude of the Fed’s crisis response The bottom line: a Federal Reserve bailout commitment in excess of $29 trillion.

Newz from Limbo is a news site and, the hosting mechanism notwithstanding, should not be defined as a web log or as 'little more than a community forum'... Write News from Limbo at Krypto78=at=gmail=dot=com... The philosophical orientation of Newz from Limbo is best described as libertarian... For anti-censorship links: http://veilside78.blogspot.com/2010/12/anti-censorship-spectrum_23.html (If link fails, cut and paste it into the url bar)... You may reach some of Paul Conant's other pages through the sidebar link or at http://paulpages.blogspot.com/

2011-12-09T13:48:00.001-08:00

Obama pressures Congress
to curb detention measure
according to an Associated Press report appearing in Politico.

The legislation also would deny suspected terrorists, even U.S. citizens seized within the nation's borders, the right to trial and subject them to indefinite detention. The Obama administration opposes that feature, along with other items slipped into the National Defense Authorization bill at the last moment.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/70196.html#ixzz1g4k3AGzO

Bloomberg News editors are urging that the detention measure be vetoed, but not out of concern over basic American freedom, but rather out of protectiveness of the FBI's interests versus the Pentagon's and because the editors say the measure makes it harder to move captives out of Guantanamo Bay prison, which the editors wish to see closed down.

The editors say they are unmoved by concerns about infringement of liberty as spelled out in the Bill of Rights.

The Politico story vanished from a top position in the Google News search engine as this writer worked and almost escaped his notice as a result.

Newz from Limbo is a news site and, the hosting mechanism notwithstanding, should not be defined as a web log or as 'little more than a community forum'... Write News from Limbo at Krypto78=at=gmail=dot=com... The philosophical orientation of Newz from Limbo is best described as libertarian... For anti-censorship links: http://veilside78.blogspot.com/2010/12/anti-censorship-spectrum_23.html (If link fails, cut and paste it into the url bar)... You may reach some of Paul Conant's other pages through the sidebar link or at http://paulpages.blogspot.com/

2011-12-07T09:17:00.001-08:00

Mayfield case spotlights
peril of detention measure
In 2002, Brandon Mayfield, an Oregon lawyer and adherent of Islam, was arrested by the FBI and held for two weeks on suspicion of being involved in the Madrid train bombings.

He objected to his detention under the Patriot Act, and once it emerged that an error had been made he eventually won a settlement and an apology from the federal government.

http://www.justiceflorida.com/tags/brandon-mayfield-fingerprint/

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2009/12/portland_attorney_brandon_mayf.html

http://www.salon.com/2007/10/03/brandon_mayfield/

Had Mayfield been picked up under the McCain-Levin preventive detention measure, it is highly probable that the lawyer would still be sitting in the Guantanamo Bay prison or some other federal internment center. That is because federal authorities would need not present a probable cause for the detention nor show anyone whatever evidence they claimed to have (basically a fingerprint that turned out to be a false positive). Mayfield would not have been permitted to confront his accusers and most of his legal venues would have been stifled.

That this is true is demonstrated by some persons held at Guantanamo for years against whom there is virtually no evidence. However, authorities fear to let anyone go because it's possible that their experience will have angered them so much that they will join al Qaeda, as one or two released captives have done after being tormented during years of custody.

In Mayfield's case, he would very likely have been held indefinitely. Examine the reasoning of hardline columnist Daniel Pipes, who defended the federal government's action in arresting Mayfield:

"Mr. Mayfield's political profile fits that of many disaffected, America-hating terrorists: he strongly opposes the Patriot Act, inveighs against American foreign policy related to Muslim countries, and is 'particularly angered,' according to his brother Kent, by close U.S. relations with Israel. Mr. Mayfield speculates that the Bush administration knew in advance about 9/11 but chose to let the attacks go ahead so as to justify going to war. And on his release from custody, he compared the U.S. federal government to Nazi Germany."

So, the thinking goes, an American who is convinced that the 9/11 attacks were a result of treachery at the federal level or that the U.S. government should not pamper Israel or that the Patriot Act is an assault on the foundations of American liberty [why label it the Patriot Act unless freedom was under assault?] fits the profile of a terrorist. Had Pipes been similarly detained, wouldn't he have been angry enough to invoke the specter of Nazi tyranny?

Also, wrote Pipes, "Someone in Mr. Mayfield's house was in telephone contact with Perouz Sedaghaty (a.k.a. Pete Seda), director of the U.S. office of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a number of whose foreign branches have been designated as terrorist organizations."

Is there something wrong with a man who is embattled being in touch with a lawyer? Or with Mayfield representing a man in a custody dispute who was eventually convicted of terrorism? But, said Pipes, not only was Mayfield a lawyer, he was a Muslim and identified with Muslim ideology.

By such logic, one could say that Pipes, by expressing a neoconservative ideology, by being too trusting of federal power and by being excessively protective of federal cover stories, is demonstrating a pattern consistent with being a flack for 9/11 conspirators and is a candidate for internment.

Even had Pipes made a good case for detaining the lawyer via the Patriot Act, under McCain-Levin, Mayfield's First Amendment rights of freedom of religion and freedom of speech would be held against him as indicating a "pattern" consistent with terrorism. It is unlikely that he, or anyone else, would have been told of the (false) fingerprint match.

Of course, one wonders why Mayfield wasn't quietly put under surveillance rather than seized in a grandstanding public relations ploy. Was the government attempting to intimidate lawyers for terror suspects?

And if lawyers willing to represent terror suspects could be treated in such a way, what is the likely fate of many an internet journalist, anti-Patriot Act blogger or skeptic of the U.S. narrative about the events of 9/11.

2011-12-06T09:46:00.000-08:00

Mainstream media unconcerned
about draconian detention bill
Presidential candidate Ron Paul voiced strong concerns about the
National Defense Authorization act detention provisions during a recent Republican debate, a point duly noted by the American Civil Liberties Union. His son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), has been fighting the draconian bill, but those efforts have been largely ignored by mainstream media.

Though Ron Paul is a presidential candidate, reporters evidently have not been following up on his statement, nor have they pressed other presidential candidates about the issue, or if they have, the reports are going unpublished. Mainstream media have been ducking covering the controversy -- which has sparked outrage across the nation -- as a running story. The House has already passed a substantially identical measure.

For example, though Politico reported the Senate vote, the "politics and policy" site has nothing on the political uproar around the country, nothing on the many Americans who support the Pauls, nothing on the outrage coming from the right, left and middle of the road.

The fact that the measure was suddenly sprung on a public kept in the dark and the fact that it solves a problem that does not exist -- U.S. counterterrorism efforts having been effective without such a measure -- indicates that the motive is not what is claimed. What then would be the motive? many wonder.

The Occupy protesters would argue that the mainstream media are owned or controlled by the upper one percent, who may be worrying about protecting their interests over fears of a worldwide economic calamity.

Others would argue that the bill is what the 9/11 conspirators have been aiming for since the "inside job" attacks of a decade ago: to put America under the control of a hidden clique. The behavior of the mainstream media concerning the detention bill is very similar to its behavior concerning the 9/11 coverup.

An example of the reaction:
http://www.newswithviews.com/JBWilliams/williams167.htm

Even supposing the detention bill does not come to be abused, many will wonder why Levin and McCain would give such potent ammunition to "conspiracy theorists." Others will say that the provision needlessly alarms Americans and will promote the activities of private militias, with gun ownership likely to rise nationwide.

The measure is likely to be greeted with skepticism by many Irish Americans, who recall British internment of IRA suspects in the early 1970s. Few, if any, unionists were interned at that time. Reporters and historians have said that internment helped to radicalize much of the nationalist community in Northern Ireland against the British, who originally had been viewed as protectors.

The detention power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself.

The worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial provision was drafted in secret by Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) and passed in a closed-door committee meeting, without even a single hearing, before being presented for a full Senate vote, the ACLU said.

Newz from Limbo is a news site and, the hosting mechanism notwithstanding, should not be defined as a web log or as 'little more than a community forum'... Write News from Limbo at Krypto78=at=gmail=dot=com... The philosophical orientation of Newz from Limbo is best described as libertarian... For anti-censorship links: http://veilside78.blogspot.com/2010/12/anti-censorship-spectrum_23.html (If link fails, cut and paste it into the url bar)... You may reach some of Paul Conant's other pages through the sidebar link or at http://paulpages.blogspot.com/

2011-12-05T10:29:00.000-08:00

Backer of preventive detention
termed 'good friend of Israel'
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, only Sen. Joe Lieberman has received more campaign contributions ($2,005,778) from pro-Israeli political action committees than Sen. Carl Levin ($1,390,594) since 1990. Levin is known as a "good friend of Israel."

Democrat Levin and GOP Senator John McCain promoted an indefinite preventive detention measure that cleared the Senate, which would give the president authority to seize Americans on suspicion of terrorism and intern them, without having to present probable cause or exercise due process of law as outlined in the Constitution. . Lieberman voted in favor of the bill, which declares America a war zone, even though Congress has not declared war.

McCain has endorsed a book purportedly debunking 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Observers would argue that the bold maneuver, coupled with a brownout treatment by mainstream media, demonstrates a conspiracy hiding in plain site.

GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul has denounced the measure, but his stance has been omitted from most campaign coverage. Though Paul is even with Newt Gingrich in polling, mainstream media treat Gingrich as the "comer" and Paul as a virtual non-entity. The Republican Jewish Committee has assailed Paul as an extremist.

No word from that group on their opinion of McCain and Levin, whose maneuver in other years would have instantly been widely denounced as extremist.

Michael Oren, Israeli ambassador to the United States, said Friday that the Obama administration had been strongly supportive of Israel's security needs. Obama has threatened to veto the Senate measure, but that may prove difficult as it is tied to the Defense Authorization Bill.

Many wonder about how anyone would want to give dicatatorial power to the central government for use inside America. Even if the Obama administration resists misuse, what is to prevent successor administrations from consolidating control over America with such a weapon?

Democrats voting for indefinite detention include Begich, Blumenthal, Inouye, Klobuchar, Landrieu, Lieberman, Levin, Manchin, Bad Nelson, Pryor, Reed, Stabenow, Whitehouse. Republicans voting against indefinite detention include Collins, Kirk, Lee, Moran, and Rand Paul, who is Ron Paul's son.

Libertarian Party, ACLU blast internment bill
December 2, 2011

WASHINGTON - Libertarian Party Chair Mark Hinkle released the following statement today regarding the indefinite detention provisions of Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012.

"The Obama administration has already claimed that the president has the authority to kill Americans overseas, if he believes they are terrorists.

"Now, in the latest National Defense Authorization Act, Congress is trying to (Do not forward: This link will open a page with your information already filled in.)give the president power to imprison Americans indefinitely, without charges or respect for habeas corpus, if he claims they are terrorists.

"Democrats and Republicans in the Senate have already joined hands to pass the bill.

"This contempt for our rights is outrageous. Any member of Congress who supports that provision is grossly violating his or her oath to uphold the Constitution.

"If the president thinks you are a terrorist, let him present charges and evidence to a judge. He has no authority to lock you up without any judicial review, just because he and Congress believe he should have unlimited power.

"That is the kind of power held by tyrants in totalitarian regimes. It has no place in the United States.

"The Libertarian Party opposes terrorism. We also believe our government should stop taking actions that provoke terrorism. We want to end military involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other countries, and we want to repeal the Patriot Act."

For more information, or to arrange an interview, call LP Executive Director Wes Benedict at 202-333-0008 ext. 222.

The LP is America's third-largest political party, founded in 1971. The Libertarian Party stands for free markets, civil liberties, and peace. You can find more information on the Libertarian Party at our website.

###

Dear ACLU Supporter,

No due process. No trial. No proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Indefinite military imprisonment based on suspicion alone.

It's all in a bill being secretly negotiated in Congress right now. Help stop it.

Top members of Congress are secretly meeting now to try to figure out how to jam through a dangerous bill before Christmas.

Their main focus? Legislation authorizing this president and all future presidents to order the U.S. military to pick up and imprison people, including U.S. citizens — without charging them or putting them on trial.

We need you to take immediate action to prevent our country from becoming a place where the military can throw a person in jail and let him or her waste away without charge or trial.

Let's be clear about what this proposal really is: no due process, no trial, and no proof beyond a reasonable doubt — and indefinite military imprisonment based on suspicion alone.

A handful of senators secretly came up with this outrageous indefinite detention provision and attached it to the National Defense Authorization Act. And an even smaller group of House members forced through the House of Representatives a law for worldwide war, and worldwide imprisonment, in virtually any country where a terrorism suspect lives, even here in America itself.

The House and the Senate are now rushing to come up with a joint version of the bill and ram it through Congress within the next two weeks.

We know Congress is starting to hear from people who are outraged by this proposal. And if we continue to keep the pressure on, we can stop this. But it's going to take all of us.

Contact your members of Congress right now. Urge them to vote against indefinite detention and unlimited worldwide war authority legislation.

The Secretary of Defense, the Directors of the FBI and CIA, and national security experts from both Democratic and Republican administrations have argued against this extreme measure. But, as you read this, secret talks in Congress to force it quickly to final passage continue unabated.

Only a huge public outcry can prevent Congress from crossing a dangerous line that is a direct affront to everything we believe in.

Final action on this bill could come at any moment. Whether you've acted on this issue before or not, we need you to speak up now. Please contact your members of Congress immediately.

With urgency,

Chris Anders, ACLU
Senior Legislative Counsel

Rand Paul letter

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/284937/indefinite-detention-and-american-citizens-sen-rand-paul

2011-12-02T09:45:00.001-08:00

Politico loses item on Jewish group
castigating Paul as an extremist
Politico's Ben Smith newsletter had this headline:

Republican Jewish group not making friends in Paul-world

which linked to an unrelated article. A search of Politico's web site for the last name of the reporter, Adam Kredo, returned a blank. Kredo writes for Washington Jewish Week.

The brief Politico item had said:

Adam Kredo reports:

After taking some heat across the interwebs and elsewhere, the RJC clarified its stance on Ron Paul earlier today.

Paul was not invited to attend the RJC's candidates forum because the organization — as it has stated numerous times in the past — "rejects his misguided and extreme views," said Brooks.

"He's just so far outside of the mainstream of the Republican party and this organization," Brooks said. Inviting Paul to attend would be "like inviting Barack Obama to speak."

Paul has said the United States should steer clear of military backing of Israel, which can "take care of itself."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2811304/posts

Kredo, in a cell phone message, directed Newz from Limbo to a copy of his page that had a Politico URL but did not comment on the blocks to access.

Kredo's Twitter description reads:

Adam Kredo

@Kredo0

I do bad things. (I also write newspaper articles, so e-mail me: akredo@washingtonjewishweek.com)

http://washingtonjewishweek.com

2011-12-01T08:54:00.001-08:00

Lawmakers, press may find
SOPA throttles political leaks
The Stop Online Privacy Act might be used by the Executive Branch to block web pages holding leaked federal documents, according to a columnist who follows net law closely.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

Given the Obama administration's hard attitude on control of "classified" information, Newz from Limbo posed this question to experts: Would SOPA mean that the Justice Dept. could block the Wikileaks site, or the Wall Street Journal leaks site, or block a site publishing a document leaked by a Congressional aide for partisan reasons?

"Sure—though it would need to convince a federal judge to order it, first," was the emailed reply of Nate Anderson, who writes for ArsTechnica.
http://arstechnica.com/author/nate-anderson/

Steve Aftergood, on the other hand, wasn't so certain. "I don’t think so, but…" was his emailed reply. Secrecy News is published by the Federation of American Scientists.
www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/

No responses to the question were received from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press or from members of the Investigative Reporters and Editors listserve.

Wikileaks sheds light on spying industry
http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/new-wikileaks-spy-files-show-global-surveillance-industry-154534

Newz from Limbo is a news site and, the hosting mechanism notwithstanding, should not be defined as a web log or as 'little more than a community forum'... Write News from Limbo at Krypto78=at=gmail=dot=com... The philosophical orientation of Newz from Limbo is best described as libertarian... For anti-censorship links: http://veilside78.blogspot.com/2010/12/anti-censorship-spectrum_23.html (If link fails, cut and paste it into the url bar)... You may reach some of Paul Conant's other pages through the sidebar link or at http://paulpages.blogspot.com/

2011-11-27T10:13:00.001-08:00

Is Google too cool for school?

A tale about a bunch of nothing

What does 0^0 equal? WolframAlpha says its is an indeterminate form. But Google calculator insists the answer is 1 -- no ifs, ands or buts.

Google's result comes without explanation, meaning that some kid may end up with a dud answer on his homework assignment (which is what he gets for not paying attention in class).

This writer put the question to a mathematician, who writes:

"You can easily show that Lim_{x->0} x^x=1, but that's not relevant.

"The question is whether the two-variable limit Lim_{(x,y)->(0,0)} x^y

exists, and it doesn't. So, you are free to adopt whatever convention

you want for 0^0, and some people apparently have argued for 0^0=1,

but whatever convention you adopt, the function f(x,y)=x^y will be

discontinuous at (0,0). It is important to realize this, because

otherwise when taking limits, and seeing that you have one of the form

0^0 you might think it is 1, but this is false. It is an interesting

exercise to construct a path g(t) into (0,0) such that the limit of

x^y along that path is any given positive real number."

He sent me this result from another mathematician

http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/11150/zero-to-zero-power

who uses a similar argument, with the caveat that from one set theoretic perspective as well as from a combinatorial math perspective, one does indeed arrive at 0^0 = 1.

In most cases, however, one would think it makes more sense to leave 0^0 as indeterminate.

In line with the quotation above, consider this:

x^0 = (x^1)(x^-1) = x/x, which holds for all x other than 0.

However, if we write (lim x --> 0) x^0 = x/x, we may use l'Hopital's rule to arrive at D(x/x) = 1. Or in other words the limit of x^0 = 1. That limit point however is not analytical for x = 0. The limit is outside the range, and so it is a discontinuous point. We are free to accept the limit, while understanding that it is not analytical. Calculus permits indeterminate forms such as 0/0 if handled with care (usually via l'Hopital's rule).

One more point: at least one expert in complex variables regards division by 0 as implying "blowing up" to infinity, though infinities are generally excluded from the realm of numbers, unless one is talking about Cantor's cardinals.

Note added Nov. 28, 2001:

=

So the binomial expansion formula can be used to justify 0^0 = 1 because a = 0 either requires that 0^0 = 1 or that (0 + b)^x not be represented by the binomial expansion formula.

Here's the Google calculator graphic:

0^0 = 1

More about calculator.

2011-11-21T14:09:00.001-08:00

Intelligence unit backed
for global climate perils
By Steven Aftergood, Secrecy News
The U.S. intelligence community needs an organization that can assess the impacts of climate change on U.S. national security interests in an open and collaborative manner, according to a new report from the Defense Science Board (DSB).

The Director of National Intelligence should establish a new intelligence group “to concentrate on the effects of climate change on political and economic developments and their implications for U.S. national security,” said the DSB report on “Trends and Implications of Climate Change for National and International Security” (large pdf).

The Central Intelligence Agency already has a Center on Climate Change and National Security. So why would the Intelligence Community need an entirely new organization to address the exact same set of issues?

One reason is that the role envisioned for the new organization is inconsistent with the practices of the CIA Center. So, for example, the new intelligence group would be expected to pursue cooperative relationships with others inside and outside of the U.S. government. It would also “report most of its products broadly within government and non-government communities,” the DSB report said.

But the CIA Center, by unspoken contrast, does not report any of its climate change products broadly or allow public access to them. (“At CIA, Climate Change is a Secret,” Secrecy News, September 22, 2011).

The CIA’s unyielding approach to classification effectively negates the ability of its Center on Climate Change to interact with non-governmental organizations and researchers on an unclassified basis. Since, as the DSB noted, much of the relevant expertise on climate change lies “outside the government [in] universities, the private sector, and NGOs,” the CIA’s blanket secrecy policy is a potentially disabling condition.

In fact, the DSB report
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/dsb/climate.pdf
said, the secretive approach favored by CIA is actually counterproductive.

“The most effective way to tackle understanding [climate change] may be to treat it, for the most part, as an open question, transparent to all engaged in its study,” the DSB report said. “Compartmentalizing climate change impact research can only hinder progress.”

Notes from Cyberia

Blacklisting threatens net freedom
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/11/blacklist-bill-analysis/#more-33145

Wikileaks strangulation spurs countermeasures
http://techland.time.com/2011/11/21/how-the-internet-evolves-to-overcome-censorship/

More dangerous than bombers
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/11/hackers-destroy-water-pump/#more-33192

Newz from Limbo is a news site and, the hosting mechanism notwithstanding, should not be defined as a web log or as 'little more than a community forum'... Write News from Limbo at Krypto78=at=gmail=dot=com... The philosophical orientation of Newz from Limbo is best described as libertarian... For anti-censorship links: http://veilside78.blogspot.com/2010/12/anti-censorship-spectrum_23.html (If link fails, cut and paste it into the url bar)... You may reach some of Paul Conant's other pages through the sidebar link or at http://paulpages.blogspot.com/

2011-11-19T08:29:00.001-08:00

Court pressed to speed

health care recordings

Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to permit the press to record upcoming oral arguments in the three cases involving proposed federal health-care legislation, rather than wait for the court to release its own recordings.

“Because the health care reform law deeply affects millions of Americans, there likely will be a strong interest nationwide in closely following the proceedings as, or shortly after, they occur,” a Reporters Committee letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts said. “As such, the court’s current policy of releasing audio recordings of arguments at the end of the week will not adequately satisfy this strong public interest in being timely informed of important developments in a matter of such overwhelming impact on such a widespread scale.”

The letter also noted that delaying the release of argument recordings “will impede journalists’ ability to provide same-day coverage of the arguments.”

The following media organizations joined the Reporters Committee’s letter:

ABC News

A. H. Belo Corp.

Allbritton Communications Co. on behalf of WJLA-TV and NewsChannel 8

ALM Media, LLC

The Associated Press

Association of Alternative Newsweeklies

Atlantic Media, Inc.

Bay Area News Group

Belo Corp.

Bloomberg News

Cable News Network, Inc.

California Newspaper Publishers Association

CBS Broadcasting Inc.

Chicago Tribune

Citizen Media Law Project

Consumer Reports

Cox Media Group, Inc.

Dow Jones & Co., Inc.

The E.W. Scripps Co.

First Amendment Coalition

Gannett Co., Inc.

Hearst Corp.

Los Angeles Times

The McClatchy Co.

MPA – The Association of Magazine Media

National Association of Broadcasters

The National Press Club

National Press Photographers Association

NBCUniversal Media, LLC

New York Daily News

The New York Times

The Newspaper Guild – CWA

Newspaper Association of America

The Newsweek/Daily Beast Co. LLC

North Jersey Media Group Inc.

NPR, Inc.

Online News Association

POLITICO LLC

Reuters America LLC

The Seattle Times Co.

Society of Professional Journalists

Stephens Media LLC

Time Inc.

Tribune Co.

The Washington Post

WNET

“Federal health-care reform affects everyone’s well-being, and everyone has the right to see and hear the arguments over this important issue made before the highest court in the country,” said Lucy A. Dalglish, Reporters Committee executive director. “And they have the right to see it and hear it as it happens.”

Barring the approval of cameras in the Supreme Court, the Reporters Committee proposed the court at least consider immediate release of audio recordings, such as it did during the contested presidential election of 2000 and when considering campaign finance reform laws.

“To be sure, the American public’s access to affordable health care is among the most significant issues to inform public debate in this country and to come before its highest court in many years,” the letter said. “The time has come” for public access to include visual recordings.

2011-11-17T08:10:00.001-08:00

Can Rube Goldberg system

stem derivative crash peril?

The New York Times was first to publish the following analysis by a columnist for ProPublica, which operates under the Creative Commons guidelines.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/

By JESSE EISINGER, ProPublica

When the architects of the Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul flinched from the most effective solution — breaking up the banks so that none would be too big to drag down the financial system — they forced regulators of the derivatives market into a cumbersome and potentially dangerous workaround.

Those regulators are feverishly making lots of important, arcane rulings that are being followed only by insiders. They are replacing an opaque system prone to failures with a new, huge Rube Goldberg-like system that may reduce global financial risk. Or it may not. Nobody knows, not least the regulators themselves.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, led by Gary Gensler, approved rules last month that would require derivatives clearinghouses to open their membership to firms that have as little as $50 million in capital. A clearinghouse is a central body through which trades take place. It is supported by its financial firm members. For instance, if JPMorgan Chase enters into a derivatives transaction with Goldman Sachs, their deal would go through a clearinghouse, which is liable for the trade if one of those banks fails.

The big banks that dominate derivatives trading resisted letting in smaller firms, arguing that doing so would make the clearinghouses vulnerable. They have a point: a clearinghouse with a bunch of undercapitalized members would be more prone to failure, unable to pony up when one side of a trade defaults, and we would be back where we started.

And who had lobbied for this? One of those smaller brokerage firms, MF Global, then run by Jon S. Corzine. Of course, MF Global went belly up because of its aggressive bets and high leverage.

Oops.

That disaster makes it easy to conclude that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is going about trying to reform the derivatives markets all wrong. But excluding the small fry is dangerous as well. If clearinghouses restricted their membership to only the biggest and best-capitalized firms, the markets would more or less look like they do today — an oligopoly.

Derivatives trading is dominated by the likes of JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank. We now have a financial system where the failure of one megabank can jeopardize the world financial system, and having clearinghouses run only by the “too big to fail” firms merely replicates that fundamental problem.

“If you want to restrict access to just the larger organizations, you don’t solve the problem that clearinghouses are there to solve,” said Nicholas Dunbar, the author of “The Devil’s Derivatives” (Harvard Business Press), a history of the creation of these markets.

So both options are bad; letting in small guys is dangerous, but so is keeping them out.

Another insoluble problem is that of the One or the Many. If there were only one giant global clearinghouse for all derivatives, it might have enough capital to survive a panic in any one corner of the derivatives market. But if a general financial crisis forced many members to default, then it really would be too big to save. No country, not even the United States, would allow such a gargantuan institution to be domiciled on its home turf.

Instead we have an explosion of clearinghouses. We have clearinghouses for different asset classes. We have competing clearinghouses. We have clearinghouses in the United States, Europe and Asia. Dodd Frank implicitly supports this “let a thousand flowers bloom” approach.

That leads to another concern. Clearinghouses create an impression there’s some underlying capital to protect them, either in the entity itself or among the members. But a multiplicity of small ones is dangerous, according to Frank Partnoy, a professor of law and finance at the University of San Diego. The fragmentation means that safety is likely to be an illusion.

“There is less money” in each tiny clearinghouse, he explained. It virtually guarantees that if there’s a panic in one area of the world, the clearinghouse that backs it won’t have enough capital.

The regulatory changes could make things worse in another way, said David Murphy, principal of the risk management firm Rivast Consulting and a former head of risk at the trade group International Swaps and Derivatives Association. Here, it’s worth knowing a little about how banks minimize risks as they trade derivatives.

The underlying amount of derivatives, called the “notional value,” is in the hundreds of trillions. The biggest dealers, like JPMorgan, have tens of trillions of notional value on their books. What we are worried about is counterparty risk: what happens if one of the banks on either side of a trade fails?

As an example, the investment bank Robbin & Steelin has a portfolio with another investment bank, Engulf & Devour. Robbin goes through an exercise to figure out the following:

If Engulf fails, how much would Engulf owe us and what collateral do we have against that?

And how much would it cost us to replace those positions, to restore our offsetting hedges?

That, with a few steps in between and a lot of fancy math, is how those trillions of “notional” amounts shrink to a much smaller “net” figure, in the billions.

But under the clearinghouse regime, the banks will have to split up those gargantuan portfolios. Let’s say Robbin and Engulf had two trades with each other, a European derivatives trade worth $200 and an American derivatives trade worth $180. It has a net value of $20, with Engulf posting that amount in collateral with Robbin.

Now the trades move to clearinghouses. The European trade goes to a European clearinghouse. The. American trade goes to an American clearinghouse. The parties need to post larger amounts of collateral. If, say, the European clearinghouse fails, one bank is exposed and now has a much bigger exposure.

Will that bank have received adequate collateral from the clearinghouse? Maybe, but maybe not.

But the bank may have to go out into the market to offset its exposure — possibly a more disruptive move than it would have been under the previous regime.

It’s possible that the netting effects from other trades with the clearinghouse will serve the same function. But it hasn’t been adequately studied.

One possible result of all of this is that there will be less derivatives trading and more collateral going back and forth. That’s bad for bankers, but good for the rest of us.

Given the weak hand that regulators have, however, it seems more likely that the collateral will just be inadequate. It’s easy to see regulators and trading partners falling for the illusion of safety that clearinghouses provide.

“The scary part,” said Mr. Murphy, the risk expert, “is that I’m pretty certain that clearing is being imposed without anyone actually knowing whether it actually reduces counterparty risk or not.”

One sure thing in this morass of uncertainty: We will find out.

Jesse Eisinger is a reporter for ProPublica, an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. Email: jesse@propublica.org. Follow him on Twitter (@Eisingerj).

2011-11-16T09:23:00.001-08:00

Labor chief backs Occupy,
calls for protests tomorrow

Here is an email sent from the AFL-CIO:

They can take away the tarps and the tents. But they can’t slow down the Occupy Wall Street movement.

There have been police raids on Occupy Wall Street in Oakland, Calif.; Portland, Ore.; Denver; Albany, N.Y.; Burlington, Vt.; and Chapel Hill, N.C. — and now, last night in New York’s Zuccotti Park — orchestrated by politicians acting on behalf of the 1%.

But the 99% is undaunted. Occupy Wall Street’s message already has created a new day. This movement has created a seismic shift in our national debate — from austerity and cuts to jobs, inequality and our broken economic system.

Show your solidarity by attending a Nov. 17 bridge action near you.
http://local.we-r-1.org/all

And click here (http://act.aflcio.org/c/18/p/dia/action3/common/public/... ) to send a message of solidarity directly to the Occupy Wall Street protesters—Working America will deliver it this week.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has been committed to peaceful, nonviolent action from its inception. And it will keep spreading no matter what elected officials tell police to do. But that doesn’t mean these raids are acceptable. In fact, they are inexcusable.

As former Secretary of State Colin Powell put it, these protests are “as American as apple pie.” Americans must be allowed to speak out against pervasive inequality, even if the truth discomfits the 1%...

We are the 99%.

In Solidarity,

Richard L. Trumka

President, AFL-CIO

Newz from Limbo is a news site and, the hosting mechanism notwithstanding, should not be defined as a web log or as 'little more than a community forum'... Write News from Limbo at Krypto78=at=gmail=dot=com... The philosophical orientation of Newz from Limbo is best described as libertarian... For anti-censorship links: http://veilside78.blogspot.com/2010/12/anti-censorship-spectrum_23.html (If link fails, cut and paste it into the url bar)... You may reach some of Paul Conant's other pages through the sidebar link or at http://paulpages.blogspot.com/

2011-11-14T08:56:00.001-08:00

Press committee challenges
'indecency' broadcast fines
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
Enforcement of a federal policy regulating "indecent" programing on the public airwaves severely restrains the ability of broadcast journalists to report on matters of public interest and concern, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press argued in a friend-of-the-court brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court.

http://www.rcfp.org/newsitems/index.php?i=12235

Although there is a news exemption for brief, unplanned expletives or indecent material that makes it on the air, the cpmmittee argues that not only is the determination of what is indecent highly subjective, so is the determination of what is a news program. In addition, “Indecency fines so large they potentially force broadcasters out of business raise serious constitutional concerns about the permissibility of the penalties.”

Only a clear standard, or “bright-line rule,” applied to the regulation of fleeting expletives in any media format can protect news reporting on matters of public interest and concern, the brief argued.

A “system of self-regulation by the broadcast industry is a feasible alternative,” it noted, adding, that “broadcasters are fully capable or policing themselves in a manner that serves the Federal Communications Commission's legitimate interest in protecting children while avoiding the constitutional threats that arise from government regulation of content.”

“The First Amendment was adopted to protect the very kind of news reporting that is threatened by these subjective FCC standards and astonishing, disproportionate fines,” said Reporters Committee Executive Director Lucy A. Dalglish. “We’ve seen lower courts admonish FCC indecency rulings and fines against news broadcasters as arbitrary and capricious. Now the Supreme Court has the opportunity to ensure that all news media are given the right to police their own content consistent with their internal standards and public accountability.”

The Reporters Committee was joined in its brief in Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television Stations and Federal Communications Commission v. ABC Inc. by the E.W. Scripps Co. The brief is available on the Reporters Committee website.

Newz from Limbo is a news site and, the hosting mechanism notwithstanding, should not be defined as a web log or as 'little more than a community forum'... Write News from Limbo at Krypto78=at=gmail=dot=com... The philosophical orientation of Newz from Limbo is best described as libertarian... For anti-censorship links: http://veilside78.blogspot.com/2010/12/anti-censorship-spectrum_23.html (If link fails, cut and paste it into the url bar)... You may reach some of Paul Conant's other pages through the sidebar link or at http://paulpages.blogspot.com/

2011-11-10T09:25:00.001-08:00

Economists see major flaws
in the global capital system
The wave of indignation and protests targeting the monied interests is a logical consequence of a deeply flawed capital system, argue two well-known non-Marxist economists.

Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate economist at Columbia University, writes that "Spain’s protesters, and those in other countries, are right to be indignant: here is a system in which the bankers got bailed out, while those whom they preyed upon have been left to fend for themselves."

He adds, "Worse, the bankers are now back at their desks, earning bonuses that amount to more than most workers hope to earn in a lifetime, while young people who studied hard and played by the rules see no prospects for fulfilling employment.

Stiglitz, author of Freefall: Free Markets and the Sinking of the Global Economy, writes:

"The rise in inequality is the product of a vicious spiral: the rich rent-seekers use their wealth to shape legislation in order to protect and increase their wealth – and their influence. The U.S. Supreme Court, in its notorious Citizens United decision, has given corporations free rein to use their money to influence the direction of politics. But, while the wealthy can use their money to amplify their views, back on the street, police wouldn’t allow me to address the OWS [Occupy Wall Street] protesters through a megaphone."

Nouriel Roubini, an economics professor at New York University, asserts that though Karl Marx "oversold" socialism, " he "was right in claiming that globalization, unfettered financial capitalism, and redistribution of income and wealth from labor to capital could lead capitalism to self-destruct," adding: "As he argued, unregulated capitalism can lead to regular bouts of over-capacity, under-consumption, and the recurrence of destructive financial crises, fueled by credit bubbles and asset-price booms and busts."

Roubini continues:

"Even before the Great Depression, Europe’s enlightened “bourgeois” classes recognized that, to avoid revolution, workers’ rights needed to be protected, wage and labor conditions improved, and a welfare state created to redistribute wealth and finance public goods – education, health care, and a social safety net. The push towards a modern welfare state accelerated after the Great Depression, when the state took on the responsibility for macroeconomic stabilization – a role that required the maintenance of a large middle class by widening the provision of public goods through progressive taxation of incomes and wealth and fostering economic opportunity for all."

Comment: Even before Marx, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations amounts to a 1,000-page denunciation of the monied elite as mis-using Parliament for its advantage but to the detriment of the economy. He was among the first to denounce merchant lobbies and what these days is called "crony capitalism."

ACLU urges police restraint at Occupy sites
The American Civil Liberties Union is urging authorities to beware use of excessive force against Occupy protesters.

The ACLU is urging supporters to sign this open letter:

We appreciate the many law enforcement agencies and mayors across the country who respect the First Amendment rights of the Occupy protesters. The protestors are exercising core constitutional freedoms to assemble peacefully and speak out. We hope you will recommit yourself to safeguarding those fundamental freedoms.

When police respond to peaceful protest with excessive force, the result is to make people afraid to exercise their free speech rights. The Constitution was intended to protect us from exactly that.

[We urge you to respect/Thank you for respecting] the rights of protestors to speak out and assemble peacefully.

Newz from Limbo is a news site and, the hosting mechanism notwithstanding, should not be defined as a web log or as 'little more than a community forum'... Write News from Limbo at Krypto78=at=gmail=dot=com... The philosophical orientation of Newz from Limbo is best described as libertarian... For anti-censorship links: http://veilside78.blogspot.com/2010/12/anti-censorship-spectrum_23.html (If link fails, cut and paste it into the url bar)...

2011-11-08T09:33:00.001-08:00

Econotix
Sneak tax hike looming
for middle class, poor
Divided debt committee lawmakers are poised to levy a $60 billion back-door tax hike on the middle classes and curb benefits payments to the poor and senior citizens, according to a published report.

The lawmakers are leaning toward resetting the government's inflation index, which, the Associated Press reports, would bump up taxes because annual adjustments to the tax brackets would be smaller, resulting in more people jumping into higher tax brackets because their wages rose faster than the new inflation measure. Annual increases in the standard deduction and personal exemptions would become smaller.

Such a back-door tax hike, however, may well prove difficult for the no-new-tax-wing of the Republican Party to swallow.

Social Security checks will rise less when inflation rises because the government will measure inflation differently. Likewise, more people will be cut off from food stamps and other benefits because their incomes won't cross the official poverty line so easily.

There seems to be bipartisan consensus on this debt reduction method -- first floated by the Obama administration -- because most of the impact will kick in by stages and won't be felt right away.

The committee of six Democrats and six Republicans is striving toward a plan to cut government red ink by some $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years. Changing the inflation index alone would put them a sixth of the way there, the AP report said.

“I think the thought process behind this is, slip this in, people won’t understand it,” Max Richtman, head of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, is quoted as saying.

Comment:
Was the old inflation index an inaccurate gauge of inflation, or is the recalibration to a lower reading a crooked flim-flam?

As far back as Adam Smith, economists have argued that large national debt is always curtailed by the method of debasement of purchasing power of money. The inflation index trick of course cuts purchasing power of Social Security recipients. It cuts purchasing power of middle class earners. It will have much less effect on the extremely affluent, who have numerous means of avoiding being shunted to higher tax brackets.

Banker bonuses said to spur crazy risk-taking
Writing in the New York Times, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a finance professor and former Wall Street trader, argues that banker bonuses encourage wild risk taking and should be abolished.

This, he argues, would neutralize what economists call the principal-agent problem, in which the investors' agent has much to gain from what amounts to self-dealing.

Taleb teaches risk engineering at New York University Polytechnic Institute and is the author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. (Comment: interesting book.) He is a hedge fund investor and a former Wall Street trader.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/08/opinion/end-bonuses-for-bankers.html?_r=1&hpw

Adam Smith wrote in the 18th century about the agents of monopolistic companies harming the company and the economy in general by attending more to their own trading than to the interests of the company.

Judge questions sealing of anthrax files
A federal judge is asking why records should remain sealed in a soon-to-be-settled lawsuit over the death of a Boca Raton man in the 2001 anthrax attacks, reports the West Palm Beach News.

http://www.wpbf.com/news/29683537/detail.html

U.S. District Judge Daniel T.K. Hurley says in court papers the public generally has access rights to such documents. Those sealed include personnel records of Army scientist Bruce Ivins. He is blamed by the FBI for the attacks that killed five people and sickened 17 others.

Read more:

http://www.wpbf.com/news/29683537/detail.html#ixzz1d8bZUWlW

2011-11-06T10:02:00.000-08:00

Journalists are facing arbitrary arrest

as they cover Occupy demonstrations

Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel photographer is the latest journalist to be arrested while covering the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations that have sprung up across the nation, raising questions about how police should define and handle reporters documenting the protests.

Although the detentions and arrests have raised alarm with some media organizations, police contend that it is often difficult to separate the journalists covering the events from those participating in the protests, especially when making mass apprehensions.

The Sentinel’s Kristyna Wentz-Graff was on Wednesday photographing the arrest of a protester who was marching as part of a solidarity rally that started at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, when she herself was restrained and arrested by an officer. She and the other two protestors have since been released without charge and the city attorney's office has yet to determine whether they will issue citations.

The Milwaukee Police Department said in a series of posts on their Facebook page that Wentz-Graff and the two protesters they arrested ignored repeated orders to clear the streets, and that officers did not know that the photographer was a journalist until she arrived at the Milwaukee Police Department.

“She never identified herself as a journalist to officers. We know there are often many people with cameras at these events and they are not always news people,” they wrote.

In a statement to the paper, Martin Kaiser, Sentinel editor, disputed that account.
"At no time did Kristyna Wentz-Graff ignore any commands by any officer," Kaiser said. "She came upon the scene to do her job as a photojournalist. She was clearly not part of the protest. She was wearing her Journal Sentinel photo press credential. She was carrying photography equipment while taking photographs of police making arrests when she was grabbed by a police officer and handcuffed. Her arrest was completely uncalled for and violates the First Amendment. No reason for her arrest has been provided."
In a video taken by the university's PantherVision, a man watching the photographer’s arrest from the sidewalk can also be heard yelling “she’s a journalist.”

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett has also come out in support of Wentz-Graff and the Sentinel.

Wentz-Graff’s apprehension is not the first arrest of a reporter in Milwaukee this year, nor is it the first arrest of a reporter covering demonstrations related to the Occupy Wall Street movement that started in mid-September.

Perhaps garnering the most attention are the reporters who have been arrested at the original Occupy Wall Street protest in New York, where some journalists had voiced concern over being arrested or roughed up by police.

The Columbia Journalism Review for example, in an article titled “Who’s a Journalist?” published in October, wrote critically of the New York City Police Department’s policy of credentialing journalists.
The piece highlighted the arrests of three individuals, a reporter with WNET’s Metro Focus, a freelancer for The New York Times’ “City Blog” and a freelancer for AlterNet, all of whom had some press identification but not the specific NYPD credentials.

“Why did this happen?” the article asks, referring to the general policy of the NYPD to handle journalists separately from the protestors. “Part of the answer is simply a byproduct of the everyone’s-a-journalist rhetoric that defines our media these days. The more proximate answer, though, has to do with how the NYPD has decided to determine who is a journalist.”

The article noted that the NYPD recently began extending credentials to bloggers and journalists from nontraditional media organizations, but that they still need to meet requirements such as proving their reporting history. Applicants often have to wait behind a backlog of requests to get a credential that does not guarantee any specific access.

However, New York Press Club Consulting Director Peter Bekker told CJR that "it’s not a high hurdle."
Bekker added that the important distinction to make is “are these people marching with the protesters? Or are they covering them?”

And with so many of the protesters documenting the demonstrations themselves, as the Milwaukee Police Department noted, it can be difficult to tell and determine how to handle these different kinds of documentarians.

Many journalists are just temporarily detained, while others are charged with offenses such as disorderly conduct or unlawful assembly.

Just last week a reporter from the Nashville Scene—who was charged with public intoxication—was one of dozens arrested at the Tennessee protest, according to The Tennessean. That charge was complicated by the fact that the alternative-weekly reporter, Jonathan Meador, caught his own arrest on tape and sounds lucid as he tells officers that he is a member of the media and is getting off the plaza police were raiding to enforce a city curfew. A voice can also be heard on the audio, presumably an officer, saying “Tell them when you get him up there to charge him for resisting arrest.”

The Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security told the Scene that the commissioner will review the arrest and respond appropriately and that “It is not our intent to interfere with a journalist doing his or her job.”

Also this week freelance journalist-cartoonist Susie Cagle was among 101 people arrested at the Occupy Oakland protests, days after the controversial clashes with police and protestors there. According to a KGO-TV San Francisco interview, Cagle said she was wearing her press pass visibly and told police she was covering the event, to which they said they would “take care of that” in a minute.

“But then it turned into 14 hours at two jails,” she said.

According to KGO-TV, Cagle will have to appear in court next month to sort out her case. She also said that she planned to return to the Occupy Oakland protests because she feels obligated to report this story now more than ever.

— Kirsten Berg,

2011-11-04T11:44:00.001-07:00

O'Reilly remark rekindles
'intelligent design' dispute
The intelligent design controversy is still with us, as the reaction to Bill O'Reilly's recent remark in its favor demonstrates.

Media Matters, which seeks donations to "fight conservative misinformation," is among those who draw a bead on the Fox News commentator's recent assertion.

O'Reilly: "Intelligent Design Does Not Contradict Science"
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201111020018

Paul Conant, editor of Newz from Limbo, has written on the topic from a logico-mathematical perspective. A typical reader would have a tough time with parts of Conant's latest essay, The knowledge delusion,
http://kryptograff5.blogspot.com/2011/11/draft-03-knowledge-delusion-essay-by.html
which discusses the book The God Delusion by the Darwinist Richard Dawkins, but yet might be able to glean something of value from it.

Other of Conant's pages have been gathered together with links published in the post below.

Econotix
Corzine sad over 'what has transpired'
Jon Corzine, the Wall Street wheeler dealer and former New Jersey governor, resigned today, saying he was sad over "what had transpired."

His statement:
I have voluntarily offered my resignation to the Board of Directors of MF Global. This was a difficult decision, but one that I believe is best for the firm and its stakeholders.

I feel great sadness for what has transpired at MF Global and the impact it has had on the firm’s clients, employees and many others.

I intend to continue to assist the Company and its Board in their efforts to respond to regulatory inquiries and issues related to the disposition of the firm’s assets.

2011-11-04T11:01:00.000-07:00

WHO IS PAUL CONANT?

Why not use a site such as Changedetection.com http://changedetection.com to keep track of changes to this page?

Paul Conant, editor of Newz from Limbo, also writes occasional web essays under the site names N-fold and Kryptograff, among others.

Newz from Limbo is dedicated to the principle of freedom of speech and press and of theological and academic inquiry.

The N-fold and Kryptograff web sites discuss often eccentric ideas in science and math. Such essays are to some extent Conant's notes to himself, rather than polished articles. They may be found at various addresses and domains, including Angelfire and Blogspot.

Conant, writing under the byline 'Roger Conant,' was for years a newspaperman in metro New York and has contributed to the New York Times. He served as a combat correspondent in Vietnam. He has no formal scientific training but enjoys corresponding with mathematicians and scientists.

You are free, in principle, to email Conant at Krypto78 attt gmail dottt com.

You are at liberty to make mirrors of any or all Conant pages, including the few that are copyrighted. The purpose of the copyright for those pages is simply to guard against significant alteration of the content.

(If URLs below malfunction, copies of Conant's pages are found at

http://paulpages.blogspot.com/ )

Conant's 9/11 pages

How did the twin towers fall? Questions remain

http://www.angelfire.com/ult/znewz1/wtc.html

9/11 probers skipped key forensic tests

http://www.angelfire.com/ult/znewz1/trade7.html

9/11 blasts still echo in tangled files

http://911science.blogspot.com/2007/05/records-murky-on-911-explosions.html

Thumbnail of NIST's 9/11 scenario

http://kryptograff.blogspot.com/2007/06/thumbnail-of-nists-911-scenario.html

The worst of Hearst

http://911disinfo.blogspot.com/

Waterboarding and 9/11: connecting the dots

http://znewz1alternate.blogspot.com/2007/10/waterboarding-and-911-connecting-dots.html

Omissions and disparities in trade center fall rate data

http://www.angelfire.com/ult/znewz1/fallrates.html

Scientists clash over 9/11 collapses

http://911science.blogspot.com/2007/01/scientists-clash-over-official-911.html

Scientist questions 9/11 probe's professionalism

http://911science1.blogspot.com/2007/12/scientist-questions-911-probes.html

Activist scientist backs official 9/11 theory

http://znewz1.blogspot.com/2006/12/activist-scientist-backs-official-911.html

Noted scientist pans 9/11 doubters

http://znewz1.blogspot.com/2006/12/noted-scientist-pans-911-conspiracy.html

Experts can't verify official 9/11 theory

http://911science.blogspot.com/2007/08/experts-cant-verify-official-911-theory.html

Trade center engineer backs new collapse probe

http://znewz1alternate.blogspot.com/2008/02/trade-center-engineer-backs-new_12.html

Physicists challenge 9/11 tale

http://znewz1.blogspot.com/2006/12/physicists-challenge-911-tale.html

Another physicist sees 9/11 conspiracy

http://znewz1.blogspot.com/2007/04/another-physicist-sees-911-conspiracy.html
Explosives traces found in 9/11 dust? Media ducked
http://paulpages.blogspot.com/2011/11/slightly-revised-nov.html

Secret wiretap power grab well before 9/11

http://znewz1alternate.blogspot.com/2007/10/secret-wiretap-grab-7-months-before-911.html

NSA shocker fans 9/11 suspicion

http://znewz1alternate.blogspot.com/2007/10/nsa-shocker-fans-911-suspicion.html

Osama 'didn't mind' whether brother died on 9/11

http://znewz1.blogspot.com/2007/05/osama.html

FBI leery of Osama 'confession'

http://znewz1alternate.blogspot.com/2008/01/fbi-wary-of-osama-confession.html

Simulating Osama

http://znewz1alternate.blogspot.com/2007/09/simulating-osama.html

Psst... we're going to blame Iraq

http://znewz1.blogspot.com/2007/05/psst-were-going-to-blame-iraq-for-911.html

Ellsberg scorns official 9/11 probes

http://znewz1.blogspot.com/2006/07/ellsberg-scorns-official-911-probes.html

GOP insider: 9/11 fit White House plan

http://znewz1.blogspot.com/2007/04/gop-insider-911-fit-white-house-plan.html

Greenspan stokes 9/11 controversy

http://znewz1alternate.blogspot.com/2007/09/greenspan-stokes-controversy-over-911.html

9/11 news coverage and obstruction of justice

http://znewz1alternate.blogspot.com/2007/11/911-coverage-and-obstruction-of-justice.html

Modern network theory and 'improbable conspiracies'

http://znewz1alternate.blogspot.com/2008/01/modern-network-theory-and-improbable.html

Crash course in entropy

http://krypto99.blogspot.com/2009/08/crash-course-in-entropy.html

The case of the missing energy

http://kryptograff.blogspot.com/2007/04/case-of-missing-energy.html

The physics of collapse times

http://www.angelfire.com/az3/nfold/crashtimes.html

Greenspan's 9/11 skepticism

http://znewz1blog.blogspot.com/2009/10/greenspans-911-skepticism.html

Where are key Pentagon 9/11 photos?

http://krypto-graff.blogspot.com/2010/07/remarks-on-pentagon-911-claims.html

Pentagon 9/11 disparities

http://conantcensorshipissue.blogspot.com/2010/07/are-you-journalist-puzzled-about-911.html

Defense contractor aids stalled 9/11 probe

http://www.angelfire.com/ult/znewz1/wtc7.html

Conant fun pages

The prosecutor's fallacy

http://kryptograff.blogspot.com/2007/07/probability-and-prosecutor-there-are.html

A general continuing fraction recursion algorithm for square roots

http://angelfire.com/az3/nfold/recur.html

The Monty Hall problem over easy

http://angelfire.com/trek/nfold/monty.html

Null set uniqueness theorem

http://www.angelfire.com/az3/nfold/nulltheorem.html

Tests for divisibility by 9 or 11

http://angelfire.com/az3/nfold/iJk.html

Freaky facts about 9 and 11

http://krypto99.blogspot.com/2010/06/its-easy-to-come-up-with-strange.html

A set of 'gamma' constants

http://www.angelfire.com/trek/nfold/gamma.html

An interesting zero?

http://www.angelfire.com/az3/nfold/1funzero.html

Conant math, science and logic pages

An objection to Proposition 1 of Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus'

http://angelfire.com/az3/nfold/wit.html

Most TSP families grow polynomially (a concern for code experts?)

http://www.angelfire.com/az3/nfold/TSP.html

When algorithms collide: An infinite sum that isn't (or is it?)

http://angelfire.com/az3/nfold/sawtooth.html

A geometric note on Russell's paradox

http://angelfire.com/az3/nfold/russell.html

Nondenumerable sets of reals

http://angelfire.com/az3/nfold/qcomp.html

The cosmos cannot be modeled as a Turing machine or Turing computation

http://www.angelfire.com/az3/nfold/turing.html

A short proof of the Schroeder-Bernstein theorem (draft)

http://www.angelfire.com/az3/nfold/schroed.html

In search of a blind watchmaker

http://www.angelfire.com/az3/nfold/watch.html

Do dice play God? A review of Irreligion

http://www.angelfire.com/az3/nfold/dice.html

Drunk and disorderly: the rise and fall of entropy

http://www.angelfire.com/az3/nfold/entropy.html

The knowledge delusion (reflections on Dawkins)

http://kryptograff5.blogspot.com/2011/11/draft-03-knowledge-delusion-essay-by.html

Plato and Cantor vs. Wittgenstein and Brouwer

http://angelfire.com/az3/nfold/plato.html

On the consistency of ZFC

http://angelfire.com/az3/nfold/choice.html

An algorithm for implying all reals

http://angelfire.com/az3/nfold/diag.html

Time thought experiments

http://angelfire.com/az3/nfold/time.html

Einstein, Sommerfeld and the twin paradox

http://www.angelfire.com/az3/nfold/relativity.html

Infinitely long noncomputable statements (a proof)

http://kryptograff.blogspot.com/2006/10/infinitely-long-statements-proof.html

Information theory and intelligent design

http://kryptograff.blogspot.com/2006/10/information-theory-and-intelligent.html

Does math back 'intelligent design'

http://kryptograff.blogspot.com/2006/11/does-math-back-intelligent-design.html

Pseudorandom thoughts on complexity

http://kryptograff.blogspot.com/2006/11/pseudorandom-thoughts-on-complexity.html

The Kalin cipher (Google temporarily shut down my site when this appeared)

http://kryptograff.blogspot.com/2007/06/kalin-cipher.html

Toward a signal model of perception

http://www.angelfire.com/ult/znewz1/qball.html

On Hilbert's sixth problem

http://kryptograff.blogspot.com/2007/06/on-hilberts-sixth-problem.html

The world of null-H

http://kryptograff.blogspot.com/2007/06/world-of-null-h.html

Conant reportorial pages

Star Wars, AI and quantum computing

http://angelfire.com/az3/nfold/starwars.html

Cheney wiretap role surfaces

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Cheney_wiretap_role_surfaces

Biotech or bioterror: a global dilemma

http://www.angelfire.com/ult/znewz1/bioterror.html

Joe McCarthy: still making trouble

http://www.angelfire.com/az3/nfold/joe.html

Conant to Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

http://angelfire.com/az3/nfold/freepress.html

Psyops against the press

http://angelfire.com/az3/nfold/psyops.html

AIDS doomsday by 2028?

http://angelfire.com/trek/nfold/aids.html

Fox News: trumpet of Israel's hard right

http://angelfire.com/az3/nfold/rupert.html

Psychotronic mind games

http://angelfire.com/az3/newzone/mku.html

Richard Perle: hawk of many hats (this Disinfopedia article has been modified by others)

http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Richard_N._Perle

Media math still fuzzy in Florida presidential tally

http://angelfire.com/az3/nfold/flamath2.html

Conant theology page

Where is Zion?
http://paulpages.blogspot.com/2011/11/where-is-zion-many-wonder-about.html

Conant belles lettres pages

Since Grandpa Died -- a play in one act (with Liz O'Donnell)
http://paulpages.blogspot.com/2011/11/since-grandpa-died-play-in-one-act.html
Cody -- a short play or prose poem
http://rt66annals.blogspot.com/2011/12/cody-short-play-or-prose-poem-asterisks.html
The law the prophets and fig newtons

http://www.angelfire.com/az3/nuzone/figs.html

Route 66 (poetry)

http://rt66annals.blogspot.com/

Paul Conant's Kryptograff

sites contain a number of math and logic discussions:

http://kryptograff.blogspot.com/

http://krypto99.blogspot.com/

2011-10-31T12:42:00.000-07:00

Reporters, whistleblowers team up

in drive against graft, cronyism
100Reporters
A new web site links "top journalists from around the world to write about corruption."

Diana Jean Schemo and Philip Shenon came up with the idea for the site, 100Reporters, which is "aimed at filling a void in the current media landscape by reporting primarily on corruption and accountability in politics, business and governments," according to a statement.

In the statement, Diana Jean Schemo, the site's executive editor, said: "For the first time, we're bringing together professional reporters and citizens in a new partnership to expose graft and corruption in the United States and around the world. 100Reporters will cover corruption not as an isolated episode, but as an ongoing story with lasting implications. Whether talking about hunger in Somalia or uprisings in the Arab world or the revolving doors of Washington, the most important stories of our day tie into corruption. 100Reporters exists to bring those connections to light."

The group 100Reporters represents a new take on a familiar mission: using the power of the pen to hold government and business leaders accountable. Its primary mission is to cover corruption of all sorts, from the pervasive bribery that raises the cost of ordinary government services, to extortion, to the sweetheart contracts that perpetuate poverty and strangle competition.

According to Schemo, "Our unique perspective focuses on corruption in all its complexity, tracing not only its results, but the roles of parties all along the food chain."

Every year, corrupt leaders and their cronies siphon more than $1.26 trillion from the national economies of developing nations, according to the Global Financial Integrity Project. For every $1 that enters Africa in development aid, some $10 leaves the continent in illegal cash transfers. Said Schemo, "That money could be used to build roads, schools, water treatment plants and hospitals. This is information the public needs to know."

The site is also relying on citizen journalists through its "Whistleblower Alley," a secure portal where users can safely submit information-anonymously, if they choose, about corruption anywhere in the world. Such evidence can include original reporting, documents or photographic evidence of corrupt dealings or corrupt individuals. The goal is to embrace technology's potential to build new forms of journalism around a towering, intractable global issue, and to bring citizen journalists into the reporting of stories wherever possible.

Additionally, 100Reporters has formed partnerships with other news operations, including Global Post.com, the Center for Public Integrity and the Global Financial Integrity Project. Starting in November, stories will be offered for syndication through Thomson Reuters to hundreds of newspapers around the world. Expanding the publication base of 100Reporters will allow the new website's stories to reach the widest possible audience, especially in nations that typically shut down the Internet as a response to serious reporting.

The 100Reporters team includes scores of award-winning journalists from across the globe: Pulitzer winners David Johnston and Joel Brinkley, Richard Behar, Frank Foer, Lucy Komisar, Mike Sager, Lydia Chavez, Ken Silverstein, Micki Maynard, Roberto Guareschi of Argentina, Wanjohi Kabukuru of Kenya, Paul Radu and Stefan Candea of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project in Eastern Europe, Andrew Marshall in Singapore, Phil Gunson in Caracas, and many other stars of investigative journalism. The chairman of the 100Reporters Board of Directors, Ron Nixon, is an award-winning investigative correspondent for The New York Times and creator of the Ujima Project.

Limbo comment: Wikileaks may be in trouble, but here we have yet another emulator. Wonder if the national bank card cartel will block 100Reporters from conducting business (no need to worry about that pesky 5th amendment protection covering right to transact business), especially in light of the fact that an aim seems to be the ultra-elite "crony capitalists" who have proved the Occupiers' point with coordinated nationwide crackdowns and a propagandistic CBS News broadcast that could serve as a justification for the crackdowns.

2011-10-28T11:05:00.001-07:00

Temple prof blasts Times

over weak 9/11 reporting

The New York Times came under fire from a scientist who has doggedly criticized mainstream media over their reporting of events surrounding the 9/11 attacks.

Joshua Mitteldorf, a statistics professor at Temple University, complained in a letter to the New York Times public editor, Arthur Brisbane, about the poverty of Times investigative reporting concerning 9/11, contrasting it with mountains of evidence implying coverup amassed by "thousands" of professors, scientists and others. Mitteldorf has expertise in physics and evolutionary biology.

Mitteldorf's letter:

Dear Mr Brisbane-

I find it particularly ironic that the Times is writing about the challenge presented by covering the anniversary of 9/11, with no mention of the glaring absence of investigative reporting on the issue. Thousands of college professors, scientists and amateur journalists have discovered and publicized anomalies in the official account of the day, and the two authors of the Kean-Hamilton report have disavowed their own findings on the op-ed page of the Times http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/opinion/02kean.html. And yet, the Times itself has provided readers with no critical assessment of the Bush Administration's story, or even a glimpse into the world of 9/11 scholarship that has grown in the vacuum created by mainstream media.

--Josh Mitteldorf, PhD
Dept of Statistics
Temple University
Philadelphia, PA

2011-10-22T09:12:00.001-07:00

Private inventions sent to limbo
as U.S. steps up secrecy cloaks
Secrecy News
During fiscal year 2011, there were 143 new "secrecy orders" imposed on
patent applications under the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951, the U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office reported this week. This represents an
increase of 66% over the year before, and it is the highest number of new
secrecy orders in a single year since 1998.

The Invention Secrecy Act authorizes the government to block the disclosure
of a patent application if it contains information that might be
"detrimental to the national security." Remarkably, this secrecy authority
extends even to privately generated inventions that the government does not
own or control.

According to federal Patent and Trademark Office statistics obtained by the Federation of American
Scientists under the Freedom of Information Act, a total of 5,241 patent
secrecy orders were in effect at the end of FY 2011, including both new
secrecy orders and those from previous years that had been renewed. This
is the highest annual total since 1995.

http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/invention/stats.html

An explanation for the increase in secrecy orders was not reported. Nor
do the statistics themselves include anything like a "figure of merit" that
would confirm their validity or their legitimacy.

The use of secrecy orders has sometimes been questioned, particularly when
they extend to inventions that are not clearly limited to military or other
national security applications. Forty years ago, government agencies
directed that advanced renewable energy technologies should be reviewed for
possible restriction under the Invention Secrecy Act. These included
photovoltaics that were more than 20% efficient and energy conversion
systems with efficiencies "in excess of 70-80%." ("Invention Secrecy Still
Going Strong," Secrecy News, October 21, 2010)

http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2010/10/invention_secrecy_2010.html

To be "detrimental to national security" -- which is the threshold for a
secrecy order under the Invention Secrecy Act -- is a lower standard than
to cause "damage to national security," which is the criterion for national
security classification.

Government reviewers may recommend imposing a secrecy order on a patent
application in which the government has a "property interest" (i.e. the
government owns or supported the development of the invention) whenever
disclosure of the application "might be detrimental to national security,"
according to a 2010 directive from the Department of Defense. However, if
the government does not have a property interest in the invention, then
reviewers can only impose a secrecy order if disclosure "would be
detrimental to national security," a more demanding standard. But the
term "detrimental" was not further defined and the precise scope of the
review process is not publicly known.

http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/dod/d5535_02.pdf

2011-10-21T08:14:00.001-07:00

U.S. fights to force reporter
to disclose his CIA source
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
Federal prosecutors are appealing a federal district judge's decision to limit the scope of a New York Times reporter's testimony in the trial of a former CIA officer accused of leaking classified information.

The prosecution's appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va. (4th Cir.), further delays the trial of Jeffrey Sterling, which was scheduled to start Monday.

Prosecutors are challenging U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema's July decision to deny the government's motion for reconsideration and the order excluding certain testimony from Times reporter James Risen. The second part of the appeal involves an order excluding the testimony of two other witnesses who have not been named.

On July 29, Brinkema ruled that Risen would not have to reveal his confidential source in the criminal case against Sterling, who is charged with 10 federal crimes ranging from disclosure of national defense information to mail fraud. Brinkema's order restricted Risen's testimony to matters of his authorship and the accuracy of his 2006 book, "State of War," which detailed the United States' failed plan to derail Iran's nuclear program.

Since the disputed material was not published in The Times, the newspaper is not directly involved in Risen's defense. However, Times assistant general counsel George Freeman said, "We certainly hope that the trial judge's opinion doesn't get reversed." Freeman said there was not a "great need" for Risen's testimony.

Risen could face jail time and/or fines if the Fourth Circuit rules that he must reveal his source and he continues to refuse. Federal prosecutors relied on the 1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision Branzburg v. Hayes to argue in favor of Risen revealing his source. In Branzburg v. Hayes, the Court ruled that reporters have no First Amendment right to refuse to answer all questions before grand juries if they actually witnessed criminal activity. However, in the years following Branzburg, federal courts nationwide interpreted the case to give rise to a qualified privilege that typically balances a reporter’s right to protect the sources against the government’s need for the information.

In the Fourth Circuit, this balancing test requires a person seeking confidential information, including the identity of a source, from a journalist who has invoked the reporter’s privilege to protect information obtained under a promise of confidentiality to show that there is a compelling interest in the information sought, and that such information is relevant to the claim and unobtainable by alternative means.

Brinkema found that Risen’s need to protect his source outweighed the government’s need to establish its case. That is, while Risen’s testimony is indeed relevant, prosecutors failed to show a compelling interest in it and an inability to obtain the information elsewhere, her opinion said.

Congress has been considering versions of a federal shield law to protect journalists from being forced to reveal their sources since 2004, but its current form includes exemptions for national security issues.

— J.C. Derrick

2011-10-18T12:05:00.001-07:00

Notes from Cyberia
German justice officials under fire
over loosing of hobgoblin spyware
Amid ballooning public suspicion, the German justice minister tried to put a positive spin on a hacker group's expose of a police spyware program that, the group said, was so flawed that it could be captured and used by "anyone on the internet."

Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, the minister, told news magazine Focus on Sunday that Chaos Computer Club members were "not anarchists, but experts," who had brought an important debate into the public sphere.

Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger also said the assessments of the IT technicians had rarely been so important to lawmakers.

The minister added that the legal gray area surrounding use of spyware by police needed to removed, and it was time for a single legal framework for federal and state investigators to be established.

"Significant design and implementation flaws make all of the functionality available to anyone on the internet," the hackers charged.

The hacker club announced that it had "reverse engineered" and analyzed a Trojan horse malware program used by authorities to record keystrokes, activate cameras and take control of electronic communications equipment of police targets.

"The malware can not only siphon away intimate data but also offers a remote control or backdoor functionality for uploading and executing arbitrary other programs," the hacker group said.

British internet filter panned on privacy
The Electronic Frontier Foundation sharply criticized Britain's internet filter, saying it "lacks transparency," and is "vague in nature." Persons who opt out are likely to be monitored anyway, EFF said.

Working with the religious organization Mothers' Union, British Prime Minister David Cameron has decided to implement a plan with four of Britain's major ISPs—BT, TalkTalk, Virgin, and Sky—to block access to pornography, gambling, self-harm, and other blacklisted websites, EFF said in a statement. Though the filtering is not mandatory, there are extensive problems with the plan, EFF said.

The plan "lacks transparency," the group said, noting: "The blocked categories are vague in nature, and the list's origins unknown. Not only do the categories contain legal content in some cases, but there is significant room for overblocking. For example, one filtering tool used by several Middle Eastern governments categorizes Tumblr.com as pornography, because several pornographic blogs are hosted on the platform."

Also, EFF quoted Richard Clayton, a security expert at Cambridge University, as saying that customers of ISP TalkTalk who opt out are still monitored. In May, Clayton cited a series of privacy concerns relating to TalkTalk's use of the HomeSafe system, the same system the ISP intends to use for filtering, EFF said.

Clayton is quoted as saying that "the company scans all web addresses that its customers visit regardless of whether they have opted-in to the service."

And "opt-in services create privacy concerns," EFF said, arguing: "Users who choose to opt out of the 'bad' content filter are then on one list. The plan does not include privacy protections for the people who choose to opt out. The list could potentially be made public, shaming users who would prefer their Internet with its pornography, gambling, and self-harm websites intact."

The group argued that the decision by Cameron and Mother's Union is based on the Bailey Report, a British Education Department report that relied heavily on phone surveys with parents, input from religious organizations, and a Murdoch-funded Australia Institute report entitled "Youth, Sex, and the Internet."

"Time and time again, filtering based on blacklists has proven to be overbroad, blocking access to some offensive websites at the cost of many legitimate ones," the group said. "Parents have plenty of Internet filtering options which they can implement by installing software on their computers at home without having to resort to filtering at the ISP level, especially given the potential privacy risks this plan may pose for Internet users throughout the UK."

EFF noted that three months ago, the group had expressed disappointment with Australia's two largest Internet service providers (ISPs), Telstra and Optus, for agreeing to implement a filtering scheme after a filtering bill from the Australian government failed to pass.

Comment: This reporter recalls having news sites, such as the Washington Post, blocked by a filtering program used by the Nashville, Tennessee, public library. The computer screens at the time did not tell users they had an opt-out option that could be implemented by a librarian.

Times urges new review of anthrax probe
The New York Times, citing forensic skepticism about the FBI's investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks, is calling for a re-examination of the FBI case.

In an editorial today, the paper said, "Federal investigators insist that there is a vast amount of evidence supporting their conclusion" that biowar expert Dr. Bruce Ivins was the lone, deranged culprit." But, in light of disclosures by journalists and concerns of scientists, the Government Accountability Office "needs to dig deeply into classified materials to judge how well the evidence holds up."

Otherwise, the editorial said, "Congress ought to commission an independent assessment to be sure there are no culprits still at large."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/opinion/who-mailed-the-anthrax-letters.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/science/10anthrax.html?_r=2

http://www.propublica.org/article/did-ivins-give-the-fbi-a-fake-sample-of-his-own-anthrax

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/05/19/114467/fbi-lab-reports-on-anthrax-attacks.html

Comment: If the FBI's work on the anthrax poisonings is open to question, should not its work on the 9/11 attacks also come under increased scrutiny? After all, the anthrax case was only officially "decoupled" from the 9/11 attacks when an enterprising reporter disclosed that the lethal anthrax was of a type grown at the Pentagon's biowar defense facility at Fort Detrick, Md.

Newz from Limbo is a news site and, the hosting mechanism notwithstanding, should not be defined as a web log or as 'little more than a community forum'... Write News from Limbo at NewzfromLimbo=at=gmail=dot=com... The philosophical orientation of Newz from Limbo is best described as libertarian... For anti-censorship links: http://veilside78.blogspot.com/2010/12/anti-censorship-spectrum_23.html (If link fails, cut and paste it into the url bar)...

2011-10-17T10:08:00.001-07:00

Security shroud tossed over
appeal by Gitmo detainees
The government has imposed a muzzle on the judges who ruled on an appeal by a group of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. Their opinion is classified.
http://tinyurl.com/MysteryCourtOpinion

However, a slightly less censored version appears on lawfareblog
http://www.lawfareblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Latif-order.pdf
where it is learned that a district court's decision had been overruled and the case handed back to that court for more proceedings.

The name of the district judge is omitted and so it is not clear whether the matter concerns a writ of habeas corpus granted last year to a captive held at the Guantanamo Bay military prison, Cuba. In July 2010, Judge Henry Kennedy Jr. granted the petition for Adnan Latif, now 34, and instructed the Obama administration to “take all necessary and appropriate diplomatic steps to facilitate Latif's release forthwith.”

Though the government web page does not indicate the classification authority, nor the statute under which the opinion is classified, in the past judges have been muzzled by the Justice Department and Pentagon.

The appeal's content, like the decision's, is censored.

The lead plaintiff, Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, then 25, was seized by Pakistan security forces in 2001 and turned over to the United States military for a $5,000 bounty.

Witnesstorture.org
http://www.witnesstorture.org/Adnan-Farhan-Abdul-Latif
gives the following account:

Latif spent the first three years of his captivity at the Guantanamo detention center in total isolation, enduring "physical and mental torture." During this period, he was interrogated hundreds of times and held without charge or hearing before a judge.

Not until 2004 did the United States conduct a “status” hearing, permitting attorney Mark Falkoff to take on Latif's case. As Falkoff writes in the journal of his meetings with Latif, "when I first saw the accusations, I thought they looked serious." But "when I looked at the government’s evidence, I was amazed. There was nothing there.”

Latif remains in custody, despite the 2004 Defense Department determination that Latif “is not known to have participated in combatant/terrorist training” and a 2007 determination that Latif should be transferred away from Guantánamo Bay “subject to the process for making appropriate diplomatic arrangements for his departure."

On Oct. 8, the Associated Press reported that a Guantanamo Bay detainee who says he was waterboarded lost a legal battle when a federal appeals court ruled that the Obama administration can keep information secret that the prisoner wanted to make public.

The decision came in the case of Djamel Ameziane, an Algerian seeking his release from the Guantanamo Bay prison, where he has been held since 2002.

In a 3-0 decision, the appeals court said U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle had failed to give substantial deference "to the government's assessment of its foreign relations and national security interests" if certain information were to be revealed. Huvelle had declared that "I don't understand how" revealing the information "will interfere in anything."

The government's argument provided a detailed and logical explanation of the impact disclosure would have, appeals Judge Janice Rogers Brown wrote.

Other backround on Latif is available at
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AMR51/066/2009/en/779940e7-6c40-4f97-80d9-cbe2c6314d46/amr510662009en.html

Newz from Limbo is a news site and, the hosting mechanism notwithstanding, should not be defined as a web log or as 'little more than a community forum'... Write News from Limbo at NewzfromLimbo=at=gmail=dot=com... The philosophical orientation of Newz from Limbo is best described as libertarian... For anti-censorship links: http://veilside78.blogspot.com/2010/12/anti-censorship-spectrum_23.html (If link fails, cut and paste it into the url bar)...

2011-10-14T09:37:00.000-07:00

Libertarians see 'crony capitalism'

as the issue behind Occupy protests
Libertarian Party
"Crony capitalism" is the problem that lies behind the Occupy Wall Street protests,
the Libertarian Party said in a statement today.

"I have been following the Occupy protesters, who call themselves the '99%', with interest," the party's chairman, Mark Hinkle, said in the statement.

"It's true that 99% of Americans do not enjoy the special benefits of crony capitalism. Crony capitalism is very different from real capitalism. In crony capitalism, government hands out special favors and protections to politically well-connected businesses.

"The TARP bailouts, Solyndra, and the military-industrial complex are all facets of crony capitalism.

"Libertarians love free markets and hate crony capitalism.

"Unfortunately, hypocritical Republican politicians have taught a lot of Americans to think that 'free markets' means freedom for government and big business to engage in crony capitalism.

"That's not what free markets are. A free market is where the government leaves businesses alone, does not attempt to pick winners and losers, does not stifle competition, does not hand out corporate welfare, and does not absolve businesses of liability for their actions. Most of our economy today does not resemble a free market at all.

"It's unfortunate that so many businesses today go to the government begging for handouts and special treatment. I wish they wouldn't. But the real problem is the politicians who choose to give those favors to them, at everyone else's expense.

"I hope the Occupy protesters will start to direct their anger away from Wall Street and big businesses, and toward our government, which has done so much to destroy free markets and entrench crony capitalism."

Experts cautious about the Iranian slay plot
,reports Judith Miller.
http://www.judithmiller.com/10510/iran-assassination-plot

As well they should be, considering that the blockbuster indictment puts the Justice Department's drug war in a positive light, diverting some of the bad press it was getting over the "Fast and Furious" gun-running gone awry. Doubtless Attorney General Eric Holder, who was taking quite a bit of flak, also is breathing sighs of relief.

This outcome, however, seems to mostly a side benefit of the Iranian plot bust, as Holder scrambles to contain the political damage damage over the venture by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which put guns into the hands of Mexican drug banditos.

Considering the haste with which a group of lawmakers and President Obama rushed to judgment, with pledges of relaliatory sanctions, some oberservers will wonder whether a mini "Gulf of Tonkin" was ginned up in order to justify applying more pressure against Iran's nuclear program.

A previous version of the foregoing item contained a factual error.

Notes from Cyberia
Miller warns on the terroristic implications of the great Blackberry blackout.
http://www.judithmiller.com/10511/cyber-terror-vulnerability

Bioterror potential spotlighted by listeria deaths
The latest outbreak of a food-borne pathogen, Listeria monocytogenes, exposes the vulnerability of the public to the potential of deliberate contamination, though there is no indication of such an act following the deaths of vulnerable people who ate tainted melons.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that:

"Listeriosis, a serious infection usually caused by eating food contaminated with the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes, is an important public health problem in the United States. The disease primarily affects older adults, pregnant women, newborns, and adults with weakened immune systems. However, rarely, persons without these risk factors can also be affected. The risk may be reduced by recommendations for safe food preparation, consumption, and storage."

The CDC and the Food and Drug Administration are investigating a multistate outbreak of listeriosis in coordination with state and local health departments, including the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. The outbreak started in the late summer.

Collaborative investigations by local, state, and federal public health and regulatory agencies indicate the source of the outbreak is whole cantaloupe grown at Jensen Farms’ production fields in Granada, Colorado.

2011-10-13T10:14:00.000-07:00

'Secretly implemented' snooping

FCC pressured to probe Facebook

for tracking users after they log off
Electronic Privacy and Information Center
EPIC has joined the American Civil Liberties Union, Consumer Action, the American Library Association and the Center for Digital Democracy and other activist groups to press the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Facebook's implementation of "persistent identifiers," which track Facebook users even after they have logged off the site.

The groups' letter asks the commission to investigate whether Facebook's secretly implemented technology constitutes unfair and deceptive business practices.

The coalition's letter points out that Facebook's practices violate
the terms of the site's own Privacy Policy. Although Facebook claims
to have fixed the problem, according to the letter, "the company still
places persistent identifiers on users' browsers that collect post-
log-out data and could be used to identify users."

The Sept. 29 letter also requests an investigation into new Facebook
applications, such as Timeline, which aggregates a Facebook user's data
and entire posting history, and Open Graph, which documents a user's
interaction with other web sites. Security experts have warned that
Timeline's aggregation of user data provides a tempting target for
computer criminals. The new applications also profoundly change the way
information is shared: "Under the frictionless sharing model, content
sharing is a passive experience in which a social app prompts the user
once, at the outset, to decide the level of privacy for the app . . .
then proceeds to share every bit of information obtained thereafter."

The coalition's letter also discusses Facebook's history of "failing to
protect consumer privacy." The Federal Trade Commission is currently
investigating Facebook's secret use of facial recognition technology to
build a biometric database from users' photos. Facebook's use of facial
recognition technology also violated the company's Privacy Policy, as
well as public assurances made by Facebook to users.

EPIC: Letter to Federal Trade Commission (Sept. 29, 2011)
https://epic.org/privacy/facebook/EPIC_Facebook_FTC_letter.pdf

EPIC: Facebook Facial Recognition Complaint
http://epic.org/redirect/101211-epic-fb-facial-complaint.html

EPIC: Facebook Privacy
http://epic.org/privacy/facebook/

Fair use commentary

Carl Sagan: a diagnosis of paranoia

doesn't mean they aren't out to get you

'In paranoid thinking a person believes he has detected a conspiracy -- that is, a hidden (and malevolent) pattern of behavior of friends, associates or governments -- where in fact no such pattern exists. If there is such a conspiracy, the subject may be profoundly anxious, but his thinking is not necessarily paranoid. A famous case involves James Forrestal, the first U.S. Secretary of Defense. At the end of World War II, Forrestal was convinced that Israeli secret agents were following him everywhere. His physicians, equally convinced of the absurdity of this ide'e fixe, diagnosed him as paranoid and confined him to the upper story of Walter Reed Army Hospital, from which he plunged to his death [sic?], partly because of inadequate supervision by hospital personnel, overly deferential to one of his exalted rank. Later it was discovered that Forrestal was indeed being followed by Israeli agents who were worried that he might reach a secret understanding with representatives of Arab nations. Forrestal had other problems, but having his valid perception labeled paranoid did not help his condition. '

*******

' An acquaintance of mine says, "In America today, if you're not a little paranoid you're out of your mind." '

From The Dragons of Eden, Speculations on the evolution of human intelligence, Random House 1977, page 181 (hard cover)

Sagan was writing in the seventies, when the public wasn't even able to absorb the extent and depth of conspiracies carried out under President Richard M. Nixon. Yet the illustrious scientist's analysis held for 1949 and holds today.

Sagan was making a point about non-paranoid "paranoia," but some of his statements are slightly out of sync with the facts as reported on 2011 web sites. For example, Forrestal seems to have fallen to his death, a sash tightly wrapped around his neck, at Bethesda Naval Hospital, not Walter Reed. Aside from concerns about Israeli operatives, Forrestal was also worried that the Soviet NKVD was shadowing him everywhere. During this period the American public was learning of Soviet spy rings that had honeycombed Washington -- and the NKVD was certainly something to worry about.

Was Forrestal tailed by Israeli operatives? Although there may not be absolute confirmation, it should be recalled that Menahem Begin's terrorist gang tried to assassinate Britain's Ernest Bevin over his anti-Zionist position. And Forrestal was likewise known for his anti-Zionist stance.

This site gives some useful background, but the reader is urged to check further:
http://www.dcdave.com/article5/060409.htm

2011-10-12T09:25:00.000-07:00

GPS inventor joins court fight
against warrantless tracking
Electronic Frontier Foundation
The principal inventor of the Global Positioning System (GPS) and other leading technologists have joined the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in urging the U.S Supreme Court to block the government from using GPS tracking without first getting a warrant, arguing that the massive collection of sensitive location data should require court oversight.

Roger L. Easton is considered the father of GPS as the principal inventor and developer of the Timation Satellite Navigation System at the Naval Research Laboratory. The current GPS is based on Timation, and its principles of operation are fundamentally identical. In an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court Monday in United States v. Jones, EFF, Mr. Easton, along with other technology experts, pointed out the many ways in which GPS tracking is fundamentally different from and more invasive than other surveillance technologies the court has allowed before, and how law enforcement use of GPS without a warrant violates Americans' reasonable expectations of privacy.

"This is the first case where the Supreme Court will consider automatic, persistent, passive location tracking by law enforcement," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann. "The government can use location information over time to learn where you go to church, what sort of doctors you go to, what meetings and activities you participate in, and much more. Police should not have blanket permission to install GPS devices and collect detailed information about people's movements over time without court review."

In Jones, FBI agents planted a GPS device on a car while it was on private property. Agents then used the GPS to track the position of the vehicle every ten seconds for a full month without obtaining a search warrant. An appeals court ruled that the surveillance was unconstitutional without a warrant, but the government appealed the decision.

"If police are allowed to plant GPS devices wherever they please, that's essentially blanket permission for widespread, ongoing police surveillance without any court supervision," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "It's not hard to see how that kind of leeway would be abused. We hope the Supreme Court takes a close look at how this technology works and act to protect the Fourth Amendment rights of Americans."

The brief was authored by Andrew Pincus of Mayer Brown LLP and The Yale Law School Supreme Court Clinic. It was also signed by the Center for Democracy and Technology, Professor Matt Blaze of the University of Pennsylvania, Professor Andrew J. Blumberg of the University of Texas at Austin, and Professor Norman M. Sadeh of Carnegie Mellon University.

For more information:
http://eff.org

Iranian slay plot charge: truth or propaganda payback?
Commentary:

Certainly it is true that governments engage in murderous conspiracies. And elements of the Iranian regime may well be capable of attempting to hire drug cartel assassins to kill the Saudi Arabian ambassador to America.

On the other hand, a component of the U.S. "national security" clique has a strong reason to paint the Iranian government blacker than black: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's public accusations against the United States government for arranging the attacks of Sept. 11.

Ahmadinejad, of course, has much blood on his own hands. Yet, he is the only national leader willing to point out the obvious. So if he makes such an accusation of conspiracy, what better way to discredit him even more than by accusing a component of his regime of a murderous conspiracy?

It is noteworthy that the Iranian agents were talking with U.S. undercover narcs. In the murky world of intelligence, agents often talk with their opposites in hopes of probing their true motives. We can't really be sure the Iranians were serious about a murder plot, though they may have been. We can be sure that the Americans, rather than playing the usual intelligence game, decided a big public bust was in their interests.

Newz from Limbo is a news site and, the hosting mechanism notwithstanding, should not be defined as a web log or as 'little more than a community forum'... Write News from Limbo at NewzfromLimbo=at=gmail=dot=com... The philosophical orientation of Newz from Limbo is best described as libertarian... For anti-censorship links: http://veilside78.blogspot.com/2010/12/anti-censorship-spectrum_23.html (If link fails, cut and paste it into the url bar)...

2011-10-11T09:12:00.000-07:00

Birch Society spotlights a call

for Occupy the Fed protests

The Occupy Wall Street protests have stirred the John Birch Society to give favorable coverage to a similar initiative dubbed Occupy the Fed.

"Perhaps surprising to some, many conservatives sympathize with the Occupy Wall Street protesters because they understand the motivating factors behind the protests: increased costs on everyday items, unemployment, inflation, etc.," according to a Birch Society article.

"However, those conservatives recognize that much of the anger of the protesters is directed at the wrong target," the society said. "The real enemy, they contend, is the Federal Reserve, and it is for that reason that those conservatives have chosen to use the momentum of the Occupy Wall Street protests to stage Occupy the Fed protests instead.

One organizer, known only as “Anonymous A99,” announced the first operation targeting the Fed, called “Operation Empire State Rebellion,” on March 12. The announcement explained that the movement was intended to be a “decentralized non-violent resistance movement.” Anonymous A99 said of the intent of the organizers:

Above all, we aim to break up the global banking cartel centered at the Federal Reserve, International Monetary Fund, Bank of International Settlement and World Bank.

We demand that the primary dealers within the Federal Reserve banking system be broken up and held accountable for rigging markets and destroying the global economy, effective immediately.

As a first sign of good faith, we demand Ben Bernanke step down as Federal Reserve chairman.

Until our demands are met and a rule of law is restored, we will engage in a relentless campaign of non-violent, peaceful, civil disobedience.”

Boston protesters said to get rough handling
Anti-Wall Street protesters say they were roughly handled when Boston police moved in early this morning to arrest more than 100 people for civil disobedience, including a legal observer for the radical National Lawyers Guild.

Had the police simply approached those who were congregating in a "forbidden zone" and asked them to move off site, many might have done so. Had they approached them one by one and escorted them to police vans, there would have been less of a fracas.

But, according to some observers, the police "attacked."

If so, a likely contributing factor was lack of media presence, who had not been assigned to show up at 1 a.m. Police nearly always behave differently when under a media spotlight.

One question that needs answering is whether a backroom deal was made whereby financial elitists held back the press and encouraged the cops to move in during the dead of night (by the way, it seems unlikely that protester presence in "forbidden zones" at that time of night posed any threat of traffic tie-ups).

2011-10-07T09:43:00.005-07:00

Top red assists ex-Obama aide

in 'rebuild America' movement
Accuracy in Media, a conservative watchdog group, reports that Van Jones, the former White House aide and former Communist, remains on very good terms with the Communist Party.

Judith LeBlanc, who runs a group called Peace Action and is one of the vice-chairs of the Communist Party, was introduced on stage as one of Van Jones’s “partners” in the “rebuild the American dream” movement, AIM says.

More at http://aim.org

2011-08-01T12:55:00.001-07:00

Google+ 'real name' policy
spells trouble for dissenters

Commentary by Jillian York, Electronic Frontier Foundation

pseu·do·nym
[sood-n-im]
–noun a fictitious name used by an author to conceal his or her identity; pen name.

There are myriad reasons why individuals may wish to use a name other than the one they were born with. They may be concerned about threats to their lives or livelihoods, or they may risk political or economic retribution. They may wish to prevent discrimination or they may use a name that’s easier to pronounce or spell in a given culture.

Online, the reasons multiply. Internet culture has long encouraged the use of "handles" or "user names," pseudonyms that may or may not be tied to a person’s offline identity. Longtime online inhabitants may have handles that have spanned over twenty years.

Pseudonymous speech has played a critical role throughout history as well. From the literary efforts of George Eliot and Mark Twain to the explicitly political advocacy of Publius in the Federalist Papers or Junius' letters to the Public Advertiser in 18th century London, people have contributed strongly to public debate under pseudonyms and continue to do so to this day.

A new debate around pseudonymity on online platforms has arisen as a result of the identification policy of Google+, which requires users to identify by "the name your friends, family, or co-workers usually call you". This policy is similar to that of Facebook’s which requires users to "provide their real names and information." Google’s policy has in a few short weeks attracted significant attention both within the community and outside of it, sparking debate as to whether a social platform should place limits on identity. A considerable number of Google+ users have already experienced account deactivation as a result of the policy, which Kirrily "Skud" Robert, a former Google employee kicked off the service for identifying as "Skud," has closely documented.

Those in favor of the use of "real names" on social platforms have presented a number of arguments: that real names improve user behavior and create a more civil environment; that real names help prevent against stalking and harassment by making it easier to go after offenders; that a policy requiring real names prevents law enforcement agents from “sneaking in” to the service to spy on users; that real names make users accountable for their actions.

While these arguments are not entirely without merit, they misframe the problem. It is not incumbent upon strict real-name policy advocates to show that policies insisting on the use of real names have an upside. It is incumbent upon them to demonstrate that these benefits outweigh some very serious drawbacks.

Consider, for example, Wael Ghonim, the now-famous Egyptian whose Facebook page, We Are All Khaled Said, inspired thousands to join in the January uprising. Though the page was created in the summer of 2010, not long after the death of Khaled Said at the hands of policemen, it wasn’t until later that year that it began to truly gain momentum. And yet, its presence in the protests almost didn’t happen: In November 2010, the page went down after its administrator (now known to have been Ghonim) was reported for using a pseudonym. While Facebook was able to offer a solution, allowing an "identified" person to step in for Ghonim, this case was largely exceptional, owing to Ghonim’s ability to connect to Facebook staff and solve the problem. Not everyone has these types of connections, and there’s no way of knowing how many people have fallen through the cracks, so to speak, because they were unaware of how to appeal an account deactivation. In Ghonim’s case, using his real name would have placed him under considerable risk. And while pseudonymity provides no guarantees, it makes it considerably more difficult for authorities to identify activists.

There are myriad reasons why an individual may feel safer identifying under a name other than their birth name. Teenagers who identify as members of the LGBT community, for example, are regularly harassed online and may prefer to identify online using a pseudonym. Individuals whose spouses or partners work for the government or are well known often wish to conceal aspects of their own lifestyle and may feel more comfortable operating under a different name online. Survivors of domestic abuse who need not to be found by their abusers may wish to alter their name in whole or in part. And anyone with unpopular or dissenting political opinions may choose not to risk their livelihood by identifying with a pseudonym.

As Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens put forth in deciding McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm’n 514 U.S. 334, 357 (1995),

"Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation—and their ideas from suppression—at the hand of an intolerant society. The right to remain anonymous may be abused when it shields fraudulent conduct. But political speech by its nature will sometimes have unpalatable consequences, and, in general, our society accords greater weight to the value of free speech than to the dangers of its misuse."

Just as using "real" names can have real consequences, mandating the use of "real" names can too, excluding from the conversation anyone who fears retribution for sharing their views. While one added value of requiring real names might be increased "civility" of the conversation, it is most certainly to the detriment of diversity.

The bloggers at Geek Feminism have compiled a wiki highlighting the people who are harmed by a real names policy, demonstrating the hundreds of potential reasons why an individual may use a name other than his or her own. Though many examples on the list demonstrate cases of at-risk individuals whose use of a pseudonym is for the purpose of safety, there are other important reasons that one may choose pseudonymity as well.

Take the example of Michael Anti, the Chinese journalist whose birth name is Jing Zhao. Anti was kicked off of Facebook in January of 2011, presumably after someone reported him for using a name other than the one with which he was born. Despite having used the pen name "Michael Anti" for almost a decade, in his writing for the New York Times and elsewhere, Facebook insisted on strict enforcement of its policy.

On Google+, similar examples have arisen, as have false positives, prompting Google+ to change some of its processes, including a shift from immediate account deactivation to offering users a warning and an opportunity to align their name with the policy.

Nevertheless, policies requiring "real" names are nearly impossible to enforce at scale, and as several examples have demonstrated, enforcement tends to be skewed against individuals who are well-known or have enemies, a result of community reporting mechanisms.

It is well within the rights of any company--Google, Facebook, or otherwise--to create policies as they see fit for their services. But it is shortsighted for these companies to suggest that "real name" policies create greater potential for civility, when they only do so at the expense of diversity and free expression. Indeed, a shift toward crafting policies requiring "real" names will have a chilling effect on online free expression.

Tech firm axed huge cache of News Int'l emails
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/aug/01/news-international-ordered-email-mass-deletions

Newz from Limbo is a news site and, the hosting mechanism notwithstanding, should not be defined as a web log or as 'little more than a community forum'... Write News from Limbo at NewzfromLimbo=at=gmail=dot=com... The philosophical orientation of Newz from Limbo is best described as libertarian... For anti-censorship links: http://veilside78.blogspot.com/2010/12/anti-censorship-spectrum_23.html (If link fails, cut and paste it into the url bar)...

2011-07-31T14:07:00.001-07:00

Reports of cyber-hacking
add to Murdoch's worries
The Murdoch news empire faced new troubles as Scotland Yard began checking reports of computer hacking by operatives for the now-defunct News of the World, according to Larry McShane, writing in the New York News. The scandal went airborne when Murdoch operatives were accused of hacking the cell phones of a slain girl and of relatives of war dead and terror victims.

Meanwhile, on this side of the Atlantic, executives at the Murdoch-owned New York Post on Friday ordered all staffers to "preserve and maintain documents" involving phone hacking or bribery, the News said.
Police are "currently considering a number of allegations regarding breach of privacy ... including computer hacking," according to a police statement.

Murdoch's son James, who appeared alongside his father before Parliament, could be summoned for additional questioning after three ex-employees contradicted his testimony.

There was no mention of possible computer hacking at that parliamentary hearing, and the police declined to release any specifics in their statement, the News reported.

The phone-hacking allegations have already led to the arrests of 10 Murdoch employees, including former top executive Rebekah Brooks and former News of the World editor Andy Coulson.

Cyber-hacking charges have come up before, with Murdoch's News America paying a large sum to Floorgraphics over a cyber-hacking lawsuit after a whistleblower testified. (See http://conantcensorshipissue.blogspot.com/2011/07/praising-mobster-methods-murdochs-u.html

Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, has called on the FBI to take a serious look at that case.

War inquiry to blast Blair
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2020625/Iraq-inquiry-Tony-Blair-held-account-Chilcot-report-war.html
--

Newz from Limbo is a news site and, the hosting mechanism notwithstanding, should not be defined as a web log or as 'little more than a community forum'... Write News from Limbo at NewzfromLimbo=at=gmail=dot=com... The philosophical orientation of Newz from Limbo is best described as libertarian... For anti-censorship links: http://veilside78.blogspot.com/2010/12/anti-censorship-spectrum_23.html (If link fails, cut and paste it into the url bar)...

2011-07-30T13:22:00.001-07:00

Birch Society gets thumbs down
as politicians pursue China ties
Birchers have been cast out of the Conservative Political Action Conference scheduled for next February, according to the Daily Caller.

This follows a decision by the National Governors Association to bar a John Birch Society journalist this month from a conference on China trade, which the society opposes on grounds of communism representing a threat to national security. Chinese journalists, most of whom may not be overly objective concerning communist matters, were welcomed.

According to the Birch Society, Krista Zaharias, a senior press officer with the governors group, informed the Birch Society's New American in a series of emails that the group was denying credentials for William F. Jasper, a New American writer, and his colleague, Sam Antonio, producer of Liberty News Network, because Zaharias did not consider the New American’s articles to be written “in an objective manner.”

According to official letters obtained by the Daily Caller, the gay conservative group GOProud and the anticommunist Birch Society won’t be co-sponsoring the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2012.

The decision was reached by a full vote of the American Conservative Union’s board of directors. The ACU organizes and hosts CPAC each year.

Long targeted for its McCarthyist viewpoint, the John Birch Society’s campaign to thwart engagement with the communist Chinese regime is not welcomed by various powerful groups. The society stirred anger recently when it strongly opposed the appointment of Leon Panetta as defense secretary on grounds of a background of communist political networking and liberal positions it deemed as helpful to the communist causes.

Conservatives in the Senate joined in the unanimous vote to confirm Panetta's appointment.

The following information comes from Gary Benoit of the New American, a Birch publication:

On July 15 and 16, the National Governors Association Annual Meeting met in Salt Lake City and featured a first-ever U.S.-China Governors Forum that brought together provincial governors China with their American counterparts.

In addition to the many Chinese reporters based in the United States who covered the event, the Chinese governors brought along their own entourage of journalists, photographers, and videographers.

In January of this year, the international press freedom organization Reporters Without Borders reported that the Propaganda Department of the Communist Party of China had issued a series of directives ordering all Chinese journalists to undergo a six-month course aimed at training them, among other things, to “recognize and avoid politically sensitive topics.” The real purpose of the directives, says Reporters Without Borders is, “in short, to make journalists themselves actors in censorship.”

The governors group appeared to be "cooperating with China’s Propaganda Department in this new initiative, whether it realizes it or not," Benoit charged. "While dozens of Beijing’s trained propagandists posing as journalists were welcomed to the NGA summit, the New American’s senior editor, William F. Jasper, was singled out for exclusion."

Jasper and Antonio, however, managed to cover the event, Benoit wrote.

Salt Lake Tribune spotlights communist favoritism
http://www.ahorautah.com/sltrib/politics/52198373-90/credentials-governors-nga-jasper.html.csp

Newz from Limbo is a news site and, the hosting mechanism notwithstanding, should not be defined as a web log or as 'little more than a community forum'... Write News from Limbo at NewzfromLimbo=at=gmail=dot=com... The philosophical orientation of Newz from Limbo is best described as libertarian... For anti-censorship links: http://veilside78.blogspot.com/2010/12/anti-censorship-spectrum_23.html (If link fails, cut and paste it into the url bar)...

2011-07-29T12:44:00.000-07:00

Report is critical of president
on autocratic secrecy powers
The American Civil Liberties Union is chastising the Obama administration's record on transparency versus excessive secrecy.
www.aclu.org/files/assets/secrecyreport_20110727.pdf

In the report, "Drastic Measures Required: Congress Needs to Overhaul Secrecy Laws and Increase Oversight of the Secret Security Establishment," the rights lobby chides President Obama for his "mixed record" on secrecy issues and accuses him of authoritarian, anti-democratic behavior on a number of points.

Charging that "reality has not always lived up" to Obama's past rhetoric, the group complained that the Obama administration:

• Embraced the Bush administration’s tactic of using overly broad “state secrets” claims to block lawsuits focused on government misconduct.

• Fought a court order to release photos depicting the abuse of detainees held in U.S. custody and supported legislation to exempt these photos from the Freedom of Information Act retroactively. The legislation gave the secretary of defense sweeping authority to withhold any visual images depicting the government’s “treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained” by U.S. forces, no matter how egregious the conduct depicted or how compelling the public’s interest in disclosure.

• Threatened to veto legislation designed to reform congressional notification procedures for covert actions.

• Aggressively pursued whistleblowers who reported waste, fraud and abuse in national security programs with criminal prosecutions to a greater degree than any previous presidential administration.

• Refused to declassify information about how the government uses its authority under section 215 of the Patriot Act to collect information about Americans not relevant to terrorism or espionage investigations.

"Moreover, when opportunities for taking bold measures to attack unnecessary secrecy arose, the administration failed to act or chose timid and incremental steps instead," according to the report, written by Mike German and Jay Stanley.

German, a former FBI agent, is the ACLU's policy counsel on national security. Stanley is an ACLU policy analyst on speech, privacy and technology.

Newz from Limbo is a news site and, the hosting mechanism notwithstanding, should not be defined as a web log or as 'little more than a community forum'... Write News from Limbo at NewzfromLimbo=at=gmail=dot=com... The philosophical orientation of Newz from Limbo is best described as libertarian... For anti-censorship links: http://veilside78.blogspot.com/2010/12/anti-censorship-spectrum_23.html (If link fails, cut and paste it into the url bar)...

2011-07-26T13:41:00.001-07:00

Bill would order net providers
to keep detailed records on you
The Electronic Frontier Foundation
The House of Representatives is currently considering H.R. 1981, a bill that would order all of our online service providers to keep new logs about our online activities, logs to help the government identify the web sites we visit and the content we post online.

This sweeping new "mandatory data retention" proposal treats every Internet user like a potential criminal and represents a clear and present danger to the online free speech and privacy rights of millions of innocent Americans.

H.R. 1981 would impose sweeping requirements on a broad swath of online service providers to keep new records on all of their customers, just in case the police ever want to investigate any of them. In particular, the bill would require any "provider of an electronic communication service or remote computing service" to keep for at least 18 months a record of which users were assigned to particular network addresses at particular times.

Such addresses, like the Internet Protocol (IP) address assigned to your cable modem by your cable company, or to your laptop by a wireless router, can be used to identify who visited particular websites or posted particular content online--threatening your right to privately browse the web and to speak and read anonymously when you're online.

Mandatory data retention would force your ISP--and your workplace, your school, your library, your corner coffee-shop with free WiFi, and anyone else that offers you internet access--to create vast and expensive new databases of sensitive information about you. That information would then be available to the government, in secret and without any court oversight, based on weak and outdated electronic privacy laws.

That same data would also be available to civil litigants in private lawsuits--whether it's the RIAA trying to identify downloaders, a company trying to uncover and retaliate against an anonymous critic, or a divorce lawyer looking for dirty laundry. These databases would also be a new and valuable target for black hat hackers, be they criminals trying to steal identities or foreign governments trying to unmask anonymous dissidents.

The House Judiciary Committee is about to hold a critical vote that will determine whether this dangerous, mass-spying proposal moves forward or not, and the bill could soon be on the House floor for a final vote.

Newz from Limbo is a news site and, the hosting mechanism notwithstanding, should not be defined as a web log or as 'little more than a community forum'... Write News from Limbo at NewzfromLimbo=at=gmail=dot=com... The philosophical orientation of Newz from Limbo is best described as libertarian... For anti-censorship links: http://veilside78.blogspot.com/2010/12/anti-censorship-spectrum_23.html (If link fails, cut and paste it into the url bar)...

2011-07-21T10:28:00.001-07:00

Experts in war on terrorism, mob

retained by News Corp. directors

News Corp.'s independent directors, including one who crafted the Patriot Act, have hired two top figures with backgrounds in the war on terror and mob prosecutions to guard their interests as the Murdoch media phone-hack crisis sends shockwaves through the political and media worlds.

The Murdoch press was a chief backer of the invasion of Iraq, and left those who relied on its news with the false impression that Saddam Hussein was linked to the 9/11 attacks. The Murdoch press also has savaged critics of official 9/11 accounts. Murdoch's organization is under suspicion of being a continuing criminal enterprise.

The company's independent directors have brought Mary Jo White, a former U.S. attorney for New York, and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who has made clear his view that rights of those presumed to be terrorists must be curtailed, aboard to advise Viet D. Dinh, one of News Corp.'s independent directors, according to a statement released by Debevoise & Plimpton, the New York law firm where both attorneys practice.

Dinh, also an attorney, is supervising -- on behalf the independent directors -- News Corp.'s management and standards committee, which is cooperating with authorities investigating the scandal. Dinh is regarded as the chief architect of the Patriot Act.

As U.S. attorney, White brought racketeering charges against mobster John Gotti and prosecuted terrorists in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

With the arrest of Rebekah Brooks, former chief executive of News Corp subsidiary News International, and the possibility of further charges or allegations against other executives, independent directors want to make sure that the company's interests are protected, according to a Reuters report Tuesday.

Senator prods feds on cyber-hack case
Meanwhile, Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, is urging federal authorities to move on possible criminal cyber-hacking by Murdoch's News America Marketing. The head of that firm, Paul Carlucci, had prodded employees to adopt a ruthless attitude by playing a scene from a film in which Al Capone beats a victim to death with a baseball bat.

(See Murdoch arm paid off in cyner-hacking... http://conantcensorshipissue.blogspot.com/2011/07/praising-mobster-methods-murdochs-u.html)

Lautenberg wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller yesterday to highlight the 2005 hacking case. In 2005, Lautenberg had written Attorney General Roberto Gonzalez about the matter but nothing came of it. The Murdoch press was a ferocious backer of President Bush and his wars.
The senator had already joined several lawmakers in urging an FBI inquiry into the possibility of criminal hacking of the cell phones of 9/11 victims.

"As the Department of Justice and FBI examine the recent hacking allegations involving News Corp. and its subsidiaries more closely, I wanted to make sure that you were fully aware of the case of FLOORgraphics and News America, as it may be relevant to your current investigation," Lautenberg wrote.

Scientist faults a Harper's 9/11 theory
A scientist is upbraiding a Harper's magazine article as biased in favor of the Bush administration's narrative of the events of Sept. 11, 2001.
http://mathforum.org/~josh/
http://www.mathforum.org/~josh/academic.html

In a letter sent to the editors, Joshua J. Mitteldorf, a biologist with a background in physics, expressed "disappointment on reading David Rieff’s article, The Limits of Remembrance, offering perspectives that are confined by the Bush administration’s narrative about the perpetrators and the crimes of 9/11."

About half of Americans disbelieve the official accounts, Mitteldorf said, adding: "The doubting half comprises not the usual gullible and superstitious crowd, but a great many independent thinkers, especially scientists, who realize that the official version of events is not just implausible but physically impossible."

Mitteldorf's resume:
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:e09kaHf2d7UJ:www.electionassessment.org/Submissions/2005-06-29EAH/Mitteldorf_J/extdoc/Mitteldorf_J%2520Josh-Mitteldorf-cv.pdf+josh+mitteldorf+physics&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjW9W4BZEPex26RxH7NSovXpFhiqSEz2yuc8V1pGKuc8tVv2N0dQLGa52rPhGcE5JlRU6xgVm_AU1YwBo5l6aKvFL2JxA1EeurdoH7Q5VCzQGMbnN6Cqp7yhnBeT7HR4n4QNBnd&sig=AHIEtbQ-mtxtILCobtG-vWa0Yx8hN9BVaA&pli=1

A copy of Mitteldorf's letter:

20 July 2011
To the Editors:

   I subscribe to Harper’s because you are willing to discuss realities that are censored by other newspapers and magazines. My subscription began, in fact, after reading Mark Crispin Miller’s August, 2005 article describing George Bush’s theft of the 2004 election. Publication of this article was an act of courage which occasioned, I believe, the largest single-issue readership in the Magazine’s history.

   Imagine my disappointment on reading David Rieff’s article, The Limits of Remembrance, offering perspectives that are confined by the Bush Administration’s narrative about the perpetrators and the crimes of 9/11.

   Diverse public opinion polls reveal that only half of Americans subscribe to this version of reality, despite the fact that it is the only one represented in the nation’s print and broadcast media. The doubting half comprises not the usual gullible and superstitious crowd, but a great many independent thinkers, especially scientists, who realize that the official version of events is not just implausible but physically impossible. Among independent-minded Harper’s readers, I would venture to guess that the number who believe the standard narrative about Osama bin Laden’s brown-skinned men with boxcutters is substantially lower than 50%.   20 July 2011
To the Editors:

   I subscribe to Harper’s because you are willing to discuss realities that are censored by other newspapers and magazines. My subscription began, in fact, after reading Mark Crispin Miller’s August, 2005 article describing George Bush’s theft of the 2004 election. Publication of this article was an act of courage which occasioned, I believe, the largest single-issue readership in the Magazine’s history.

   Imagine my disappointment on reading David Rieff’s article, The Limits of Remembrance, offering perspectives that are confined by the Bush Administration’s narrative about the perpetrators and the crimes of 9/11.

   Diverse public opinion polls reveal that only half of Americans subscribe to this version of reality, despite the fact that it is the only one represented in the nation’s print and broadcast media. The doubting half comprises not the usual gullible and superstitious crowd, but a great many independent thinkers, especially scientists, who realize that the official version of events is not just implausible but physically impossible. Among independent-minded Harper’s readers, I would venture to guess that the number who believe the standard narrative about Osama bin Laden’s brown-skinned men with boxcutters is substantially lower than 50%.

   Speaking for this majority of your readership, I write to inquire whether you are planning to address the topic in a manner that acknowledges the diversity of convictions concerning actualities of 9/11.

                           Yours,
                         Josh Mitteldorf

2011-07-20T09:07:00.001-07:00

Triple damages from Blackmail Inc.?
Legal sharks eye racketeering laws
as they circle bloodied News Corp.
As victims of the Murdoch media empire's predatory tactics hone their court filings, the U.S. rackets act -- which has criminal and civil components -- looms large on the horizon.

Because News International, which held the British News of the World tabloid responsible for much of the hacking, is in turn held by News Corp., a U.S. corporation, there is the possibility that hacker victims in Britain can sue in U.S. courts for triple damages, as provided by the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations act, which was designed to break up organized criminal enterprises. The civil component has been used on numerous occasions against corporations which had no known ties to gangland.

It is clear that the Murdoch formula for power was to use any means, however unscrupulous, to "get something on" politicians, competing companies or anyone else deemed a target and to either publicly defame them with details of their personal lives or to pass around surreptitously obtained dirt to clients of corporate rivals. (See story below.)

Murdoch's media were happy to provide bully boys to harass and defame 9/11 critics for simply attempting to convey that governments have been lying about this matter. The collusion is indicative of extensive corruption on the U.S. side of the Atlantic.

A strong case can be made that a pattern of criminal activities is made evident by the various corrupt practices settlements made by the Murdoch operations. Aggrieved parties on both sides of the Atlantic and possibly from other parts of the globe may be eligible to sue in U.S. federal court, charging racketeering activities by the Murdochians.

However, free press advocates are concerned about the possibility of the RICO act being used against News Corp. If government officials, on either side of the Atlantic, see it as their duty to police the brutish press, it won't be long before such laws are used to police -- in fact, censor by intimidation -- the honest media.

It would appear that a line must be walked. However, merely because a gang of blackmailers carry press credentials is no excuse for winking at major criminal conduct. On the other hand, officials are always saying that exposure of official secrets is criminal and that the press should be brought to heel.

Mainstream media expose anthrax case hole
http://www.propublica.org/article/justice-department-retracts-court-filings-that-undercut-fbis-anthrax-case

PBS, Mclatchy and ProPublica run stories implying an inadequate investigation.

Scientists can't confirm FBI anthrax theory
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=13098&page=1
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=13098&page=125

2011-07-18T10:21:00.001-07:00

Praising mobster methods

Murdoch's U.S. arm paid off

in cyber-hacking, defamation

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News America has paid out more than $29 million to settle a suit over illegal cyber-hacking, the New York Times is reporting. Murdoch's U.S. operations have long been plagued by charges of shady conduct, the newspaper said.

According to the Times, a federal case in New Jersey brought by a company called Floorgraphics went to trial in 2009 in which News America was accused of,hacking its way into Floorgraphics’s password protected computer system, obtaining proprietary information and then disseminating false, misleading and damaging information about the plaintiff.

The complaint said the breach was traced to an I.P. address registered to News America and that after the break-in, Floorgraphics lost contracts from Safeway, Winn-Dixie and Piggly Wiggly, the Times reports.

Much of the lawsuit, the Times says, was based on the testimony of Robert Emmel, a former News America executive who had become a whistle-blower. After a few days of testimony, News America's parent company, News Corp., settled with Floorgraphics for $29.5 million and then, days later, bought it, even though it reportedly had sales of less than $1 million.

Earlier this year, News America paid out $125 million to Insignia Systems to settle allegations of anti-competitive behavior and violations of antitrust laws, the Times said, adding: "In the most costly payout, it spent half a billion dollars in 2010 on another settlement, just days before the case was scheduled to go to trial. The plaintiff, Valassis Communications, had already won a $300 million verdict in Michigan, but dropped the lawsuit in exchange for $500 million and an agreement to cooperate on certain ventures going forward."

In 2006 the state of Minnesota accused News America of engaging in unfair trade practices, and the company settled by agreeing to pay costs and not to falsely disparage its competitors.

News America was led at the time of the cyber-hack lawsuit by Paul V. Carlucci, who, according to Forbes, used to show the sales staff the scene in 'The Untouchables' in which Al Capone beats a man to death with a baseball bat. According to Emmel’s testimony, Carlucci said that any “bed-wetting liberals" among his staff could seek work elsewhere.

Carlucci continues to serve as head of News America and is publisher of Murdoch's New York Post tabloid.

News Corp. declined to respond to a Times request for comment.

Across the Atlantic, Britain's Labor Party leader, David Miliband, called for the breakup of Murdoch's news holdings.

"I think that we've got to look at the situation whereby one person can own more than 20% of the newspaper market, the Sky platform and Sky News," Miliband said. "I think it's unhealthy because that amount of power in one person's hands has clearly led to abuses of power within his organization. If you want to minimize the abuses of power then that kind of concentration of power is frankly quite dangerous."

2011-07-17T10:11:00.001-07:00

Murdoch son pressed
to explain 'hush money'
Britain's Guardian newspaper is urging Parliament to interrogate media mogul Rupert Murdoch's son, James, over payments of as much as $3.2 million in apparent "hush money" to cell phone hack victims.

The Guardian editorial poses these questions:

Why did you pay £1m [$1.6m] in damages and costs to Gordon Taylor [a soccer star] and others in 2009 and seal the evidence? Would you agree that this could be described as "hush money"?

On whose advice did you make this decision?

Why did you agree the payoff to Max Clifford [a well-known public relations man]? Is it right that the value of this was £1m? Is it fair to describe this as "hush money"?

Why didn't you make a clean breast of what was discovered in the spring of 2009 instead of covering it up?

You have said this decision was based on "incomplete information". What further information would have made these payments right?

Was evidence of criminality concealed at any time from: The News Corp board? The NI [News International, a Murdoch holding company] board? Parliament? Police? The PCC [Press Complaints Commission]?

Are you aware of section 79 of RIPA which can be used to prosecute any director showing "consent, connivance or neglect" of offences relating to interception of communications?

The Guardian story of 9 July 2009 showed that the "one rotten apple" story NI had stuck to for three years was untrue – and known by then within NI to be untrue. Why did you issue a statement denying it?

Other questions for James Murdoch are found at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/16/observer-leader-rupert-murdoch-phone-hacking.

The Guardian's questions for Rupert Murdoch include:

When did you become aware of the 2009 payments authorised by your son James to buy the silence of people whose voicemails had been hacked by NI employees?

It is understood the value of these payments was in the region of £2m. Which News Corp executives or board members knew about them?

Were News Corp's audit committee, board or general counsel made aware of these payments? If not, why not? Should they have been?

When previously unknown evidence of criminality within your company becomes known to senior executives isn't it their responsibility to inform the police and regulators rather than try to cover it up?

What do you now think of your son's decision to try to conceal this evidence of criminality with secret payments rather than inform the appropriate law and regulatory authorities?

The Guardian's story of 9 July 2009 exposed these payments and the fact that the "lone rotten apple" theory within your company was wrong. What action did you and/or the News Corp board take as a result of this story?

More questions for Rupert Murdoch and the executive he forced out, Rebekah Brooks, are found at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/16/observer-leader-rupert-murdoch-phone-hacking

Britain's Independent newspaper cautioned parliamentarians to frame questions in such a way as to prevent the Murdochs and Brooks from dodging questions based on a claim of impeding a police inquiry. Brooks' lawyer indicated that she might not appear in Parliament at all.

2011-07-14T13:43:00.001-07:00

Scientists braved criminal media
to publish shocking 9/11 evidence
The "criminal-media nexus" under fire in London draws attention to major news events that have gone unreported by the mainstream press on both sides of the Atlantic.

In 2009, for example, a team of scientists reported that evidence of an advanced explosive had been found in the dust of the collapsed World Trade Center towers.

Yet a search today of Google News for the name of one of the investigators, Niels Harrit, a chemistry professor at the University of Copenhagen, turned up no mainstream news organizations, other than Berliner Umschau, which cited Harrit in an opinion piece.

In the paper, published by the Open Chemical Physics Journal, the scientists told of finding red-gray flakes in various samples of dust and determining that the flakes were from a material similar to that in advanced TBX weaponry.

The team had sought submissions of samples of dust from the public and received containers submitted by people who had decided to save such samples. The only samples used in the study came from the five persons who agreed to let themselves be identified publicly.

There has been no public statement from the FBI on the work of the scientists. However, it may be assumed that the evidence can be ignored based on the fact that the chain of custody is broken. There is no way to be sure that the samples weren't doctored.

And yet, such tampering would seem to have required a technically advanced conspiracy, wherein volunteers working for conspirators either submit doctored material or are able to intercept and switch samples. In other words, a tampering conspiracy would require a sophisticated intelligence operation.

But, the question then arises: if intelligence units were behind the 9/11 attacks, why didn't they intercept the samples and switch them for non-incriminating dust. It seems plausible that honest agents had made such a switch too risky, and that conspirators counted on what Britain's former prime minister, Gordon Brown, denounced as a "criminal-media nexus" that includes not only the Murdoch press, but other news organizations as well.

The report, Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe, told of igniting the chips and watching them flame. "The evidence for active, highly energetic thermitic material in the WTC dust is compelling," the scientists wrote.
http://www.diexx88blog.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/activethermitic_911.pdf

[Also see 9/11 probers skipped key forensic tests
http://www.angelfire.com/ult/znewz1/trade7.html]

They said the residues from ignited chips were "strikingly similar" to the chemical signature of commercial thermite. The scientists believed that the thermite residues were consistent with "super-thermite," also known as "nano-thermite," They cited a 2001 report on Defense Department research into "nano-energetics" and thermobaric (TBX) weapons.
Here is such a report:
http://www.p2pays.org/ref/34/33115.pdf

"Super-thermite electric matches" had been devloped by Los Alamos National Laboratory for such applications as triggering explosives for demolitions, the experts noted.

The authors said their tests ruled out the possibility that the red chips were flakes of ordinary paint.

However, one of the authors, physicist Steven E. Jones, had already been given the Murdoch treatment for having raised questions over the reliability of official accounts, and it is quite possible that journalists and politicians alike shrank from covering the report out of fear of the "criminal-media nexus" blackball.

Harrit works alongside Thomas Bjorn Holm, head of the Nano-Science Center at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Copenhagen and may have been able to consult with Bjorn Holm, whose name does not appear on the report.

Harrit's Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Niels-Harrit/32509864153

Jones was a professor at Brigham Young University before being pressured to retire as a result of his 9/11 criticism,
http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/

The scientists used advanced technology, including scanning electron microscopy, X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy and differential scanning calorimetry.

One of the authors, Jeffrey Farrer, manages the electron microscopy facility for Brigham Young University's Department of Physics and Astronomy. His research includes nano-particle and thermitic reactions.
http://www.physics.byu.edu/directory.aspx?personID=23

Another author is Kevin R. Ryan, terminated by Underwriters Laboratory after raising technical issues concerning the official 9/11 narrative.
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Kevin-R-Ryan22nov04.htm

Physicist Daniel E. Farnsworth, as with a number of experts critical of the government claims about 9/11, is retired and presumably beyond the reach of career retribution incited by the mendacious, criminalized press. Like Jones, Farnsworth taught at Brigham Young.
http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/currvitaApril09.htm

Another author, Frank Legge, is an Australian chemist who serves as a co-editor at the Journal of 9-11 Studies.
http://www.scientistsfor911truth.org/mempages/Legge.html

Gregg Roberts, a 9/11 activist, is also listed, but a Google search gives no inkling of his scientific background.
http://world911truth.org/tag/gregg-roberts/

James R. Gourley identifies himself as a chemical engineer in an extensive criticism he submitted to the National Institute of Standards and Technology 9/11 investigation.
http://911research.wtc7.net/letters/nist/WTC7Comments.html

Bradley R. Larsen is another author. His firm, S&J Scientific, does not appear to have a web page trackable by Google and his scientific background did not show up in a Google search.*

The authors acknowledge conversations with a number of 9/11 critics, including retired naval physicist David L. Griscom
http://www.impactglassresearchinternational.com/
and former University of Iowa physicist Crockett Grabbe.
http://www.sealane.org/speak/index1.html
-----------------------------------------------------
*CORRECTION: A previous version of this page linked to an incorrect web site for Larsen.

2011-07-14T08:31:00.000-07:00

Murdoch tumult casts a cloud
over London's Iraq war inquiry
How will the Murdoch upheaval in Britain affect the Chilcot inquiry into government claims about the need to wage war against Iraq?

Labor Prime Minister Tony Blair was known by some as Rupert Murdoch's "poodle" because of Blair's relationship with the media tycoon. Gordon Brown, who succeeded Blair as a Labor premier, appointed -- under pressure -- the inquiry and, as Blair's chancellor of the exchequer, supported the war. He has lambasted the Murdoch press, which turned against Labor and supported David Cameron, the current Tory premier -- calling it a criminal enterprise.

The British public is learning that the Murdoch press regularly blackmailed police and politicians with threats of getting the tabloid sleaze treatment and politically rewarded those who were viewed as helpful to the Murdochs. The Murdoch press was jingoistic to the extreme on both sides of the Atlantic in lobbying for a war against Iraq, and accepted the weapons of mass destruction claims uncritically as well as continually implying that Saddam Hussein had been linked to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The "criminal-media nexus" identified by Brown has strong implications in the political sexing up of issues to feed to jingoistic news outlets.

A Wikileaks cable disclosed that Britain's Defense Ministry had acted on a U.S. request to assure that the inquiry, headed by Sir John Chilcot, protected U.S. interests.

An inquiry committee deputy secretary said that the committee believed it was beyond its scope to "reinvestigate the causes of 9/11" or to check whether "U.S. authorities" had done a good job in those investigations. However, the committee ignored the potential that British authorities had been slack in investigating the causes of 9/11 and hence had helped create the atmosphere (in league with the Murdoch press) for drumming up a war.

Here is the note:

Dear Mr [Paul] Conant

Thank you for your email and the material to which you directed us. I am afraid that the Inquiry Committee does not accept that it is within the Inquiry's terms of reference to reinvestigate the causes of 9/11 nor that it is within its scope to express a view on whether the US authorities have properly investigated those events.

Yours sincerely,

Clare Salters
Deputy Secretary, Iraq Inquiry

Meanwhile, Murdoch's defiance of a request to testify before a parliamentary committee sent out new political shockwaves, with some asserting that the tycoon was so accustomed to having his way with politicians that he assumed he could airily ignore members of the House of Commons.

Others thought that his decision to appear before a judicial inqury, but not the Commons committee, smacked of an attempt to avoid a tabloid-style frenzy of negative coverage at a Commons appearance.

His U.S. citizenship has been given as a reason for being able to avoid compulsory testimony. However, whether this is sufficient grounds has yet to be fully determined. Certainly, the U.S. Congress would never brook such a stance.

His aide, Rebekah Brooks, who is British, has agreed to appear before Parliament but indicated she would avail herself of the equivalent of the U.S. Fifth Amendment right to remain silent to avoid self-incrimination.

His son, James, in another example of Murdoch hubris, declared that he couldn't testify in Parliament when it required but would have to await his pleasure -- presumably with the hope that the media heat would have died down. James also holds U.S. citizenship.

In the United States, CNN reports that pressure mounted for a federal investigation into Murdoch's media empire Thursday as a key member of a House oversight committee called for Congress to look into allegations that one of Murdoch's U.S.-based companies possibly broke anti-bribery and other laws.

Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Iowa, told CNN that "Congress has important oversight responsibilities" in responding to the charges and "getting to the bottom of this evolving scandal."

Murdoch's News Corp. -- the parent company of Fox News -- may have engaged in "political espionage or personal espionage," Braley said.

Another lawmaker, Rep. Peter T. King, the Republican who heads the House Homeland Security Committee, called on the FBI to look into possible Murdoch company wrongdoing in the wake of a report that the company tried to hack 9/11 victim cell phones.

Democratic senators John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, Barbara Boxer of California and Robert Menendez and Frank R. Lautenberg, both of New Jersey, called for federal investigations into Murdoch practices.

The U.S. government must ensure that victims in the United States have not been subjected to illegal and unconscionable actions by these newspapers seeking to exploit information about their personal tragedies for profit,” Menendez wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder.

Menendez, who represents a state that took many 9/11 casualties, observed that Scotland Yard's detective work might be shared with the FBI.

Several of the senators urged that the Securities and Exchange Commission also look into possible corporate misconduct.

In general, Republicans have been silent. Republican strategist Roger Ailes runs Murdoch's Fox News which, like his other U.S. media holdings, is perceived as favorable to GOP political aims.

2011-07-11T15:38:00.001-07:00

Murdoch empire doomed?
Scandal keeps worsening
Murdoch watcher Michael Wolff seems to think the London media firestorm over the Murdoch press's tactics might well mean the media empire will go under at any moment.
http://www.channel4.com/news/rupert-murdoch-facing-end-game-as-hack-scandal-worsens

At this point, according to a conjecture reported by Britain's Guardian newspaper, Rupert Murdoch's main aim is to safeguard his son James, who heads News Corp.'s British fiefdom.
Repercussions have reached U.S. shores, with an investor group filing suit in Delaware for relief of autocratic management of the publicly traded part of the media conglomorate.

The wild methods of the Murdoch press stem from management problems at upper levels, the suit says.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303678704576440341696152246.html

The latest shockers include reports that the Murdoch press targeted the cell phones of 9/11 victims and their relatives, poked through private financial records of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and even had Queen Elizabeth II on its list of cell phone hack targets. It was the hacking of Prince William's phone that alerted the prince's aides as to the source of the information and led to the mounting disclosures, which went viral once a former Murdoch man was secretly taped bragging about such practices.

If News International, or James Murdoch, are found to have condoned a practice of police bribes and payoffs, the U.S. Justice Dept. can impose fines on the parent News Corp., which is incorporated in the United States, and possibly seize assets. Politically, this may prove a boon to the Obama administration, which can hold out such a possibility if the Murdoch press in America is too hard on the president or too accommodating to the Republican Party.

Links to stories on the Murdoch hurricane at the Guardian:

2011-07-09T09:25:00.000-07:00

'The phones on the news desk have been ringing all week with people shouting the nastiest, most vile abuse'
GHOUL
MEDIA
OUTFIT
SENT
TO HELL
# Murdoch rushes to London as hacking scandal balloons
# Heir a potential target of U.S. corruption charges
# Massive destruction of evidence investigated
# Prime minister pledges a judicial inquiry
# Politicians under fire as too cozy with press crooks
# Advertisers pull away in horror

TOP MURDOCH AIDE HINTS AT WORSE TO COME
What could be worse than hacking of cell phones
of slain girl, kin of terrorist victims and war dead?
Scandal rocks global media empire

U.S. repercussions likely for Fox News
and other Murdoch holdings as
son is exposed to U.S. graft charges,
PARENT FIRM FACES POTENTIAL ASSETS SEIZURE

Big TV deal dealt major setback
NEWS OF THE WORLD'S FINAL EDITION

News Int'l: Rupert Murdoch, son James
are braced to give evidence 'under oath'

2011-07-08T11:55:00.000-07:00

Arizona warned health workers
of possible E. coli terror strike
Arizona authorities were sufficiently concerned about the potential for E. coli terrorism to issue a warning to health workers, according to a public document found on the internet.

The possibility that food supplies might be deliberately contaminated with a vicious form of E. coli known as the O157:H7 serotype was raised in a circular to health professionals updated in August 2004. That strain, though not as lethal as the O104:H4 strain that broke out in Germany and France in May, can bring about severe health effects, including kidney failure.
http://www.azdhs.gov/phs/edc/edrp/pdf/escherichiacoliset.pdf

"In a terrorist attack, E. coli would most likely occur due to intentional contamination of food or water supplies," according to Arizona's Office of Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response, adding: "In addition aerosolization could be a possibility."

Authorities and media have cooperated to say nothing about the probabilities of terrorism or of escape from a laboratory, in the recent O104:H4 outbreak that has killed 50 and sickened 4,000, many suffering permanent kidney damage or failure. They have also cooperated to shield the food distributors involved in selling suspect fenugreek seed from being publicly named.

The strain is, like the O157:H7 strain, quite rare. But the O104:H4 serotype has evolved to acquire immunity to a wide range of antibiotics and has acquired the DNA of the plague pathogen, according to experts.

The possibility that the O104:H4 pathogen is a genetically engineered strain that may have escaped from a laboratory is passed over in silence. However, potential escapes are a serious concern for scientists.

One theory of the 1977 Russian influenza pandemic is that the virus escaped from a research center, according to S.J. Flint and her colleagues in Principles of Virology published by the American Society for Microbiology in 2000.

The devastating Ebola virus came perilously close to escaping a research facility in Washington, D.C., it has been reported. Deaths of researchers infected by Marburg virus are also on record.

Below is a "quick view" copy of the Arizona circular:

Escherichia Coli O157:H7
Bioterrorism Agent Profiles for Health Care Workers
Causative Agent: Escherichia coli serotype O157:H7 is a gram-negative, rod-shaped bacterium
that produces Shiga toxin(s). This rare variety of E.coli produces large quantities of potent toxins
that cause severe damage to the lining of the intestines, leading to hemorrhagic colitis.
Routes of Exposure: Ingestion of contaminated food or water is the main route of exposure, but
direct person-to-person contact can also spread infection.
Infective Dose & Infectivity: May be as few as 10 organisms. All people are believed to be
susceptible to hemorrhagic colitis, but young children and the elderly appear to progress to more
serious symptoms more frequently.
Incubation Period: The incubation can be from 2 to 8 days, but it usually ranges from 3 to 4 days.
Clinical Effects: The illness is characterized by severe cramping (abdominal pain) and diarrhea
which is initially watery, but becomes grossly bloody. Occasionally vomiting occurs. Fever is
either low-grade or absent. The illness is usually self-limited and lasts for an average of 8 days.
Some individuals exhibit watery diarrhea only.
A severe clinical manifestation of E. coli O157:H7 infection is hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS).
Up to 15% of those with bloody diarrhea from E. coli 0157:H7 can develop HUS, which can lead to
permanent kidney failure.
Lethality: The overall mortality rate for E. coli O157:H7 is <1%. For those who develop HUS, the
death rate is between 3-5%.
Transmissibility: The major source of transmission is the consumption of raw or undercooked
ground beef. Other sources of transmission include unpasteurized milk and juice, alfalfa sprouts,
lettuce, dry-cured salami, and contact with infected animals. Waterborne transmission can occur
by swimming in or drinking inadequately chlorinated water such as that found in contaminated
lakes and swimming pools. The organism is easily transmitted from person-to-person when proper
hand washing techniques are not used.
Primary Contamination & Methods of Dissemination: In a terrorist attack, E. coli would most
likely occur due to intentional contamination of food or water supplies. In addition aerosolization
could be a possibility.

Secondary Contamination & Persistence of organism: Secondary transmission can result from
exposure to the stool of patients with overt disease. Diarrheal fluids are highly infectious. The
period of infectivity of stool is typically a week or less in adults but 3 weeks in one-third of children.
Prolonged carriage of E. coli O157:H7 in the stool is uncommon.
Decontamination & Isolation:
Patients – No decontamination necessary. Patients can be treated with standard
precautions, with contact precautions for diapered or incontinent patients. Hand washing is of
particular importance.
Equipment & other objects – 0.5% hypochlorite solution (one part household bleach and
nine parts water), EPA approved disinfectants, and/or soap and water can be used for
environmental decontamination.
Laboratory Testing: Clinical laboratories can screen for E. coli O157:H7 in stool samples by
using sorbitol-MacConkey agar.
Therapeutic Treatment: Most people recover without specific treatment in five to ten days. For
uncomplicated cases, rehydration may be all that is required. Fluid and electrolyte replacement is
important when diarrhea is watery or there are signs of dehydration. Antibiotics are often avoided
in E. coli O157:H7 infections, since some evidence suggests that antibiotic treatment may
precipitate complications such as HUS.
Prophylactic Treatment: No vaccine is available to prevent E. coli O157:H7 infections.
Differential Diagnosis: Salmonella, Shigella, Campylobacter, Yersinia enterocolitis, and bacterial
food poisoning may show similar signs and symptoms.
References:
Chin J. Control of Communicable Diseases Manual, Seventeenth Edition, American Public Health
Association; 2000.
Foodborne Pathogenic Microorganisms and Natural Toxins Handbook, Center for Food Safety and
Applied Nutrition, U.S. Food and Drug Administration http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~mow/intro.html
For more information call (602) 364-3289
Updated August 2004 Page 5.20
Arizona Department of Health Services
Division of Public Health Services
Office of Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response
ESCHERICHIA

Updated August 2004 Page 5.19
Arizona Department of Health Services
Division of Public Health Services
Office of

Correction: A previous version of this story contained an error mischaracterizing the plague pathogen as a virus.
***********************************

Murdoch's News Int. is probed

on vast destruction of evidence

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/08/phone-hacking-emails-news-international

2011-07-07T09:21:00.001-07:00

Authorities resist discussion
of possible E. coli terrorism
In the wake of vicious E. coli outbreaks in Europe, authorities are silent on the possibility that the strange pathogen was either disseminated by bioterrorists or somehow escaped from a research laboratory,

Both in Europe and America, reporters are publishing nothing on the possibilities, not even assurances from security authorities or experts that such scenarios were highly unlikely. One would expect that if either scenario was improbable, security agencies would have been glad to say so.

Britain's Telegraph newspaper published one story last month which said that the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure, a security agency, was concerned about the possibility of food-poisoning terrorism, but after the story appeared, a search of that agency's web site for the relevant statement or anything pertinent proved futile.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/8557373/Food-chain-at-risk-of-being-poisoned-by-terrorist-groupsAGA SAAT GMBH .html

Web searches show no other media even asking questions about such a scenario, indicating a government-media agreement to avoid the topic, along with the topic of a potential accidental release.

The Center for Infectious Disease Research And Policy (CIDRAP) has complained that health authorities had done a disservice to the public by refusing to name a German seed firm apparently involved in the contamination. Newz from Limbo has published the firm's identity: AGA SAAT GMBH. However, virtually all internet news stories have omitted the firm's name.

No response was received from experts, including those at CIDRAP, who were asked by Newz from Limbo in emails about the possibility the pathogen escaped from a laboratory or was deliberately engineered and disseminated.

Laboratory escapes are a source of concern among pathologists. For example, the H1N1 viral strain known as Russian influenza was theorized to have escaped from a laboratory, according to Principles of Virology by S.J. Flint et al (American Society for Microbiology 2000).

Dr. Helge Karch, a German E. coli expert, had called the pathogen unusual because it was a "chimera" that included plague DNA. The plague pathogen resides in rat fleas and rats are known to invade seed graineries. However, the peculiar E. coli pathogen had also developed resistance to a wide range of antibiotics.

No response from Karch was received to an email query sent him.

Here is the email to Karch:

Hello Dr. Karch,

I'm wondering what the likelihood might be that the o104:h4 strain is a genetically engineered pathogen that either escaped from a research center or was deployed as a terrorist weapon. Or is it more probable that one or more viruses brought about the genetic recombination naturally?

What mechanism would be likely to introduce plague DNA into the E. coli -- a virus that hopped from a rat flea to another mammal? Has o104:h4 ever been detected in rats?

I am also trying to be sure of where and under what circumstances the precursor strain that you identified originated.

Best regards,
Paul Conant
Newz from Limbo

A similar inquiry was sent to CIDRAP.

It should be noted that on occasion the Google email accounts of Paul Conant, editor of Newz from Limbo, are hacked and various materials deleted. Care has been taken to be sure that passwords are strong.

A satirical article about E. coli "terrorism" appeared on Alternet and was republished by Le Monde.
http://www.alternet.org/food/151255/100_scared%3A_how_the_national_security_complex_grows_on_terrorism_fears_/
But no serious questions seem to have been asked.

E. coli veggie screening under fire
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/07/vegetable-screening/

Dad outraged at report of hack of phone
after son was killed in terror bombings

Fox News owner shuts outlet
in cell phone hacking scandal
Ad boycotts embroil press magnate Murdoch

Hackings said to include:
# Deleting messages on slain girl's phone
# Spying on grieving kin of slain soldiers

The media titan Rupert Murdoch sought to stanch damage from a deepening phone hacking scandal on Thursday by sacrificing the mass-circulation British weekly The News of the World, in a bid to protect his News Corporation empire, the New York Times reports.

The cell-hack saga turned yet more disturbing yesterday with suggestions that the paper had broken into the voicemail not only of a 13-year-old murder victim but also of relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that the paper had paid tens of thousands of dollars in bribes to police officers for information.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/world/europe/08britain.html?hp

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/07/world/europe/07britain.html?scp=1&sq=hacking%20cell&st=cse

2011-07-05T13:23:00.000-07:00

Chilling E. coli scenarios arise
as probers close in on source
The tracking of deadly E. coli pathogens carrying plague DNA to a single lot of spice seeds poses disturbing scenarios for investigators.

Because the E. coli strain, O104:H4, is believed to have originated in human intestines before mutating to an extremely antibiotic-resistant form, the contamination of the lot almost certainly stemmed from at least one human handler.

This handler is very likely to have either been someone in Germany at the import firm AGA SAAT GMBH or in Egypt or on a cargo line in order to have affected people some 750 miles apart.

Scenario 1:
The handler, who might have been resistant to the strain, inadvertently contaminated the fenugreek seeds, which in raw form are used as spices in curries and other dishes. In that case, there would be reason to believe that the strain was a hospital-bred strain that had not previously been identified.

Yet, European health authorities monitor hospitals for such strains, and no such strain has been reported as a hospital-borne problem. This would then lead to suspicion of Egyptian hospitals, which a decade ago were reported to be hotbeds for the breeding of super-bugs resistant to antibiotics. (Hospitals worldwide are contending with this problem.) But, Egyptian authorities said that the O104:H4 strain was unknown in Egypt. Its precursor is known, however, in Germany.

In 2008, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control published research saying that a study of Spanish hospital patients had shown that treatment with the antibiotic ampicillin appeared to be affecting human intestinal E. coli. This report may have triggered the initial suspicion that Spanish cucumbers were the infection carrier.

Scenario 2:
The handler was a terrorist, either acting alone or in concert with others, who sprinkled the bacteria onto the lot either when in Egypt or in Germany, or possibly during transit by ship and rail.

If the seeds were deliberately contaminated, investigators would then face the issue of how the strain was developed. There are methods of breeding antibiotic resistant strains. Researchers may try to provoke such resistance in order to study bacterial biology.

Dr. Helge Karch, a German E. coli expert, reported that “the O104:H4 bacteria responsible for the current outbreak are a so-called 'chimera' that contains genetic material" from various E. coli bacteria. The bug "also contains DNA sequences from plague bacteria which makes it particularly pathogenic.” He also has said he believed the strain to have originated in humans, rather than livestock.

The fact that the strain picked up resistance to such a wide spectrum of antibiotics in a relatively short span of perhaps less than a decade is a matter of concern.

No terrorist group is reliably reported to have claimed credit for the outbreak. However, a loner with sufficient biological training could well have pulled off such a deed. Al Qaeda and its allies have been urging individuals to exact revenge for the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Last year U.S. officials sought to play down a report that al Qaeda had been considering poisoning U.S. salad bars with ricin, a feared chemical warfare weapon.
http://articles.cnn.com/2010-12-21/us/al.qaeda.poison.plot_1_threat-stream-food-supply-al-qaeda-group?_s=PM:US

At any rate, in either scenario, the world is facing a new era of troubles. The "global village" effect means that emergent diseases and biological warfare can have wide-ranging impact, as seen by the fact that the contaminated seeds were eaten by Europeans 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) apart.

A strain of E. coli isolated in South Korea showed similarity to the German and French serotype. However, researchers say the Korean serotype -- biological indicators of resistance to antibiotics and other bacteriacides -- is markedly different from that of the European killer strain, according to a paper published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

The culprit pathogen seems to be an evolved and extremely toxic version of a microorganism first identified in Münster, Germany, in 2001, according to genetic analyses done by two separate teams of scientists, the Wall Street Journal has reported. This would tend to indicate that the source of contamination was a food handler at the German organic food firm AGA SAAT GMBH.

"Everything we know so far indicates it is an evolved strain," the Journal quoted Alexander Mellmann of the University Hospital of Münster, as saying. Mellmann was involved in the genetic analysis. "If it was completely unknown, we'd struggle a lot more in our effort to fight it."

In addition to Mellmann's group, a separate team from BGI, formerly known as the Beijing Genomics Institute, and University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf compared the genetic material of the 2001 and 2011 strains. They found that seven genes crucial to both bugs' survival are identical, as are 12 virulence/fitness genes shared by both, the Journal said.

The 2001 strain caused fewer than five identified cases world-wide, and scientists never did identify its natural reservoir—where a new strain of the E. coli bug can originate, such as in cattle. But the genetic analysis showed that as the 2001 bug likely swapped genetic material with other bacterial strains, some big changes occurred, the Journal said.

The 2011 version turns out to be resistant to eight classes of antibiotics, including penicillin, streptomycin and sulfonamide. The likely reason is that rapid evolution "resulted in the gain of more genes during the last 10 years" that conferred immunity against many more antibiotics, according to BGI, according to the Journal.

The introduction of plague genes into the strain would have occurred via recombination of genes, which occurs naturally, but which is also accomplished by the techniques of genetic engineering.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) reports that the European toll in the outbreak of E. coli O104:H4 in Germany and France linked to the fenugreek seeds had risen to 4,173 illnesses and 49 deaths.

Those numbers include 892 hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) cases.

A single lot of seeds -- lot number 48088 -- from an Egyptian exporter appears to be the link between the German and French outbreaks, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) reports, even though microbiological tests carried out on the seeds have thus far been negative.

Food Safety News reports that EFSA cautions that those test results "cannot be interpreted as proof that a batch is not contaminated" with Shiga toxin-producing E. coli. Given that other lots may be implicated, and because exposure to a small quantity of the seeds can have a "severe health impact," the food-safety authority is recommending that all lots of fenugreek from the identified -- but unnamed -- exporter should be considered suspect, the news service said.

Fenugreek seeds from the suspect Egyptian lot - about 15,000 kilograms - were imported to one large German distributor, according to an AP report. Those seeds were then sold to 70 different companies, 54 of them in Germany, the center of the outbreak, and to 16 companies in 11 other European countries.

Meanwhile, the British company Thompson & Morgan said it is awaiting the results of lab tests on three kinds of its sprouting seeds - organic fenugreek, white mustard and rocket (arugula). It confirmed that its supplier had obtained organic fenugreek sprouting seed from Egypt, and that Thompson & Morgan in turn supplied seeds to a French garden center. That garden center was the source of the seeds used to grow sprouts served at a school event in the town of Bègles, where many of those sickened reported eating various cold soups garnished with sprouts.

However, as with the Egyptian exporter, Thompson & Morgan's supplier was not named. The German importer AGA SAAT GMBH has succeeded in having European authorities omit its name as the transhipment source of the infected seeds.
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/fs/food-disease/news/jul0111deletion.html

The French garden center was the source of the seeds used to grow sprouts served at a school event in the town of Bègles, where many of those sickened reported eating various cold soups garnished with sprouts.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/8557373/Food-chain-at-risk-of-being-poisoned-by-terrorist-groups.html

Two new Wikileaks emulators operating
http://www.zdnet.com.au/anonymous-launches-wikileaks-style-sites-339317882.htm

Newz from Limbo

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