NSA Pays £100m in Secret Funding for GCHQ

August 2nd, 2013

Via: Guardian:

The US government has paid at least £100m to the UK spy agency GCHQ over the last three years to secure access to and influence over Britain’s intelligence gathering programmes.

The top secret payments are set out in documents which make clear that the Americans expect a return on the investment, and that GCHQ has to work hard to meet their demands. “GCHQ must pull its weight and be seen to pull its weight,” a GCHQ strategy briefing said.

The funding underlines the closeness of the relationship between GCHQ and its US equivalent, the National Security Agency. But it will raise fears about the hold Washington has over the UK’s biggest and most important intelligence agency, and whether Britain’s dependency on the NSA has become too great.

In one revealing document from 2010, GCHQ acknowledged that the US had “raised a number of issues with regards to meeting NSA’s minimum expectations”. It said GCHQ “still remains short of the full NSA ask”.

Ministers have denied that GCHQ does the NSA’s “dirty work”, but in the documents GCHQ describes Britain’s surveillance laws and regulatory regime as a “selling point” for the Americans.


Dozens of CIA Operatives on the Ground During Benghazi Attack

August 2nd, 2013

Via: CNN:

CNN has uncovered exclusive new information about what is allegedly happening at the CIA, in the wake of the deadly Benghazi terror attack.

Four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed in the assault by armed militants last September 11 in eastern Libya.

Sources now tell CNN dozens of people working for the CIA were on the ground that night, and that the agency is going to great lengths to make sure whatever it was doing, remains a secret.

CNN has learned the CIA is involved in what one source calls an unprecedented attempt to keep the spy agency’s Benghazi secrets from ever leaking out.

Since January, some CIA operatives involved in the agency’s missions in Libya, have been subjected to frequent, even monthly polygraph examinations, according to a source with deep inside knowledge of the agency’s workings.

The goal of the questioning, according to sources, is to find out if anyone is talking to the media or Congress.

It is being described as pure intimidation, with the threat that any unauthorized CIA employee who leaks information could face the end of his or her career.


California: Largest Solar Thermal Energy Plant in the World

August 1st, 2013

Via: National Geographic:

The Ivanpah Valley of the Mojave Desert in California is home to spiky yucca trees, long-nosed leopard lizards, loggerhead shrikes, and a rare species of tortoise—and soon, the largest solar thermal energy plant in the world.

More than six years in the making, the Ivanpah plant is now slated to begin generating power before summer’s end. It was designed by BrightSource Energy to use more than 170,000 mirrors to focus sunlight onto boilers positioned atop three towers, which reach nearly 500 feet (150 meters) into the dry desert air. The reflected sunlight heats water in the boilers to make steam, which turns turbines to generate electricity—enough to power more than 140,000 homes.

At 377 megawatts (MW), Ivanpah’s capacity is more than double that of the Andusol, Solnava, or Extresol power stations in southern Spain, which previously were the largest in the world (150 MW each).

Research Credit: emulsified


Man Arrested At Theater Had Armor, Gun, Fake CIA ID

August 1st, 2013

Lawyer: “Costume” [???]

Via: Michigan Live:

The attorney for the man accused of impersonating a federal officer while wearing body armor and openly carrying a loaded gun claims the fake Central Intelligence Agency ID was part of a costume he was wearing.

Jeff Clothier, attorney for Cassidy Delavergne, the man who was arrested this week at NCG Trillium theater for having a fake ID and badge, said his client was returning to his car to put his gun away at the request of the theater manager when police came up to him in the parking lot.

Delavergne, 24, also was wearing a necklace with an attached golden, shied-shaped badge with the words of special agent and Central Intelligence Agency on it. Clothier said his client bought the badge on the Internet and made the ID through a computer program.

Clothier likened what Delavergne was wearing to a costume. The movie he was seeing, “Red 2” is about a group of retired CIA officers.

“You don’t arrest people for wearing consumes,” Clothier said.

He also wore the same outfit the week previous without incident when he saw “Despicable Me 2” at the same theater, his attorney said.

Clothier said Delavergne was unlawfully detained at the time he was searched.

“But for the unlawful detention, they may never have found the ID,” said Clothier.

Grand Blanc Township police could not be reached for comment on Clothier’s claims.

—

Random nutter, or???

Via: AP:

The FBI said a man arrested at a Michigan movie theater was wearing body armor and carrying a gun.

FBI spokesman Simon Shaykhet says police were called to the Trillium Theater in Grand Blanc Township near Flint on around 8:20 p.m. Tuesday after someone noticed the vest and gun.

Cassidy Delavergne was watching a movie when police approached him. According to investigators, Delavergne flashed a fake Central Intelligence Agency identification badge and told the officers that he was a federal agent.

Suspicious of his story, police arrested Delavergne and found he was wearing body armor and carrying a 9 mm pistol with 34 rounds of ammunition.

Federal agents arrived and searched Delavergne’s car, where they found an additional 111 rounds of ammunition. Shaykhet declined to say whether agents believe Delavergne planned to use his handgun.

A court filing says Delavergne told an agent he displayed the phony ID to minimize concerns about his gun.

Reporter Andrew Keller said right now, Delavergne has only been charged with having a CIA identification card.

“Right now, the FBI is not releasing anything about possible motives, but did say Delavergne claims he was wearing the body armor and carrying the gun because he just got off work and did not want to leave them in his car. The FBI also said he claimed to have a concealed weapons permit,” he said.


How Hollywood Helped Hitler

August 1st, 2013

Via: Hollywood Reporter:

Beginning with wholesale changes made to Universal’s 1930 release All Quiet on the Western Front, Hollywood regularly ran scripts and finished movies by German officials for approval. When they objected to scenes or dialogue they thought made Germany look bad, criticized the Nazis or dwelled on the mistreatment of Jews, the studios would accommodate them — and make cuts in the American versions as well as those shown elsewhere in the world.

It was not only scenes: Nazi pressure managed to kill whole projects critical of the rise of Adolf Hitler. Indeed, Hollywood would not make an important anti-Nazi film until 1940. Hitler was obsessed with the propaganda power of film, and the Nazis actively promoted American movies like 1937’s Captains Courageous that they thought showcased Aryan values.

Historians have long known about American companies such as IBM and General Motors that did business in Germany into the late 1930s, but the cultural power of movies — their ability to shape what people think — makes Hollywood’s cooperation with the Nazis a particularly important and chilling moment in history.

Book: The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact with Hitler by Ben Urwand


Behavioral Insights Team

August 1st, 2013

Unfortunately, Fox News is the the original source for this one, but it needs to be posted.

Via: Fox News:

The federal government is hiring what it calls a “Behavioral Insights Team” that will look for ways to subtly influence people’s behavior, according to a document describing the program obtained by FoxNews.com. Critics warn there could be unintended consequences to such policies, while supporters say the team could make government and society more efficient.

While the program is still in its early stages, the document shows the White House is already working on such projects with almost a dozen federal departments and agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture.

“Behavioral sciences can be used to help design public policies that work better, cost less, and help people to achieve their goals,” reads the government document describing the program, which goes on to call for applicants to apply for positions on the team.

The document was emailed by Maya Shankar, a White House senior adviser on social and behavioral sciences, to a university professor with the request that it be distributed to people interested in joining the team. The idea is that the team would “experiment” with various techniques, with the goal of tweaking behavior so people do everything from saving more for retirement to saving more in energy costs.

The document praises subtle policies to change behavior that have already been implemented in England, which already has a “Behavioral Insights Team.” One British policy concerns how to get late tax filers to pay up.

“Sending letters to late taxpayers that indicated a social norm — i.e., that ‘9 out of 10 people in Britain paid their taxes on time’ — resulted in a 15 percent increase in response rates over a three-month period, rolling out to £30 million of extra annual revenue,” the document reads.

Another policy aimed to convince people to install attic insulation to conserve energy.

“Offering an attic-clearance service (at full cost) to people led to a five-fold increase in their subsequent adoption of attic-insulation.”

Such policies — which encourage behavior subtly rather than outright require it — have come to be known as “nudges,” after an influential 2008 book titled “Nudge” by former Obama regulatory czar Cass Sunstein and Chicago Booth School of Business professor Richard Thaler popularized the term.

Original Document: Research to Results: Strengthening Federal Capacity for Behavioral Insights

Related: Obama Staffer Wants ‘Cognitive Infiltration’ of Conspiracy Groups


Florida: Christian Cannibal Puppeteer Arrested with Kiddie Porn; Planned to Abduct and Eat Child

August 1st, 2013

Via: Dangerous Minds:

This is one of those stories that just makes your blood run cold: Ronald William Brown of Largo, Florida, the 57-year-old proprietor of “Puppets Plus,” has been charged with the possession of child pornography and of conspiring with another man to kidnap and then eat a child.

The Christian Television Network kids program Joy Junction regularly featured Brown and his ventriloquist dummy “Marty,” who would warn about things like… pornography.

Brown, an active member of the Gulf Coast Church in Largo, and an accomplice, Michael Arnett, were planning to abduct a specific child who was a member of the church and who took part in Brown’s “Puppet Ministry Kidz Zone” youth ministry program.

Homeland Security agents who searched Brown’s home and tool shed yesterday discovered images of bound and gagged kids, photographs of dead children and a flier for a missing child.

Research Credit: EG


XKeyscore: NSA Tool Collects ‘Nearly Everything a User Does on the Internet’

July 31st, 2013

Via: Guardian:

A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its “widest-reaching” system for developing intelligence from the internet.

The latest revelations will add to the intense public and congressional debate around the extent of NSA surveillance programs. They come as senior intelligence officials testify to the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, releasing classified documents in response to the Guardian’s earlier stories on bulk collection of phone records and Fisa surveillance court oversight.

The files shed light on one of Snowden’s most controversial statements, made in his first video interview published by the Guardian on June 10.

“I, sitting at my desk,” said Snowden, could “wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email”.

US officials vehemently denied this specific claim. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, said of Snowden’s assertion: “He’s lying. It’s impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do.”

But training materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed.

XKeyscore, the documents boast, is the NSA’s “widest reaching” system developing intelligence from computer networks – what the agency calls Digital Network Intelligence (DNI). One presentation claims the program covers “nearly everything a typical user does on the internet”, including the content of emails, websites visited and searches, as well as their metadata.

Analysts can also use XKeyscore and other NSA systems to obtain ongoing “real-time” interception of an individual’s internet activity.


Are Dandelions A Natural Anti-Cancer Agent? Researchers Win Grant Money To Investigate

July 31st, 2013

Via: Medical Daily:

In a study published in Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Pandey explores a treatment of melanoma skin cancer made from a potent extract of dandelion root.

Melanoma skin cancer, which has become one of the leading cancer among adults ages 25 to 29 in North America, is oddly resistant to chemotherapy. Treatment, then, is limited to surgical excision of the primary tumor site followed by immunotherapy and mostly ineffective chemotherapy for metastasized melanoma. Not only do standard treatments often prove to be inadequate, but patients suffer harsh side effects, seemingly for nothing.

To meet the challenge of finding an effective and alternative therapy, Pandey and his colleagues recently investigated the effect of dandelion root extract (DRE) on human melanoma cell lines in vitro. Specifically, they prepared extracts of dandelion root using a variety of techniques, including filtration, lyophilization, constitution, and sterilization. After they prepared the DRE, they treated in vitro cells (A375 and G361 human melanoma cells, along with normal human fibroblasts — a common cell within the connective tissue) with the DRE, experimenting with different specific concentrations and time points.

What did they find?

The extract they had created targets the mitochondria, the site of cellular respiration, and generates reactive oxygen species, molecules which damage the cell. Although it is unclear which components of the DRE were active when successfully destroying the human melanoma cells, it clearly acted as a “natural chemotherapeutic agent that may be extended to other chemo-resistant cancer lines,” write the authors.

Not surprising many would say, as a wide variety of cultures have long asserted the healing possibilities of dandelions or as they are known in Latin, Taraxacum officinale.


Former Israeli Intelligence Operatives Now Working For Hedge Funds

July 31st, 2013

Via: Forbes:

A company staffed with former operatives of Israel’s top intelligence agencies and founded with the help of the former head of the Mossad is being used by hedge funds looking for an edge in the financial markets.

Kela Israeli Intelligence has increasingly become a popular service on Wall Street. The firm employs about 40 former intelligence operatives and analysts, most of them ex-members of the Israeli army’s secretive 8200 unit, which is often described as Israel’s equivalent to the National Security Agency and believed to be behind the Stuxnet computer worm that attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities. Kela also employs former agents of Israel’s Mossad spy agency and the company was founded with the help of Shabtai Shavit, the director general of the Mossad from 1989 to 1996, who sits on Kela’s advisory board.

Founded in 2009 with an eye toward harnessing the intelligence talent in Israel for use in the corporate sector, Kela does work for insurance companies, pension funds and sovereign wealth funds, but it has found its services are greatly in demand by hedge funds. Some 80% of its business is currently coming from hedge fund managers in New York, London and Hong Kong, according to Yigal Naveh, Kela’s chief executive officer and co-founder.

Research Credit: almaverdad2


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