Secret U.S. Panel Puts Americans on ‘Kill List’
October 6th, 2011Hopey Changey.
Via: Reuters:
American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior U.S. government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to U.S. officials.
There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House’s National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.
Related: The Secret Memo That Explains Why Obama Can Kill Americans
California Appeals Court Approves Cell Phone Searches During Traffic Stops; No Warrant Necessary
October 6th, 2011Via: The Blaze:
…after initially striking down cell phone snooping, California has now joined the list of states that allow cops to go through your phone without a warrant.
Related: Police Device Used To Steal Your Cell Phone Data During Traffic Stop
U.S. Drone Helicopters to Begin Troop Re-Supply Operations in Afghanistan
October 6th, 2011Via: Wired:
Next month, the Afghanistan war gets a boost. Specifically, a boost from a robotic helicopter that ferries gear to U.S. troops.
Check out the video above. That’s the K-MAX helicopter, a collaboration between defense giant Lockheed Martin and Connecticut aerospace company Kaman, lifting off from an Arizona test site in August, after its human pilot walked out of the cockpit. The copter ascends, toting nets bearing what look like hundreds of pounds’ worth of palletized cargo, flies the gear off to another part of the Yuma Proving Ground, drops it safely, and lands.
This isn’t the first unmanned helicopter used in the Afghanistan war. Earlier this year, the Navy — which also owns the K-MAX — sent its Fire Scout surveillance helos into the war zone, where they flew as much as 400 hours per month. But K-MAX is the first robo-copter used for cargo operations, and the Department of the Navy’s been looking for months at using drone helos not only to drop troops their re-supply, but to get wounded warriors to a field hospital before it’s too late.
DARPA Symposium Speakers Consider Implications of Contact with Aliens on Religion
October 6th, 2011[???]
Via: Space:
The discovery of intelligent aliens would be mind-blowing in many respects, but it could present a special dilemma for the world’s religions, theologians pondering interstellar travel concepts said Saturday (Oct. 1).
Christians, in particular, might take the news hardest, because the Christian belief system does not easily allow for other intelligent beings in the universe, Christian thinkers said at the 100 Year Starship Symposium, a meeting sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to discuss issues surrounding traveling to other stars.
In other words, “Did Jesus die for Klingons too?” as philosophy professor Christian Weidemannof Germany’s Ruhr-University Bochum titled his talk at a panel on the philosophical and religious considerations of visiting other worlds.
“According to Christianity, an historic event some 2,000 years ago was supposed to save the whole of creation,” Weidemann said. “You can grasp the conflict.” [10 Alien Encounters Debunked]
Here’s how the debate goes: If the whole of creation includes 125 billion galaxies with hundreds of billions of stars in each, as astronomers think, then what if some of these stars have planets with advanced civilizations, too? Why would Jesus Christ have come to Earth, of all the inhabited planets in the universe, to save Earthlings and abandon the rest of God’s creatures?
‘Unprecedented’ Problems with Bank of America’s Web Site
October 6th, 2011Customers closing accounts after the announcement of the $5 per month EFT card fee?
There’s a bit of a movement underway to let Bank of America know how customers feel about that $5 fee. People are either emptying their accounts of funds, or closing their accounts completely. I’m very happy to say that my balance is now $26. haha.
Via: ComputerWorld:
The six days of online brownouts and slowdowns that have plagued Bank of America’s website are “unprecedented,” a leading Internet and mobile cloud monitoring service said today.
“I don’t think we’ve seen as significant and as long an outage with any bank. And I’ve been with Keynote for 16 years now,” said Shawn White, vice president of operations for web monitoring service Keynote Systems. “It’s particularly shocking precisely because these banks know how critical it is for their online customers to be able to access their bank account. It’s so personal and dear to them.”
Bank of America (BofA) said its Web and mobile services have not been hit by hacking or denial-of-service attacks. But the nation’s largest bank would not disclose what’s causing its online problems.
The bank also said it has substituted its standard homepage with an alternate one to help in user navigation.
“I just want to be really clear. Every indication [is that] recent performance issues have not been the result of hacking, malware or denial of service,” said BofA spokeswoman Tara Burke. “We’ve had some intermittent or sporadic slowness. We don’t break out the root cause.”
It’s Man vs. Machine and Man Is Losing
October 6th, 2011More machines, fewer workers.
Via: Wall Street Journal:
In the man-versus-machine competition, machine is winning. And it’s not just Watson beating humans on “Jeopardy.”
Since the recession ended, businesses had increased their real spending on equipment and software by a strong 26%, while they have added almost nothing to their payrolls.
Against the Institution: A Warning for ‘Occupy Wall Street’
October 6th, 2011Via: Andrew Gavin Marshall:
While I fully endorse the efforts and actions of the Occupy Wall Street protests, now emerging internationally, there are concerns which need to be addressed and kept in mind as the movement moves forward.
The process through which a potentially powerful movement may be co-opted and controlled is slight and subtle. If Occupy Wall Street hopes to strive for the 99%, it must not submit to the 1%, in any capacity.
The Occupy movement must prevent what happened to the Tea Party movement to happen to it. Whatever ideological stance you may have, the Tea Party movement started as a grass roots movement, largely a result of anti-Federal Reserve protests. They were quickly co-opted with philanthropic money and political party endorsements.
For the Occupy Movement to build up and become a true force for change, it must avoid and reject the organizational and financial ‘contributions’ of institutions: be they political parties, non-profits, or philanthropic foundations. The efforts are subtle, but effective: they seek to organize, professionalize, and institutionalize a movement, push forward the issues they desire, which render the movement useless for true liberation, as these are among the very institutions the movement should be geared against.
This is not simply about “Wall Street,” this is about POWER. Those who have power, and those who don’t. When those who have power offer a hand in your struggle, their other hand holds a dagger. Remain grassroots, remain decentralized, remain outside and away from party politics, remain away from financial dependence. Freedom is not merely in the aim, it’s in the action.
The true struggle is not left versus right, democrat versus republican, liberal versus conservative, or libertarian versus socialist. The true struggle is that of people against the institution: the State, the banks, the central banking system, the corporation, the international financial institutions, the military, the political parties, the mainstream media, philanthropic foundations, think tanks, university, education, psychiatry, the legal system, the church, et. al.
The transfer of power from one institution to another does not solve the crisis of our ‘institutional society,’ whereby a few have come to dominate so much, to concentrate so much power at the expense of everyone else having so little. True liberation will result only from opposition to ‘the institution’ as an entity. Placating power from one institution to another renders resistance ineffective. The power structures must be discredited, and power must be distributed to the people, through voluntary associations, communal groupings, and people-powered (and people-funded!) initiatives.
In order to survive as a movement, money will become a necessity. Do not turn to the non-profits and philanthropic foundations for support. The philanthropies, which fund and created the non-profits and NGOs, were themselves created to engage in ‘social engineering’: to ‘manufacture consent’ among the governed, and create consensus among the governors. The philanthropies (particularly those of Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller) fund social movements and protest organizations so as to steer them into directions which are safe for the elites. The philanthropies are themselves run by the elite, founded by bankers and industrialists striving to preserve their place at the top of the social structure in the midst of potentially revolutionary upheaval. As the president of the Ford Foundation once said, “Everything the foundation does is to make the world safe for capitalism.”
Money from philanthropies will organize the movement into a more professionalized entity, will direct its efforts around the promotion of legalistic reform, making slight changes to the system’s symptoms, promoting particular legislation, rallying around very specific issues removed from their global historical context. The effect is to turn anti-system revolutionaries into legalistic reformers. With such funding, movement organizers are drawn into the world of NGOs, international conferences, international institutions, aid agencies, and mainstream political participation. The leaders of the movement become professionalized and successful, both in prestige and finances. Thus, their own personal position becomes dependent upon promoting reform, not revolution; on maintaining the system (with minor changes to the aesthetic), not moving against it. The movement itself, then, would be institutionalized.
Flashback: Citigroup Plutonomy Memos
October 6th, 2011I was pretty sure that I’d posted these long ago, but I’m not finding them in my archives. In short: The rich are getting richer, so Citi advised buying a basket of stocks of companies that cater to very wealthy people.
Via: Monkeyfister:
…the rich are the dominant source of income, wealth and demand in plutonomy countries such as the UK, US, Canada and Australia, countries that have an economically liberal approach to wealth creation. We believe that the actions of the rich and the proportion of rich people in an economy helps explain many of the nasty conundrums and fears that have vexed our equity clients recently, such as global imbalances or why high oil prices haven’t destroyed consumer demand. Plutonomy, we think explains these problems away, and tells us not to worry about them. If we shouldn’t worry, the risk premia on equity markets may be too high.
Secondly, we believe that the rich are going to keep getting richer in coming years, as capitalists (the rich) get an even bigger share of GDP as a result, principally, of globalization. We expect the global pool of labor in developing economies to keep wage inflation in check, and profit margins rising – good for the wealth of capitalists, relatively bad for developed market unskilled/outsource-able labor. This bodes well for companies selling to or servicing the rich. We expect our Plutonomy basket of stocks – which has performed well relative to the S&P 500 index over the last 20 years – to continue performing well in future.
Research Credit: skippy the bush kangaroo
Geek Fight Club
October 5th, 2011Uppercut from California is a place. on Vimeo.
‘Sesame Street’ Unveils Muppet to Teach Kids About Hunger
October 5th, 2011Via: Entertainment Weekly:
Sesame Street has a new muppet who is hungry for more than just cookies.
The iconic kids show is set to unveil a new impoverished puppet named Lily, whose family faces an ongoing struggle with hunger issues. Lily will be revealed in a one-hour Sesame Street primetime special, Growing Hope Against Hunger, which is being sponsored by Walmart. The special will star country singer Brad Paisley and his wife Kimberly Williams Paisley, as well as the Sesame Street Muppets.
…
The special will share the stories of real-life families to raise awareness of hunger issues in the United States, as well as strategies that have helped these families find food. The United States Department of Agriculture estimates that 17 million American children — nearly 1 in 4 — have limited or uncertain access to affordable and nutritious food.
