Hillary Clinton: We Can’t Legalize Drugs Because ‘There Is Just Too Much Money in It’
February 8th, 2011Mmm hmm.
Via: Reason:
Last week, while visiting Mexico, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was interviewed by Denise Maerker of Televisa, who asked her opinion of proposals to address black-market violence by repealing drug prohibition. Clinton’s response illustrates not only the intellectual bankruptcy of the prohibitionist position but the economic ignorance of a woman who would be president (emphasis added):
Maerker: In Mexico, there are those who propose not keeping going with this battle and legalize drug trafficking and consumption. What is your opinion?
Clinton: I don’t think that will work. I mean, I hear the same debate. I hear it in my country. It is not likely to work. There is just too much money in it, and I don’t think that—you can legalize small amounts for possession, but those who are making so much money selling, they have to be stopped.
Mafia Holds Compromising Silvio Berlusconi Photos
February 8th, 2011Via: Telegraph:
A leading Italian photographer has alleged that mafia gangsters claim to possess compromising photos of Silvio Berlusconi at wild “bunga bunga” sex parties.
Fabrizio Corona, who runs a celebrity photography agency, claimed that members of the Camorra mafia in Naples are trying to sell the alleged images to gossip magazines.
“Representatives from a big weekly magazine went to Naples to buy photos of Berlusconi from the underworld,” he told an Italian television programme.
He said there were nude pictures of the Italian prime minister, but later appeared to backtrack, saying none of the images were “obscene”.
Mr Corona, who is known as the “king of the paparazzi,” also claimed that there had been a mysterious break-in at his photo agency, with thieves stealing several computer discs from his extensive picture archives, although he denied that he had any photos of Mr Berlusconi.
Prosecutors are expected to request as early as today that the prime minister, 74, be sent for trial on allegations of paying for sex with an underage prostitute, an erotic dancer known as Ruby the Heart Stealer, and of abusing his office by having her released on theft charges.
Investigators have compiled hundreds of pages of evidence which they claim prove that “several” women prostituted themselves at Mr Berlusconi’s parties at his villa outside Milan. He has denied all the claims.
Mr Corona has had legal troubles of his own and is appealing against a conviction for blackmailing celebrities with compromising photos.
But his allegations widened the investigation from Milan to Naples, with prosecutors now seeking to interview him.
Egypt: Pentagon Moving Warships, Preparing for Possible Evacuations
February 7th, 2011Translation: The Suez Canal will remain open.
Via: Los Angeles Times:
The Pentagon is moving U.S. warships and other military assets to make sure it is prepared in case evacuation of U.S. citizens from Egypt becomes necessary, officials said Friday.
The Kearsarge, an amphibious assault ship carrying 700 to 800 troops from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, and the Ponce have arrived in the Red Sea, putting them off Egypt’s shores in case the situation worsens.
Pentagon officials emphasized that military intervention in Egypt was not being contemplated and that the warships were being moved only for contingency purposes in case evacuations became necessary.
Homeland Security Hijacks Domain Names of Sites That Allegedly Linked to Copyrighted Materials
February 7th, 2011That’s right.
Don’t believe it? Here it is, from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) / Department of Homeland Security:
The websites seized yesterday were popular “linking” sites – a type of website that provides access, or “links,” to other websites where pirated sporting and pay-per-view events are hosted. Users simply click on a link to begin the process of downloading or streaming to their own computer an illegal broadcast of a sporting event from the third party website that is hosting the stream.
Linking websites are popular because they allow users to quickly browse content and locate illegal streams that would otherwise be more difficult to find. Visitors to these websites are being redirected to a banner that advises them that the domain name has been seized by the New York office of ICE HSI because of criminal copyright violations.
Via: Tech Crunch:
The biggest problem is that Homeland Security seems to suggest — without a hint of doubt — that merely linking to infringing content is criminal copyright infringement. That is a huge stretch. The affidavit appears to make it clear that it believes that these sites are guilty of direct criminal copyright infringement, rather than any sort of contributory copyright infringement. As we’ve discussed in the past, the courts have tended to say that embedding and linking can be contributory infringement, but not direct infringement. Homeland Security and ICE may be in for a bit of legal trouble trying to prove that embedding is direct infringement.
As with the last batch of seizures, it quickly becomes clear that Homeland Security was taking orders from private companies, and made absolutely no effort whatsoever to determine if the assertions made by those private parties (who might be helped by having Homeland Security shut down competitors and/or more innovative solutions) were accurate.
Related: cryptogon.ch
U.S. Has Secret Tools to Force Internet on Dictators
February 7th, 2011The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing.
Oh sure. U.S. PSYOP is just going to provide open Internet connections to the oppressed masses… *roll eyes*
Well, what this probably means is that, when you’re connected to .mil’s PSYOP ISP, you may get a ‘special’ version of the Internet. For example, when you type in cnn.com or google.com, what you see may be quite different from what the rest of the world sees. The military could be running proxies that make sites appear any way PSYOP planners want them to appear. They could load content from the actual sites, but, on the fly, add PSYOP payloads to what is sent to the target population.
So, while regular visitors to cnn.com see the usual cnn.com page, those who connect to .mil’s PSYOP ISP might see extra stories that have been created specifically for the mission at hand. Or, other stories might not appear at all.
Maybe search results for various topics are packed with totally bogus results.
How about a special version of YouTube with videos and users completely fabricated by .mil and not at all visible by people on the regular Internet?
A proxy server is like one of those food processors you see on TV infomercials at 4am. It slices. It dices. It minces. A carrot goes in one side as a carrot, but it could come out the other side a dozen different ways.
Via: Wired:
The U.S. military has no shortage of devices — many of them classified — that could restore connectivity to a restive populace cut off from the outside world by its rulers. It’s an attractive option for policymakers who want an option for future Egypts, between doing nothing and sending in the Marines. And it might give teeth to the Obama administration’s demand that foreign governments consider internet access an inviolable human right.
Arquilla, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, spent years urging the military to logic-bomb adversary websites, disrupt hostile online presences, and even cause communications blackouts to separate warring factions before they go nuclear. What the military can turn off, he says, it can also turn on — or at least fill dead airspace.
Consider the Commando Solo, the Air Force’s airborne broadcasting center. A revamped cargo plane, the Commando Solo beams out psychological operations in AM and FM for radio, and UHF and VHF for TV. Arquilla doesn’t want to go into detail how the classified plane could get a denied internet up and running again, but if it flies over a bandwidth-denied area, suddenly your Wi-Fi bars will go back up to full strength.
“We have both satellite- and nonsatellite-based assets that can come in and provide access points to get people back online,” Arquilla says. “Some of it is done from ships. You could have a cyber version of pirate radio.”
Chinese Corn Imports Forecast to Soar
February 7th, 2011Via: Financial Times:
Corn prices – and with them, the price of meat – are set to explode if the latest import estimates from China are correct.
Last year, Beijing recorded its largest imports of corn since its disastrous crop of 1995-96. But this year could see further record buying. The US Grain Council, the industry body, said late on Thursday that it has received information pointing to Chinese imports as high as 9m tonnes in 2011-12, up from 1.3m in 2010-11.
If true, it means that the corn market is a lot tighter than even the most bullish traders imagine. The US Department of Agriculture, which compiles benchmark estimates of supply, demand and stocks, forecast Chinese imports at just 1m tonnes in 2011-12.
The most China has imported in modern history is 4.3m tonnes in 1994-95 and 3m tonnes in 1978-79. For most of the past 50 years, Beijing has been largely absent from the international market, as domestic production was enough to meet demand.
But Terry Vinduska, the chairman of the council, said after visiting China that “estimates given to us were that China is short of 10m-15m tonnes in stocks and will need to purchase corn this year”. He pointed to about 9m tonnes in imports. “We learned the government normally keeps stocks at 30 per cent but they are currently a little over 5 per cent, which may lead to imports of 3m-9m tonnes.”
Related: Largest Soybean Sale Ever Between U.S. and China
New Zealand: Rural Broadband Light at the End of the Tunnel is the Train
February 7th, 2011You’ve heard of putting a wolf in charge of guarding a hen house. In rural New Zealand, we’ll get two wolves on the job.
The final announcement has not yet been made, so I suppose there’s a chance that it might not be as bad as it looks now. However, my money is on the light at the end of the tunnel being the train.
Via: Computerworld NZ:
The other bidders for the Rural Broadband Initiative say they don’t know the basis of the decision to award the tender to Telecom/Vodafone and that they can’t see where the proposed copper/3G proposal can be superior.
“They say they’re going to a proven technology with copper – it’s so proven that it’s being replaced by fibre everywhere,” says Kordia ceo Geoff Hunt.
“The opportunity to deploy much better broadband has been lost. It is really disappointing,” he claims. “New Zealand had an opportunity to invest in 4G technology, which is where Australia and China are going. We’re really disappointed.”
He claims the decision effectively condemns rural communities to suffering from same old duopoly services that continue to under-deliver and hold rural New Zealand hostage.
“The government had an opportunity through the RBI to provide a technology step-change in services for rural New Zealand that would have laid a future-proof and highly competitive foundation for the next 15 years.
“We should remember that this was supposed to be the rural broadband initiative and not the rural mobile initiative.”
Hunt claims Telecom’s copper has been rejected for urban New Zealand and performs even more poorly in rural environments.
“The 3G element of the Telecom /Vodafone solution is being superseded all around the world by fourth-generation wireless (4G) technologies like TD-LT, OpenGate’s proposed technology solution for the RBI.
“Australia, India, China and the US are all planning to roll out this technology now, and between them will have more than one billion customers. We thought this would have been a compelling sign for New Zealand if the Government wanted to keep in-step with its key trading partners. Alas, no.’
“Telecom is also in contract negotiations to deliver Ultra-Fast Broadband, which requires them to deliver up to 100 Mbps in urban areas. Rural access to up to 5 Mbps will hardly close the digital divide,” Hunt says .
“Without competition, it is hard to see this duopoly doing anything other than rolling out the minimum requirement of 5 Mbps over six years. Urban users in the same timeframe will have access to 100 Mbps,” he claims.
Sugar Shortage Looms as Storm Ruins Australian Crop
February 6th, 2011Via: Bloomberg:
World sugar output will probably fall short of demand, said Rabobank, after a cyclone with winds stronger than Hurricane Katrina destroyed homes and smashed crops in Australia, driving prices to 30-year highs.
Tropical Cyclone Yasi ripped through northern Queensland, a region growing a third of the country’s cane, cutting output potential in the area by about 50 percent, producers group Canegrowers said Feb. 4. The storm, which the government says may have wiped out at least A$500 million ($507 million) of agricultural production, raised speculation that the world’s third-largest sugar exporter may struggle to match last year’s output that was the lowest in two decades.
Like Other War Criminals, Bush Has to Plan Travel Carefully; Cancels Visit to Switzerland
February 6th, 2011Via: Reuters:
Former President George W. Bush has canceled a visit to Switzerland, where he was to address a Jewish charity gala, due to the risk of legal action against him for alleged torture, rights groups said on Saturday.
Bush was to be the keynote speaker at Keren Hayesod’s annual dinner on February 12 in Geneva. But pressure has been building on the Swiss government to arrest him and open a criminal investigation if he enters the Alpine country.
Criminal complaints against Bush alleging torture have been lodged in Geneva, court officials say.
Hackers Penetrate Nasdaq Computers
February 6th, 2011Via: Wall Street Journal:
Hackers have repeatedly penetrated the computer network of the company that runs the Nasdaq Stock Market during the past year, and federal investigators are trying to identify the perpetrators and their purpose, according to people familiar with the matter.
The exchange’s trading platform—the part of the system that executes trades—wasn’t compromised, these people said. However, it couldn’t be determined which other parts of Nasdaq’s computer network were accessed.
Investigators are considering a range of possible motives, including unlawful financial gain, theft of trade secrets and a national-security threat designed to damage the exchange.
The Nasdaq situation has set off alarms within the government because of the exchange’s critical role, which officials put right up with power companies and air-traffic-control operations, all part of the nation’s basic infrastructure. Other infrastructure components have been compromised in the past, including a case in which hackers planted potentially disruptive software programs in the U.S. electrical grid, according to current and former national-security officials.
“So far, [the perpetrators] appear to have just been looking around,” said one person involved in the Nasdaq matter. Another person familiar with the case said the incidents were, for a computer network, the equivalent of someone sneaking into a house and walking around but—apparently, so far—not taking or tampering with anything.
A spokesman for Nasdaq declined to comment.
A probe into the matter was initiated by the Secret Service and now includes the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
