FEDERAL JUDGE FINDS NATIONAL SECURITY LETTERS UNCONSTITUTIONAL, BANS THEM
March 16th, 2013Via: Wired:
Ultra-secret national security letters that come with a gag order on the recipient are an unconstitutional impingement on free speech, a federal judge in California ruled in a decision released Friday.
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston ordered the government to stop issuing so-called NSLs across the board, in a stunning defeat for the Obama administration’s surveillance practices. She also ordered the government to cease enforcing the gag provision in any other cases. However, she stayed her order for 90 days to give the government a chance to appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
“We are very pleased that the Court recognized the fatal constitutional shortcomings of the NSL statute,” said Matt Zimmerman, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed a challenge to NSLs on behalf of an unknown telecom that received an NSL in 2011. “The government’s gags have truncated the public debate on these controversial surveillance tools. Our client looks forward to the day when it can publicly discuss its experience.”
Austria: Poll Reveals Worrying Views About Banned Nazi Party
March 16th, 2013Via: Independent:
As Austria prepares to mark the anniversary of its annexation by Nazi Germany, an opinion poll has shown that more than half of the population think it highly likely that the Nazis would be elected if they were readmitted as a party.
A further 42 per cent agreed with the view that life “wasn’t all bad under the Nazis”, and 39 per cent said they thought a recurrence of anti-Semitic persecution was likely in Austria.
The disturbing findings were contained in a poll conducted for the Vienna newspaper, “Der Standard” in advance of Tuesday’s 75th anniversary of Austria’s Nazi annexation – a date which still counts as one of the most shameful and controversial in the country’s history.
Tens of thousands of Austrians gave Adolf Hitler and his troops a rapturous welcome when they invaded the country unopposed in March 1938. Austria fought World War II as part of Nazi Germany and many Austrians helped run Nazi death camps. Yet for decades, post-war Austria frequently perpetuated the myth that it was a victim of Nazi oppression. Der Standard said its poll was designed to show how today’s Austrians judged Nazi rule.
Neighbouring Germany’s popular “Stern” magazine described the poll’s findings as shocking today. The poll also showed that 61 per cent of Austrian adults wanted to see a “strong man” in charge of government, and 54 per cent said they thought it would be “highly likely” that the Nazis would win seats in they were allowed to take part in an election.
Some 46 per cent of those polled said they believed Austria was a victim of Nazi oppression in 1938, while 61 per cent said they believed that “enough” had been done to reappraise Austria’s Nazi past.
Research Credit: latitude38
Land of the Free: What Are My Rights at Various “Checkpoints”?
March 15th, 2013I’ve never heard of or encountered the ‘Drug Checkpoint’ scam before! When did the filth start trying that one on?
The Supreme Court has ruled that random checkpoints for the purpose of finding illegal drugs are unconstitutional. However, police sometimes put up signs warning drivers of up-coming drug checkpoints and instead pull over people who make illegal u-turns or discard contraband out the window. If you see a sign saying “Drug Checkpoint Ahead”, just keep driving and don’t panic. If there’s a rest area following the sign, DO NOT pull into it. If you do, you’ll find yourself surrounded by drug-sniffing dogs.
Police departments, especially in the Mid-west, have been pushing their luck with this tactic, so if you encounter anything resembling an actual drug checkpoint, please contact that state’s ACLU Chapter. Similarly, if you’re arrested as a result of a real or fake “drug checkpoint”, you must contact an attorney to explore your legal options.
Via: Flex Your Rights:
There are four general types of checkpoints you might encounter: DUI checkpoints, US border checkpoints, drug checkpoints, and TSA checkpoints. In a legal sense, they are not all created equal. So depending on which one you encounter, you’ll want to be prepared to flex your rights appropriately.
Research Credit: Pookie
This Is Anarcho-Herbalism
March 15th, 2013Via: Alchemy Works:
A society of people who are responsible for their own health and able to gather or grow their own medicines is a hard society to rule. These days we are dependent on the power structure of industrial health care – the secret society of the doctors, the white-male-dominated medical schools, the corporate decision makers with their toxic pharmaceuticals and heartless greed and labs full of tortured beings. That dependence is one more thing keeping us tied down to the State and unable to rebel with all our hearts or even envision a world without such oppression. With a new system of healing, based on self-knowledge and herbal wisdom, we will be that much more free.
Offering a real alternative health care system will help to calm some people’s fears about returning to an anarchistic, Earth centered way of life. There is a false security in the men with the big machines, ready to put you back together again (if you have enough money). What is ignored is the fact that industrial society causes most of the dis-eases that people fear. Living free on a healing Earth while surrounded by true community and eating real food will prove to be a better medicine than anything you can buy.
Research Credit: Pookie
Army Officer Invokes ‘Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines’ In Drone Paper
March 14th, 2013Via: Business Insider:
Along the way Pryer writes that he wishes he believed that America would one day look back at “transnational drone strikes as a morally disastrous policy that our nation brie?y toyed with at the turn of the century, before gaining wisdom from this folly.”
He believes himself to be optimistic in this regard though. A dreamer. Instead, a combination of an American feeling of blind moral superiority and technological supremacy make the development of Spartan robots seem like a foregone conclusion.
Then he drops this dystopic doozy:
[The U.S. seems bound to develop] robots so advanced that they make today’s Predators and Reapers look positively impotent and antique. These killer robots, though, will share one thing in common with their primitive progenitors: with remorseless purpose, they will stalk and kill any human deemed “a legitimate target” by their controllers and programmers.
Home Repossessions Lowest Since 2007
March 14th, 2013Via: Bloomberg:
Home repossessions in the U.S. plunged 29 percent last month from a year earlier to the lowest level since 2007 amid increased efforts by state lawmakers and courts to delay property seizures, according to RealtyTrac.
Banks took 45,038 properties from delinquent borrowers in February, an 11 percent decrease from the previous month and the fewest since September 2007, the Irvine, California-based data provider said today in a report. Forty-one states had drops in completed foreclosures from February 2012, led by declines of 78 percent in Oregon and 69 percent in Massachusetts.
OTP22: Are The Dead Drops Outside the U.S. Real?
March 14th, 2013I read the recent IRC transcript of the user with alleged ties to GCHQ and thought that, while entertaining, it was the happiest bunch of horseshit I’ve come across in awhile.
And that’s when it hit me: OTP22 is probably not a government recruitment operation or social engineering experiment because the dead drops are all over the world; U.S., Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, Norway, Finland. If a government was behind this, it would amount to running espionage operations in multiple foreign countries. There is zero chance that such an imbroglio would feature a publicly accessible front end (the message desk) with a bunch of greasy nerds posting all of their antics on the Internet.
Unless… Those foreign dead drops aren’t real.
If the foreign dead drops are just being fabricated and posted by the controllers, OTP22 is probably something like this: U.S. Spies Want to Play Alternate-Reality Games:
Alternate-reality games are no longer just for geeks and corporations that want to sell you stuff. America’s intelligence agents now think these interactive games could make for a better way to study human psychology and social behavior.
The intelligence community’s blue-sky researchers, the Intelligence Advanced Research Agency (IARPA), announced they’re seeking designers for alternate-reality games, or ARGs. It’s for work, they swear. The project, which goes by the name UAREHERE (as in “you are here”), “may provide capabilities that allow for high-quality, externally valid social, behavioral and psychological research in near-real world contexts,” according to a request for information released this week.
Alternate reality games emerged in the last decade as a form of transmedia storytelling, or the practice of using multiple forms of media — particularly the internet — to craft a narrative structure. The directors of an ARG typically start by developing a story, litter clues on the internet, and when the players solve them, the players are led to further clues or a staged event featuring live actors. Many ARGs require dozens or hundreds of people to play out, and the games are interactive: Players can shape the course of a story by their actions. It’s also become a means to market products, whether musicians teasing a new album, or a movie studio promoting a new film.
While the ostensible purpose of the game is to research human behavior, the specific intelligence function served here is a mystery. Nor does the agency specify who the players would be: The info request notes that recruiting and screening players will be a challenge. Another: determining whether an ARG would even work as a research tool, let alone how to design an ARG.
No big deal. U.S. spooks wasting borrowed Chinese money again. Move along, nothing to see here.
If, however, those foreign dead drops are real, this thing is very, very weird. I don’t know, man… Break out the Theremin weird.
‘Lean Times at the Pentagon’: U.S. Air Force Considering Building Network of Tunnels for Mobile Doomsday Trains
March 14th, 2013The reason why I haven’t been is because it’s a trivial event, either way. Soviet America is so far gone, so dependent on insane state expenditures, that the propaganda outlets lose their mind at the prospect of any budget cuts at all.
—Spending: With Sequestration and Without Sequestration
And now…
Via: Danger Room:
The Air Force wants to upgrade its aging nuclear missiles and the hundreds of underground silos that hold them. One idea it’s exploring: the construction of a sprawling network of underground subway tunnels to shuttle the missiles around like a mobile doomsday train. As one does.
As first reported by Inside Defense, the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center will award several study contracts next month worth up to $3 million each to research the idea. A broad agency announcement from the Air Force describes the hair-raising concept, intended to keep the weapons secure through 2075, as a system of tunnels where nuclear missiles are shuttled around on rails or some undefined “trackless” system.
The advantage of the world’s deadliest subway: During an atomic holocaust, mobile missiles are harder for an adversary to target than a static silo. Missiles could be positioned at launch holes placed at “regular intervals” along the length of the tunnels.
“The tunnel concept mode operates similar to a subway system but with only a single transporter/launcher and missile dedicated to a given tunnel,” stated the notice. “The tunnel is long enough to improve survivability but leaving enough room to permit adequate ‘rattle space’ in the event of an enemy attack.”
The Air Force hasn’t given specifics on where the tunnels could be built, or how long they’d need to be. But they’ll probably have to be jumbo-sized to “minimize impact from attack during all phases of missions/operations,” the notice stated. The Air Force requires that all research proposals address ways to “minimize likelihood” that unauthorized persons could sneak in, while keeping the system working safely and not sacrificing the doomsday train’s ability to “conduct world-wide operations.”
The project would likely be gigantic, expensive and take decades to build — all things that cut against cut against these relatively lean times at the Pentagon.
Pope Francis: Open Thread
March 14th, 2013I’ve only spent about a minute on this so far and here are my impressions: 1) He doesn’t look much like a Sith Lord and 2) He isn’t a former Nazi.
Mmkay?
Is this Petrus Romanus?
Will he welcome our alien overlords?
The first Jesuit Pope will______ (Fill in the blank).
Etc. etc.
Soylent: Man Wants to Avoid the Time Consuming and Expensive Practice of Eating Food, Develops a Sort of Pharmaceutical Grade Nutrient Slop Instead
March 14th, 2013I’m not suggesting that anyone do this, or not do it. I’m posting this mainly because it made me laugh. I had similar ideas (although not as well thought out and more poorly executed) when I was in my 20s and single.
It might surprise you to see that I’m not steadfastly against something like this Soylent concoction, but I’m not. If you locked me in a cage and gave me a choice between the poison-as-food that most Americans regularly consume and Rhinehart’s Soylent, I would definitely choose the Soylent.
Via: Mostly Harmless:
Food is the fossil fuel of human energy. It is an enormous market full of waste, regulation, and biased allocation with serious geo-political implications. And we’re deeply dependent on it. In some countries people are dying of obesity, others starvation. In my own life I resented the time, money, and effort the purchase, preparation, consumption, and clean-up of food was consuming. I am pretty young, generally in good health, and remain physically and mentally active. I don’t want to lose weight. I want to maintain it and spend less energy getting energy.
I hypothesized that the body doesn’t need food itself, merely the chemicals and elements it contains. So, I resolved to embark on an experiment. What if I consumed only the raw ingredients the body uses for energy? Would I be healthier or do we need all the other stuff that’s in traditional food? If it does work, what would it feel like to have a perfectly balanced diet? I just want to be in good health and spend as little time and money on food as possible.
I haven’t eaten a bite of food in 30 days, and it’s changed my life.
There are no meats, fruits, vegetables, or breads here. Besides olive oil for fatty acids and table salt for sodium and chloride nothing is recognizable as food. I researched every substance the body needs to survive, plus a few extras shown to be beneficial, and purchased all of them in nearly raw chemical form from a variety of sources. The section on the ingredients ended up being quite long so I’ll save that for a future post. The first morning my kitchen looked more like a chemistry lab than a cookery, but I eventually ended up with an thick, odorless, beige liquid. I call it ‘Soylent’. At the time I didn’t know if it was going to kill me or give me superpowers. I held my nose and tepidly lifted it to my mouth, expecting an awful taste.
It was delicious! I felt like I’d just had the best breakfast of my life.
More:
This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again
Similar Sentiment: The Monkey Chow Diaries
