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“On November 19, 2010, Comcast informed Level 3 that, for the first time, it will demand a recurring fee from Level 3 to transmit Internet online movies and other content to Comcast’s customers who request such content. By taking this action, Comcast is effectively putting up a toll booth at the borders of its broadband Internet access network, enabling it to unilaterally decide how much to charge for content which competes with its own cable TV and Xfinity delivered content. This action by Comcast threatens the open Internet and is a clear abuse of the dominant control that Comcast exerts in broadband access markets as the nation’s largest cable provider.

“On November 22, after being informed by Comcast that its demand for payment was ‘take it or leave it,’ Level 3 agreed to the terms, under protest, in order to ensure customers did not experience any disruptions.

“Level 3 operates one of several broadband backbone networks, which are part of the Internet and which independent providers of online content use to transmit movies, sports, games and other entertainment to consumers. When a Comcast customer requests such content, for example an online movie or game, Level 3 transmits the content to Comcast for delivery to consumers.

“Level 3 believes Comcast’s current position violates the spirit and letter of the FCC’s proposed Internet Policy principles and other regulations and statutes, as well as Comcast’s previous public statements about favoring an open Internet.

“While the network neutrality debate in Washington has focused on what actions a broadband access provider might take to filter, prioritize or manage content requested by its subscribers, Comcast’s decision goes well beyond this. With this action, Comcast is preventing competing content from ever being delivered to Comcast’s subscribers at all, unless Comcast’s unilaterally-determined toll is paid – even though Comcast’s subscribers requested the content. With this action, Comcast demonstrates the risk of a ‘closed’ Internet, where a retail broadband Internet access provider decides whether and how their subscribers interact with content.

“It is our hope that Comcast’s senior management, for whom we have great respect, will closely consider their position on this issue and adopt an approach that will better serve Comcast and Comcast’s customers.

“While Comcast’s position is regrettable, Level 3 remains open and willing to work through these issues with Comcast. However, Level 3 does not seek any ‘special deals’ or arrangements not generally available to other Internet backbone companies.

At least 15 people were reported killed on Wednesday as police sought to quell the wave of gang violence.

Heavily armed men continued to stop cars and buses, rob passengers and set vehicles alight, police said.

Officials say drug traffickers are fighting back against police operations aimed at pacifying city slums.

“There are groups of criminals who have been installed here for 20, 30 years, and they might not want to give up,” said Rio state public safety director Jose Beltrame.

…

At first glance it seems to be life as normal on the famous beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema.

But at some of the top hotels, sightseeing trips to the favelas are no longer available. Taxi drivers have seemed noticeably tenser in the past 24 hours.

Since being in Rio I have witnessed prostitution and petty thefts on Copacabana beach.

But on Tuesday night things took on a totally different aspect, with armoured vehicles and camouflaged police out in force.

Drugs gangs have been evicted from many of the favelas and police stations have been established. The gangs are now showing the law enforcers that they have not gone away.

Now some of the recent attacks have spilled into wealthier areas closer to the beach.

The freeze would hit all civilian workers in the government, including those at the Department of Defense. Military personnel wouldn’t be affected. The move would save about $2 billion for the rest of fiscal 2011 and more than $60 billion over the next decade, according to the White House.

“They were able to create problems on a limited basis for some of our centrifuges by software installed in electronic equipment,” Ahmadinejad told reporters when asked whether Iran’s nuclear programme had been affected.

“Our specialists stopped that and they will not be able to do it again,” he added without elaborating on the software thought to have been used.

An early share rally also quickly ran out of steam, amid fears that the eurozone crisis will spread.

Credit default swaps (CDS) – the contracts used to insure government debt against collapse – showed that the financial markets still had little confidence that some countries would avoid bailout, or default.

The five-year Portuguese CDS – which insures Portugal’s debt until 2015 – jumped by 45 basis points this morning to 545 bps, a record high. This followed an underwhelming auction of €5.5bn of Italian debt this morning.

Nouriel Roubini, economics professor and chairman of Roubini Global Economics, believes that the Lisbon government should seek a rescue deal quickly.

“Like it or not, Portugal is reaching the critical point,” Roubini told Portuguese newspaper Diario Economico. “Perhaps it could be a good idea to ask for a bailout in a preventative manner.”

But if military veterans have their way in a California law suit, the spy agency’s quest to turn humans into robot-like assassins via electrodes planted in their brains will get far more exposure than the drugs the CIA tested on subjects ranging from soldiers to unwitting bar patrons and the clients of prostitutes.

It’s not just science fiction — or the imaginings of the mentally ill.

In 1961, a top CIA scientist reported in an internal memo that “the feasibility of remote control of activities in several species of animals has been demonstrated…Special investigations and evaluations will be conducted toward the application of selected elements of these techniques to man,” according to “The CIA and the Search for the Manchurian Candidate,” a 1979 book by former State Department intelligence officer John Marks.

“[T]his cold-blooded project,” Marks wrote, “was designed … for the delivery of chemical and biological agents or for ‘executive action-type operations,’ according to a document. ‘Executive action’ was the CIA’s euphemism for assassination.”

The CIA pursued such experiments because it was convinced the Soviets were doing the same.

Victims have sought justice for years, in vain. Now, almost 40 years later, a federal magistrate has ordered the CIA to produce records and witnesses about the LSD and other experiments “allegedly conducted on thousands of soldiers from 1950 through 1975,” according to news accounts.

U.S. Magistrate Judge John Larsen’s Nov. 17 order exempted the agency from having to testify about electrode tests on humans, but Gordon P. Erspamer, lead attorney for the veterans, says “we are pursuing this as well.”

…

Papers filed in the case describe “electrical devices implanted in brain tissue with electrodes in various regions, including the hippocampus, the hypothalamus, the frontal lobe (via the septum), the cortex and various other places,” Erspamer said, drawing on [research papers] (http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/spytalkheathdocument.pdf) written by government scientists.

“We believe that one of our plaintiffs was given a septal implant at [Edgewood Arsenal] (www.edgewoodtestvets.org),” he said, based on an MRI he has “showing a ‘foreign body’ on the border between the septum and the frontal lobe.”

“A lot of this work was done out of Tulane University using a local state hospital and funding from a cut-out (front) organization called the Commonwealth Fund,” he continued, again drawing on the research papers.

“We tried to get docs from Tulane, but they told us that they were destroyed in the hurricane flooding.”

Al Alam said the dead person and one of the wounded were nuclear physics teachers.

State radio said the attackers planted a bomb on each of the teachers’ vehicles.

“Majid Shahriyari was martyred and his wife was injured … Fereydoun Abbasi and his wife were both wounded,” radio said.

SECRET//NOFORN

E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/17/2034
TAGS: ASEC CVIS PINR PREF

* Grave fears in Washington and London over the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme, with officials warning that as the country faces economic collapse, government employees could smuggle out enough nuclear material for terrorists to build a bomb.

* Suspicions of corruption in the Afghan government, with one cable alleging that vice president Zia Massoud was carrying $52m in cash when he was stopped during a visit to the United Arab Emirates. Massoud denies taking money out of Afghanistan.

* How the hacker attacks which forced Google to quit China in January were orchestrated by a senior member of the Politburo who typed his own name into the global version of the search engine and found articles criticising him personally.

* The extraordinarily close relationship between Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, and Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, which is causing intense US suspicion. Cables detail allegations of “lavish gifts”, lucrative energy contracts and the use by Berlusconi of a “shadowy” Russian-speaking Italian go-between.

* Allegations that Russia and its intelligence agencies are using mafia bosses to carry out criminal operations, with one cable reporting that the relationship is so close that the country has become a “virtual mafia state”.

* Devastating criticism of the UK’s military operations in Afghanistan by US commanders, the Afghan president and local officials in Helmand. The dispatches reveal particular contempt for the failure to impose security around Sangin – the town which has claimed more British lives than any other in the country.