AT&T: Spying Too Secret for Court
March 13th, 2007Via: Wired:
AT&T told an appeals court in a written brief Monday that the case against it for allegedly helping the government spy on its customers should be thrown out, because it cannot defend itself — even by showing a signed order from the government — without endangering national security.
A government brief filed simultaneously backed AT&T’s claims and said a lower court judge had exceeded his authority by not dismissing the suit outright.
Because plaintiffs’ entire action rests upon alleged secret espionage activities, including an alleged secret espionage relationship between AT&T and the Government concerning the alleged activities, this suit must be dismissed now as a matter of law,” the government argued in its brief.
Neuroscientists Induce Selective Amnesia in Rats
March 13th, 2007Via: Nature:
A single, specific memory has been wiped from the brains of rats, leaving other recollections intact.
…
The brain secures memories by transferring them from short-term to long-term storage, through a process called reconsolidation. It has been shown before that this process can be interrupted with drugs. But Joseph LeDoux of the Center for Neural Science at New York University and his colleagues wanted to know how specific this interference was: could the transfer of one specific memory be meddled with without affecting others?
“Our concern was: would you do something really massive to their memory network?” says LeDoux.
Scary music
To find out, they trained rats to fear two different musical tones, by playing them at the same time as giving the rats an electric shock. Then, they gave half the rats a drug known to cause limited amnesia (U0126, which is not approved for use in people), and reminded all the animals, half of which were still under the influence of the drug, of one of their fearful memories by replaying just one of the tones.
When they tested the rats with both tones a day later, untreated animals were still fearful of both sounds, as if they expected a shock. But those treated with the drug were no longer afraid of the tone they had been reminded of under treatment. The process of re-arousing the rats’ memory of being shocked with the one tone while they were drugged had wiped out that memory completely, while leaving their memory of the second tone intact.
LeDoux’s team also confirms the idea that a part of the brain called the amygdala is central to this process – communication between neurons in this part of the brain usually increases when a fearful memory forms, but it decreases in the treated rats. This shows that the fearful memory is actually deleted, rather than simply breaking the link between the memory and a fearful response.
TRADING OF NEW CENTURY SHARES HALTED ON NYSE
March 13th, 2007Related: Wall Street Chop Shop
Via: Bloomberg:
New Century Financial Corp., the nation’s second-biggest subprime mortgage lender, said it doesn’t have the cash to pay creditors who are demanding their money, increasing speculation that the company will go bankrupt.
The New York Stock Exchange, citing the credit crisis, halted trading of New Century this morning until it decides whether to keep listing the company’s securities. Shares of the Irvine, California-based company, already down 90 percent in 2007, lost half their remaining value in pre-market trading, and rivals fell as much as 25 percent today.
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New Century may be insolvent because too many of its own customers — most of whom have poor credit histories or heavy debt burdens — aren’t repaying their loans. Bad U.S. subprime mortgages are at a seven-year high, forcing more than two dozen lenders to close or sell operations. Their woes may contribute to more than 1.5 million Americans losing their homes and 100,000 people losing their jobs, according to real estate executives, economists, analysts and a Federal Reserve governor.
New Century said in a federal filing it doesn’t have funds to repay lenders including Morgan Stanley, Citigroup Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. The creditors want New Century to repurchase all outstanding mortgage loans they financed.
Why the Free Market Fails Consumers in Sustainable Energy Innovation
March 13th, 2007There is no free market, of course, but this article is worth reading in conjunction with Energy Scarcity vs. Cost of the War in Iraq. Why the Soviet Style Command Economy in Drag Fails Consumers in Sustainable Energy Innovation would be a more accurate reflection of the situation on the ground, but let’s not get too picky…
Via: Jeff Vial:
Let’s start off with an assumption: humanity must rapidly replace our reliance on non-renewable energy sources with truly sustainable alternatives. The conventional wisdom—at least that advanced by corporate “Main-Stream Mediaâ€â€”is that free markets are the best source of innovation. Now a question: is free-market innovation the best way to develop viable, sustainable energy alternatives?
The free market will ignore solutions that can’t turn a profit. Any firm that fails to follow this simple maxim won’t be in business for long. The corollary to this maxim is that the free market will ignore any solution that cannot be controlled, either through property interests (enforceable intellectual property, monopoly licenses, etc.) or because economies of scale demand centralized operation. This means that free market innovation is structurally incompatible with a huge portion of the universe of possible energy solutions.
Free markets love non-renewable energy sources because they are readily controlled. In countries where mineral rights are privately owned (only the US and Canada), these resources can be controlled via property rights. In the rest of the world, they can be controlled equally easily through exclusive contracts with governments. But renewable energy presents a serious control challenge to the free market’s need to profit.
Research Credit: Anonymous
$20 Billion Later Halliburton Moves Headquarters to Dubai
March 13th, 2007Enemy Collaborator Democrats squealing years late and $20 billion short… Priceless.
Via: Huffington Post:
Business must be slowing down in Iraq. After booking over $20 billion in revenues from its work in Iraq, some on no bid contracts and now under Congressional scrutiny for both the quality of its work and billing practices, Halliburton is moving its headquarters from Houston to Dubai. The company together with its KBR unit has been the Pentagon’s largest contractor in Iraq.
The move is being met with outrage on Capitol Hill. Senator Patrick Leahy (D. Vermont) and chairman of the judiciary committee voiced his anger, “This is an insult to the U.S. soldiers and taxpayers who paid the tab for their no bid contracts and endured their overcharges for all these years”.
Cryptogon Reader Contributes $20
March 13th, 2007Thanks KL!
UK Chancellor Gordon Brown Wants ‘New World Order’ to Fight Global Warming
March 13th, 2007A few of you just don’t want to accept that your most precious, deeply held religious beliefs were created by evil people to control you.
If you want to spout off like a deranged, Pentecostal snake handler, that’s fine with me, but if you’re still capable of critical thinking, spend a few minutes with these posts:
Energy Scarcity vs. Cost of the War in Iraq
Is Peak Oil a Faith Based Collapse Theory?
All Electric Vehicles and the Concept of Enough
Or, maybe I’ve gotten it wrong and the diabolical Gordon Brown is our buddy and I should ask all British people to support the calls for a New World Order, various fart taxes, scheduled blackouts, states of emergency, national ID cards, etc. when all of this is mostly about a big, fat fascist lockdown so the elite can have total control over the raw materials (including potable water) that are left on the planet for themselves, while the rest of us are tracked, traced and surveilled 24 hours per day… Hmmm.
If you buy into this, rather than trying to tell me to shut up, why don’t you just close down your browser and never come back here? Better yet, demonstrate your green credentials by killing yourself so that your Earth murdering breath doesn’t add more CO2 to the atmosphere.
Via: Guardian:
Chancellor Gordon Brown is seeking to regain the initiative on the environment with a call for a “new world order” to combat climate change.
Ahead of the launch of the Government’s Climate Change Bill on Tuesday, the Chancellor will herald the Government’s role in new European emissions standards and call for the UN to prioritise the fight against global warming.
U.S. Military Plans Iraq Fallback Strategy, Salvador Option
March 12th, 2007Early stages of planning, eh? I showed that U.S. Central Command was looking into the Salvador option over two years ago.
Via: Yahoo / Reuters:
U.S. military planners have begun work on a fallback strategy in case the U.S. troop buildup in Iraq fails, including a gradual pullout of U.S. forces and more emphasis on training and advising Iraqi forces, the Los Angeles Times reported in Monday’s editions.
The strategy, based partly on the U.S. experience in El Salvador in the 1980s, is in the early planning stages, the newspaper said, citing U.S. military officials and Pentagon consultants who spoke on condition of anonymity.
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The United States sent 55 Green Berets to El Salvador to help its military fight rebels from 1981 to 1992, in a drive to make the U.S. military presence less visible, the newspaper said.
It said Pentagon officials said the Iraq plan would have to entail many more advisors, but that the El Salvador model had influenced planning.
Bloomberg: U.S. Housing Bust Deepens
March 12th, 2007Uglier by the minute.
Via: Bloomberg:
Hold on to your assets. The deepest housing decline in 16 years is about to get worse.
As many as 1.5 million more Americans may lose their homes, another 100,000 people in housing-related industries could be fired, and an estimated 100 additional subprime mortgage companies that lend money to people with bad or limited credit may go under, according to realtors, economists, analysts and a Federal Reserve governor. Financial stocks also could extend their declines over mortgage default worries.
The spring buying season, when more than half of all U.S. home sales are made, has been so disappointing that the National Association of Home Builders in Washington now expects purchases to fall for the sixth consecutive quarter after it predicted a gain just last month.
Visa Chief: Cashless Society by 2012
March 12th, 2007Sure.
Via: Independent Online:
Paying for goods with notes and coins could be consigned to history within five years, according to the chief executive of Visa Europe.
Peter Ayliffe said that, by 2012, using credit and debit cards should be cheaper and more convenient than cash.
Some retailers could soon start surcharging customers if they choose to buy products with cash, because of the greater cost of processing these payments, he warned.
Visa Europe briefed the British Retail Consortium last month on new “contactless” cards that can be waved in front of a scanner to make small payments.
