A Skeptical Survivalist

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is worried that high U.S. unemployment could lead to the same kind of riots here that have swept through Europe and North Africa.

“You have a lot of kids graduating college, [who] can’t find jobs,” said Bloomberg, during his weekly radio show on Friday. “That’s what happened in Cairo. That’s what happened in Madrid. You don’t want those kinds of riots here.”

That was the mayor’s response when asked about the poverty rate, which rose to 15.1% in 2010, its highest level since 1993, according to census data released Tuesday. About 46.2 million people are now living in poverty, 2.6 million more than last year.

“The public is not happy,” he said. “The public knows there is something wrong in this country, and there is. The bottom line is that they’re upset.”  Source

(CNN) — Governments have come knocking on Google’s door more frequently seeking people’s private usage information.

Google fielded 8,888 requests from the United States government last year asking for information on people using its services, the company wrote in a report on Monday. The total number is likely higher because the Google statistics only cover criminal investigations.

The U.S. is by far the most active, and successful, solicitor of private info from Google, accounting for about one-third of all federal requests last year, according to the data.

In the latter half of 2010, Google provided at least 4,323 pieces of info to the U.S. Google did not disclose how many requests it complied with prior to changing its policy in July 2010.

A government has a 60% average success rate for receiving the data it asked for of the 25 countries listed during the July to December time period, which is when Google began reporting that info. For the U.S., Google granted 94% of the government’s requests.

Read the rest

It’s happening all over these days - and not just in the Middle East.  This is a trend. It’s starting in the US now.

San Francisco California - Aug 13, 2011 - link

In a controversial move that has riled up free speech advocates, San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) subway system said it cut off cellphone signals at “select” stations in response to a planned protest this week.

“BART temporarily interrupted service at select BART stations as one of many tactics to ensure the safety of everyone on the platform,” the transit agency said in a statement on its website Friday.

BART said it took the actions because protesters said they “would use mobile devices to coordinate their disruptive activities and communicate about the location and number of BART Police.”

Great Britian - Aug 14, 2011 - link

(CNN) — In an emergency session of Parliament on Thursday, British Prime Minister David Cameron said that the violence, looting and arson sweeping his country “were organized via social media.” He said his government is now considering how and whether to “stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.”

On Friday, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency published a commentary contrasting Cameron’s latest statements with his Arab Spring-inspired speech earlier this year, in which he loftily proclaimed that freedom of expression should be respected in Tahrir Square as much as in London’s Trafalgar Square.

“We may wonder why Western leaders, on the one hand, tend to indiscriminately accuse other nations of monitoring, but on the other take for granted their steps to monitor and control the Internet,” Xinhua said. “For the benefit of the general public, proper Web-monitoring is legitimate and necessary.”

China - Aug 13, 2011 - link

Public distrust of the government mounted after Chinese media reported that the petrochemical plant might have been allowed to operate illegally months before it received mandatory environmental approval. According to Southern Metropolis News, the Fujia plant started full-scale production in June 2009, but it did not get the go-ahead from the Liaoning environmental protection bureau until April last year.

Chinese authorities, which are quick to suppress dissent from spreading, blocked searches on Weibo for “PX,” “Dalian,” and “Dalian protests.” Search results for these terms showed pages that said “according to relevant laws, regulations and policies, search results are not displayed.”

Paris France - Aug 11, 2011 - link

PARIS — Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain said Thursday that the government, seeking to prevent a repeat of riots and looting in London and other British cities this week, might bar suspected troublemakers from using social media and other digital communications tools.

Uganda - Aug 11, 2011 - link

Uganda’s Security Minister Wilson Muruli Mukasa has accused the opposition of using social media in a “grand plan” to topple the government.

His comments came as opposition parties vowed to relaunch mass protests against the rising cost of living.

Mr Mukasa said social networking sites Facebook and Twitter were being used to prepare youths for insurrection.

During protests in April, the government ordered internet service providers to block their use.

The directive was largely ignored with only two service providers implementing it, the BBC’s Joshua Mmali in the capital, Kampala says.

Syria - Aug 3, 2011 - link

Syrian protestors are scared to use Facebook and Twitter, saying the government tracks their posts, as officials in that region attempt to prevent another Arab Spring uprising.

Anti-government activists accuse authorities of watching Twitter feeds and Facebook in order to learn of planned protests and arrest those who show up. In fact, activists believe the government reopened the previously blocked social media sites earlier this year explicitly to monitor citizens’ behavior.

Malawi - July 22, 2011 - Link

The government of Malawi has shut down news websites and social media networks including Twitter and Facebook and has blocked signals from radio stations in a bid to stop the coordination of demonstrations that have so far left more than 18 people dead.

The Malawian government, through the telecom sector regulator, the Malawi Communication Regulatory Authority (MACRA), this week ordered ISPs (Internet service providers) to shut down and radio stations to desist from live broadcasts of the protests, claiming such coverage may incite violence.

ageofperil:

A provocative appeal from The Economist yesterday calls on Americans to “save the Fourth Amendment.” While Economist blogger Lexington focuses on the constitutionality of street patdowns by police in troubled neighborhoods, it’s worth noting that the line has become increasingly blurred…

danielholter:

In The Looming Tower, the Pulitzer-winning history of al-Qaeda and the road to 9/11, author Lawrence Wright lays out how Osama bin Laden’s motivation for the attacks that he planned in the 1990s, and then the September 11 attacks, was to draw the U.S. and the West into a prolonged war—an actual war in Afghanistan, and a broader global war with Islam.

Osama got both. And we gave him a prolonged war in Iraq to boot. By the end of Obama’s first term, we’ll probably top 6,000 dead U.S. troops in those two wars, along with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans. The cost for both wars is also now well over $1 trillion.

We have also fundamentally altered who we are. A partial, off-the-top-of-my-head list of how we’ve changed since September 11 …

• We’ve sent terrorist suspects to “black sites” to be detained without trial and tortured.
• We’ve turned terrorist suspects over to other regimes, knowing that they’d be tortured.
• In those cases when our government later learned it got the wrong guy, federal officials not only refused to apologize or compensate him, they went to court to argue he should be barred from using our courts to seek justice, and that the details of his abduction, torture, and detainment should be kept secret.
• We’ve abducted and imprisoned dozens, perhaps hundreds of men in Guantanamo who turned out to have been innocent. Again, the government felt no obligation to do right by them.
• The government launched a multimillion dollar ad campaign implying that people who smoke marijuana are complicit in the murder of nearly 3,000 of their fellow citizens.
• The government illegally spied and eavesdropped on thousands of American citizens.
• Presidents from both of the two major political parties have claimed the power to detain suspected terrorists and hold them indefinitely without trial, based solely on the president’s designation of them as an “enemy combatant,” essentially making the president prosecutor, judge, and jury. (I’d also argue that the treatment of someone like Bradley Manning wouldn’t have been tolerated before September 11.)
• The current president has also claimed the power to execute U.S. citizens, off the battlefield, without a trial, and to prevent anyone from knowing about it after the fact.
• The Congress approved, the president signed, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a broadly written law making it a crime to advocate for any organization the government deems sympathetic to terrorism. This includes challenging the “terrorist” designation in the first place.
• Flying in America now means enduring a humiliating and hassling ritual that does little if anything to actually make flying any safer. Every time the government fails to catch an attempt at terrorism, it punishes the public for its failure by adding to the ritual.
• American Muslims, a heartening story of success and assimilation, are now harassed and denigrated for merely trying to build houses of worship.
• Without a warrant, the government can search and seize indefinitely the laptops and other personal electronic devices of anyone entering the country.
• The Department of Homeland Security now gives terrorism-fighting grants for local police departments across the country to purchase military equipment, such as armored personnel carriers, which is then used against U.S. citizens, mostly to serve drug warrants.

kevinnj:

It is so frustrating to hear everyone cheer like we won something, we didn’t. Am I glad this scum bag is off the face of the earth and that he can no longer harm another human being? Fuck yes. Am I glad it cost over 900,000 lives to do so? No. He got EXACTLY what he wanted, even down to his death. As evil and maniacal as he was, he was still an intelligent man, and we did exactly what he thought we would. I only wish this could have happened before so many other innocent people had to die.

(Source: azspot)

The Senate convened Thursday just long enough to take a roll call, which allows for the sergeant-at-arms staff to go to missing lawmakers’ homes with police.

Troopers went to multiple homes but left after finding no one, Sergeant-at-Arms Ted Blazel said.

Wisconsin law does not allow police to arrest the lawmakers, but Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said he hoped the show of authority would pressure them to return. He would not say how many Democrats were being targeted but said it was more than one.

Across New Orleans, active-duty soldiers, National Guard members and local law enforcement agencies from across the country continued door-to-door searches by patrol car, Humvee, helicopter and boat, urging remaining residents to leave.

Maj. Gen. James Ron Mason of the Kansas National Guard, who commands about 25,000 Guard troops in and around New Orleans, said his forces had rescued 687 residents by helicopter, boat and high-wheeled truck in the past 24 hours.

General Mason said Guard troops, although carrying M-16 rifles, would not use force to evict recalcitrant citizens. That, he said, was a job for the police, not members of the Guard. “I don’t believe that you will see National Guard soldiers actually physically forcing people to leave,” General Mason said.

Mr. Compass, the police superintendent, said that after a week of near anarchy in the city, no civilians in New Orleans will be allowed to carry pistols, shotguns, or other firearms of any kind. “Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons,” he said.

That order apparently does not apply to the hundreds of security guards whom businesses and some wealthy individuals have hired to protect their property. The guards, who are civilians working for private security firms like Blackwater, are openly carrying M-16s and other assault rifles.

Mr. Compass said that he was aware of the private guards but that the police had no plans to make them give up their weapons.

New Orleans has turned into an armed camp, patrolled by thousands of local, state, and federal law enforcement officers, as well as National Guard troops and active-duty soldiers. While armed looters roamed unchecked last week, the city is now calm.

This is an excerpt from an article by Susan Lindauer, a US Intelligence Asset who gave advance warning to the government about the 9/11 attack and was arrested under the Patriot Act and detained in a military prison for a year for her troubles.

The American people are not nearly as frightened as they should be. Many Americans expect the Patriot Act to limit its surveillance to overseas communications. Yet while I was under indictment, Maryland State Police invoked the Patriot Act to wire tap activists tied to the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, an environmental group dedicated to wind power, solar energy and recycling. The DC Anti-War Network was targeted as a “white supremacist group.” Amnesty International and anti-death penalty activists got targeted for alleged “civil rights violations.”

All of these are American activists engaged in lawful disputes of government policy. All of them got victimized by the surveillance techniques approved by Tea Party leaders, because they pursued a policy agenda that contradicted current government policies. The Tea Party swore to defend the freedom of independent thinking in Congressional campaigns. One presumes those promises are now forgotten until the next election.

I cannot forget. I cannot forget how I was subjected to secret charges, secret evidence and secret grand jury testimony that denied my right to face my accusers or their accusations in open court, throughout five years of indictment. I cannot forget my imprisonment on a Texas military base for a year without a trial or evidentiary hearing.

I cannot forget how the FBI, the US Attorneys Office, the Bureau of Prisons and the main Justice office in Washington — independently and collectively verified my story— then falsified testimony to Chief Justice Michael Mukasey, denying our 9/11 warnings and my long-time status as a U.S. intelligence Asset, though my witnesses had aggressively confronted them. Apparently the Patriot Act allows the Justice Department to withhold corroborating evidence and testimony from the Court, if it is deemed “classified.”

I cannot forget threats of forcible drugging and indefinite detention up to 10 years, until I could be “cured” of believing what everybody wanted to deny— because it was damn inconvenient to politicians in Washington anxious to hold onto power.

Some things are unforgivable in a democracy. The Patriot Act would be right at the top of that list. Nobody who has supported that wretched law should ever be allowed to brag of defending liberty again. That goes for the Tea Party. By voting to extend surveillance of American citizens, they have abandoned the principles of freedom that brought about their rise to power. They have shown their true face.

[Full Text of the enacted law here]

Under the guise of protecting Americans from food-borne illnesses, Congress has passed the S510 Food Safety Act, granting unlimited power to the FDA to oversee the processing of food from farm to table. The FDA has led the public to believe over a number of years that we desperately need government protection from food-borne illnesses. As a result of this manipulation, the S510 Food Safety has been passed without opposition. Ironically, the regulatory actions made possible by this bill will only promote the type of farming that produces food borne illnesses.

The S510 Food Safety Act will regulate the entire process of food production from every source in the United States. Farms must submit to government inspections and have safety documentation on record for 2 years. This documentation must be made promptly available upon oral or written request by an FDA agent. Farms are responsible for the fees associated with their own inspections. The FDA will also oversee food transportation within the United States; food imported from other countries will not be regulated but must simply carry a guarantee of safety by the exporting country. This imbalance in addition to the bill-related costs imposed on farmers will cause prices of locally produced food to increase exponentially.

DHS says that one of the most serious emerging threats to the country is posed by radicalized American citizens or residents capable of carrying out terrorist attacks with little or no warning.

“In some ways, the threat today may be at its most heightened state since the attacks nearly 10 years ago,” Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, told lawmakers.

This threat requires the United States to improve its existing techniques and strategies to detect and deter terrorist attacks, Ms. Napolitano said. And that means relying increasingly on a new group of terrorism fighters.

“Our focus must be on aiding law enforcement and helping to provide them with the information and resources they need to secure their own communities from the threat they face,” she said.

The Homeland Security Department is trying to increase the abilities of a loose national network of so-called fusion centers, sites operated by state or local governments where law enforcement and emergency personnel share information about terrorist threats and other crises.

Last year, however, an assessment by the department found that half of the nation’s 72 fusion centers failed to meet basic standards of effectiveness, including the ability to apply information sent from Washington to their local communities. Since then, the department has sought to bolster the weaker centers, and officials say all the centers now meet a minimum set of standards.