Yesterday Alexander Cockburn reminded us of the news Israel Shamir and Paul Bennett broke at Counterpunch in September. Julian Assange’s chief accuser in Sweden has a significant history of work with anti-Castro groups, at least one of which is US funded and openly supported by a former CIA agent convicted in the mass murder of seventy three Cubans on an airliner he was involved in blowing up.
Anna Ardin (the official complainant) is often described by the media as a “leftist”. She has ties to the US-financed anti-Castro and anti-communist groups. She published her anti-Castro diatribes (see here and here) in the Swedish-language publication Revista de Asignaturas Cubanas put out by Misceláneas de Cuba. From Oslo, Professor Michael Seltzer points out that this periodical is the product of a well-financed anti-Castro organization in Sweden. He further notes that the group is connected with Union Liberal Cubana led by Carlos Alberto Montaner whose CIA ties were exposed here.
Quelle surprise, no? Shamir and Bennett went on to write about Ardin’s history in Cuba with a US funded group openly supported by a real terrorist: Luis Posada Carriles.
In Cuba she interacted with the feminist anti-Castro group Las damas de blanco (the Ladies in White). This group receives US government funds and the convicted anti-communist terrorist Luis Posada Carriles is a friend and supporter. Wikipedia quotes Hebe de Bonafini, president of the Argentine Madres de Plaza de Mayo as saying that “the so-called Ladies in White defend the terrorism of the United States.”
Who is Luis Posada Carriles? He’s a mass murderer, and former CIA agent.
Luis Clemente Faustino Posada Carriles (born February 15, 1928) (nicknamed Bambi by some Cuban exiles)[1] is a Cuban-born Venezuelan anti-communist extremist. A former Central Intelligence Agency agent,[2] Posada has been convicted in absentia of involvement in various terrorist attacks and plots in the Americas, including: involvement in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed seventy-three people;[3][4] admitted involvement in a string of bombings in 1997 targeting fashionable Cuban hotels and nightspots;[5][6][7] involvement in the Bay of Pigs invasion; [and] involvement in the Iran-Contra affair…
Luis Posada Carilles is so evil that even the Bush administration wanted him behind bars:
In 2005, Posada was held by U.S. authorities in Texas on the charge of illegal presence on national territory before the charges were dismissed on May 8, 2007. On September 28, 2005 a U.S. immigration judge ruled that Posada cannot be deported, finding that he faces the threat of torture in Venezuela.[11] His release on bail on April 19, 2007 had elicited angry reactions from the Cuban and Venezuelan governments.[12] The U.S. Justice Department had urged the court to keep him in jail because he was “an admitted mastermind of terrorist plots and attacks”, a flight risk and a danger to the community.[7]
Who is Julian Assange’s chief accuser in Sweden? She’s a gender equity officer at Uppsula University – who chose to associate with a US funded group openly supported by a convicted terrorist and mass murderer. She just happens to have her work published by a very well funded group connected with Union Liberal Cubana – whose leader, Carlos Alberto Montaner, in turn just happened to pop up on right wing Colombian TV a few hours after the right-wing coup in Honduras. Where he joined the leader of the failed coup in Ecuador to savage Correa, the target of the coup. Montnaner also just happened to vociferously support the violent coup in Honduras, and chose to show up to sing the praises of the Honduran junta. Jean-Guy Allard, a retired Canadian journalist who now writes for Cuba’s Gramma, captured the moment
A strange pair appeared on NTN 24, the right-wing Colombian television channel aligned to the Fox Broadcasting Company the U.S. A few hours after the coup attempt in Quito, Ecuador, CIA agent Carlos Alberto Montaner, a fugitive from Cuban justice for acts of terrorism, joined with one of the leaders of the failed Ecuadorian coup, ex-Lieutenant Colonel Lucio Gutiérrez, to attack President Rafael Correa…
On the margin of his media news shows, Montaner’s is known for his fanatic support of the most extreme elements of the Cuban-American mafia.
Last year, in the wake of the coup d’état against Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, June 28, he became an fervent supporter of the dictator Roberto Micheletti, along with U.S. Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and another Cuban-American terrorist and CIA collaborator, Armando Valladares.
Montaner showed up repeatedly in Tegucigalpa to “defend human rights,” and at the same time to applaud the fascist Honduran regime when it unleashed its police on demonstrations by the National Resistance Front.
Oh…and the “rape” charge that’s smeared Julian Assange’s name around the world? On Thursday James D. Catlin, the Melbourne barrister who represented Assange in London, wrote:
Apparently having consensual sex in Sweden without a condom is punishable by a term of imprisonment of a minimum of two years for rape. That is the basis for a reinstitution of rape charges against WikiLeaks figurehead Julian Assange that is destined to make Sweden and its justice system the laughing stock of the world and dramatically damage its reputation as a model of modernity.
Sweden’s Public Prosecutor’s Office was embarrassed in August this year when it leaked to the media that it was seeking to arrest Assange for rape, then on the same day withdrew the arrest warrant because in its own words there was “no evidence”. The damage to Assange’s reputation is incalculable. More than three quarters of internet references to his name refer to rape. Now, three months on and three prosecutors later, the Swedes seem to be clear on their basis to proceed. Consensual sex that started out with a condom ended up without one, ergo, the sex was not consensual.
I’ve spent much of my professional life as a psychiatrist helping women (and men) who are survivors of sexual violence. Rape is a hideous crime. Yet in Assange’s case his alleged victim – the gender equity officer at Uppsula University – chose to throw a party for her alleged assailant – after they’d had the sex that even Swedish prosecutors concede was consensual. Barrister Caitlin again:
[The] phenomena of social networking through the internet and mobile phones constrains Swedish authorities from augmenting the evidence against Assange because it would look even less credible in the face of tweets by Anna Ardin and SMS texts by Sofia Wilén boasting of their respective conquests after the “crimes”.
In the case of Ardin it is clear that she has thrown a party in Assange’s honour at her flat after the “crime” and tweeted to her followers that she is with the “the world’s coolest smartest people, it’s amazing!”. Go on the internet and see for yourself. That Ardin has sought unsuccessfully to delete these exculpatory tweets from the public record should be a matter of grave concern. That she has published on the internet a guide on how to get revenge on cheating boyfriends ever graver. The exact content of Wilén’s mobile phone texts is not yet known but their bragging and exculpatory character has been confirmed by Swedish prosecutors. Neither Wilén’s nor Ardin’s texts complain of rape.
Small world, isn’t it? Julian Assange is the human face of Wikileaks – the organization that’s enabled whistle-blowers to reveal hideous war crimes and expose much of America’s foreign policy to the world.
He just happens to meet a Swedish woman who just happens to have been publishing her work in a well-funded anti-Castro group that just happens to have links with a group led by a man at least one journalist describes as an agent of the CIA: the violent secret arm of America’s foreign policy.
And she just happens to have been expelled from Cuba, which just happens to be the global symbol of successful defiance of American foreign policy.
And – despite her work in Sweden upholding the human right of gender equity – in Cuba she just happens to end up associating with a group openly supported by an admitted CIA agent who himself committed mass murder when he actively participated in the terrorist bombing of a jetliner carrying a Cuban sports team…an act that was of a piece with America’s secret foreign policy of violent attacks against Cuban state interests.
And now she just happens – after admittedly consensual sex – to have gone to Swedish authorities to report the sex ended without a condom…which just happens to be the pretext for Interpol to issue a “Red Notice” informing the world’s police forces of charges against Julian Assange.
Who just happens to be the man America’s political class – the people who run America’s foreign policy – have been trying to silence. And who happens to be the man some of them have been calling to have murdered.
With a lust for vengeance like that, one could be forgiven for concluding they’ve just happened to have taken a page from Anna’s revenge manual.
Sunday, December 05, 2010
Assange Accuser Worked with US-Funded, CIA-Tied Anti-Castro Group | MyFDL
Scripting News: President Mitch McConnell
President Mitch McConnell
Just read a press release about Mitch McConnell and what he will and won't let the government do about taxes and jobless benefits.
This is a guy who has only been elected to represent the state of Kentucky, and leads the minority in the Senate. But he's talking as if he has the absolute last word. And given the ineptness of our President and his party he's probably pretty close to being right.
A chilling thought. We now live in the McConnell Administration. He's the boss. Here's a big picture of our new leader. Brrr.
But if he makes a mess, he should be held responsible for it.
Interspecies electron transfer: Anaerobic bacteria found to cooperate
ScienceDaily (Dec. 4, 2010) — University of Massachusetts Amherst microbiologists Derek Lovley, Zarath Summers and colleagues report in the Dec. 2 issue of Science that they have discovered a new cooperative behavior in anaerobic bacteria, known as interspecies electron transfer, that could have important implications for the global carbon cycle and bioenergy.
The scientists found that microorganisms of different species, in this case two Geobacter species, can form direct electrical connections and pass an electric current from one microbe to the other. By cooperating in this way the two microbes can consume food that neither of them could use on their own.
The cell aggregates or "great balls of evolution" that Summers evolved in the laboratory look very much like those found in nature which are involved in degrading organic matter into the greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane. Conversion of wastes to methane by microbial aggregates is an increasingly popular method for producing natural gas as an renewable energy source.
Others can be found consuming methane from vents at the bottom of the ocean. In both cases, investigators have been puzzled for years about how these aggregates function, because a 40-year-old interspecies hydrogen transfer paradigm did not seem to fit observations. Now, the mystery appears to be solved.
As Lovley, the principal investestigator, explains, "We placed the microbes under conditions in which they had to work together in order to survive and grow using the alcohol we gave them as an energy source. They're the ultimate drinking buddies, collaborating to consume ethanol." With support from the Genomic Science Program of the U.S. Department of Energy, his lab has been exploiting the ability of microorganisms to adapt to novel conditions and developing microbes for practical applications.
It's been known since the 1960s that microorganisms can indirectly exchange electrons by the process known as interspecies hydrogen transfer. In it, one microbe produces hydrogen that another microbe then consumes. It was experiments carried out by doctoral candidate Summers to explore this phenomenon further that led to discovery of the new direct transfer process.
To begin, Summers put two species of Geobacter together under conditions expected to favor hydrogen-sharing interactions. At first, the cells did cooperate to consume the alcohol by sharing hydrogen. Over time, they also started clumping together and transforming the culture from one of dispersed microscopic cells, invisible to the naked eye, to a collection of complex multi-cellular structures, millimeters in diameter.
Resisting her lab mates' urgings to shake the cultures and break up the unexpected cell clumps, Summers continued to allow the spheres to grow. Now they were exhibiting a deep red color due to the presence of iron-containing proteins known as cytochromes. When observed with an electron microscope, they had clearly developed an intricate structure with a series of channels, presumably to help nutrients enter. They had also established completely new electric connections that permitted them to directly share electrons.
"The direct electron transfer is much more efficient and they consume alcohol much faster this way," Summers points out. Sequencing the DNA in the big red balls revealed the secret to this electrical connection: a mutation in one of the Geobacter species had caused it to make much more of a cytochrome known as OmcS. Previous studies in Lovely's lab had shown that OmcS lines up along Geobacter's electrically conductive filaments known as microbial nanowires.
"This turn of events suggested that the cytochrome was key to the electrical connection between the cells" says Summers. This was confirmed in subsequent experiments with genetically manipulated microbes. When the researchers deleted genes for the cytochrome or the nanowires, the microbes did not form the red balls and never effectively used their alcohol fuel. Lovley, Summers and colleagues had thus pinpointed the source of the microbes' new behavior.
Further experiments showed that if the mutation was introduced before putting the two Geobacters together, they rapidly formed the balls and consumed alcohol. Deleting a gene that would be necessary for the cells to exchange hydrogen also hastened ball formation, demonstrating that interspecies hydrogen transfer was not an important factor. "This is a clear case of life evolving to function more effectively in a new environment" says Lovley.
"We're guessing that many types of natural aggregates rely on interspecies electron transfer" said Lovley. "We already have some good preliminary evidence for this with some more complex natural systems. With DNA sequencing we can determine how the microbes evolve when challenged to do better. We can learn a lot about the basic mechanisms of the process of interest," he adds.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Journal Reference:
- Z. M. Summers, H. E. Fogarty, C. Leang, A. E. Franks, N. S. Malvankar, D. R. Lovley. Direct Exchange of Electrons Within Aggregates of an Evolved Syntrophic Coculture of Anaerobic Bacteria. Science, 2010; 330 (6009): 1413 DOI: 10.1126/science.1196526
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
The Kenny Rogers Theory of the Bush Tax Cuts - NYTimes.com
— Updated: 1:47 pm -->The Kenny Rogers Theory of the Bush Tax Cuts
By DAVID LEONHARDTDid the Democrats make a tactical mistake by not being tougher on the Bush tax cuts for the affluent? Absolutely.
High-income households have received by far the largest pretax raises of any group in recent years. Their tax rates have also dropped by far more. And the country is facing a huge budget deficit. Beyond these economic reasons, there are good political arguments too: Most of the country favors the expiration of the Bush tax cuts on households making more than $250,000 a year.
But should the Democrats start getting tough now? That’s a very different question.
Several other bloggers argue the answer is yes, and their arguments are worth reading. But I want to lay out, in more detail than I did in my recent column, what a hard line position for the Democrats would probably lead to. Once the full chain of events is clear, I’m left thinking the Democrats waited too long and could well compound their earlier mistakes by starting to get tough now.
If the Democrats announced that they simply would not accept an extension of the tax cuts for households making more than $250,000 a year, it couldn’t pass. It certainly could not pass before the tax cuts expire on Dec. 31, because the Democrats still control the House and the Senate. Starting next year, the Republicans could pass any extension they wanted in the House. But it would then die in the Senate, so long as at least 40 Democrats pledged to filibuster it, or President Obama could veto the extension.
The Republicans, though, have made clear that they will not pass a partial extension applying only to income below $250,000. So as of Jan. 1, tax rates will go up for everyone. People would not see an immediate hit to their paychecks, because the Treasury Department would probably wait to adjust the withholding tables, given the uncertainty. But at some point in early 2011, the tables would have to change, and the typical worker would experience a pay cut of something like 2 percent.
This issue would surely come to dominate the political debate. No other significant economic legislation would be likely to pass, including the additional efforts to encourage job creation that the Democrats favor.
Mr. Obama and the Democrats could then make the case they wanted to cut taxes for everyone making less than than $250,000 a year, but the Republicans were holding those tax cuts hostage to tax cuts for the rich. Democrats could paint themselves as the true friends of the middle class, much as Mr. Obama did during the 2008 campaign (when he pledged to cut taxes for everyone but the rich even more than John McCain did). It would be a reasonable case, and I acknowledge that it would have some chance of working.
Here is how the Republicans could respond, however: We have passed a tax cut. It was the first thing we did when we took over the House. All the Democrats have to do is pass it in the Senate and send it to the president, and you’ll have your tax cut. Instead, they’re playing class warfare, trying to raise people’s taxes in the middle of an economic slump. The Democrats had two years to deal with this issue, when they controlled the White House and Congress, but they couldn’t get their own members to agree on raising some people’s taxes. So they left the issue until after the election. Then we won the election. The voters chose our positions. And now the Democrats decide they really, truly do favor raising some people’s taxes?
Would some of this be disingenuous? Of course. That’s natural in politics. But it strikes me as a pretty good political case. It also doesn’t even address arguably the biggest reason for the Democrats to fold.
If everyone’s taxes go up — and Congress enacts no new legislation to create jobs — it’s very likely to have a negative effect on the economy. Just the tax cuts for the rich are unlikely to have a big effect one way or the other. (As I’ve pointed out before, the economy lost jobs for two years after President Bush signed the 2001 tax cuts, and economic growth during his presidency was weak.) But an across-the-board tax increase on all households doesn’t seem like a very good prescription for an economy as troubled as the current one.
Who do you think is likely to receive more blame if the economy remains weak for another year or so – the top Democrat in Washington (Mr. Obama) or the top Republican (John Boehner)?
From my conversations with people on Capitol Hill and in the administration, I think both Republicans and Democrats — many of them, at least — have conducted a thought exercise very much like the one above. That’s why the Republicans are so confident now and the Democrats are in retreat.
To end where I started, the economic case for extending the high-end Bush tax cuts is not an impressive one. Democrats — including Mr. Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and their aides — had their chance to win on this issue. But that chance seems have to come and gone. Kenny Rogers had something to say on this issue.
If you want to read the other side of the argument, check out Brad DeLong, David Cay Johnston, Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias and, especially, Diane Lim Rogers.
The Starfish and the Spider: 8 Principles of Decentralization | iRevolution
The Starfish and the Spider: 8 Principles of Decentralization
“The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations” by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom is still one of my favorite books on organizational theory and complex systems.
The starfish represents decentralized “organizations” while the spider describes hierarchical command-and-control structures. In reviewing the book, the Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum wrote that “[it has] not only stimulated my thinking, but as a result of the reading, I proposed ten action points for my own organization.”
The Starfish and the Spider is about “what happens when there’s no one in charge. It’s about what happens when there’s no hierarchy. You’d think there would be disorder, even chaos. But in many arenas, a lack of traditional leadership is giving rise to powerful groups that are turning industry and society upside down.” The book draws on a series of case studies that illustrate 8 Principles of Decentralization. I include these below with short examples.
1. When attacked, a decentralized organization tends to become even more open and decentralized:
Not only did the Apaches survive the Spanish attacks, but amazingly, the attacks served to make them even stronger. When the Spanish attacked them, the Apaches became even more decentralized and even more difficult to conquer (21).
2. It’s easy to mistake starfish for spiders:
When we first encounter a collection of file-swapping teenagers, or a native tribe in the Arizona desert, their power is easy to overlook. We need an entirely different set of tools in order to understand them (36).
3. An open system doesn’t have central intelligence; the intelligence is spread throughout the system:
It’s not that open systems necessarily make better systems. It’s just that they’re able to respond more quickly because each member has access to knowledge and the ability to make direct use of it (39).
4. Open systems can easily mutate:
The Apaches did not—and could not—plan ahead about how to deal with the European invaders, but once the Spanish showed up, Apache society easily mutated. They went from living in villages to being nomads. The decision didn’t have to be approved by headquarters (40).
5. The decentralized organization sneaks up on you:
For a century, the recording industry was owned by a handful of corporations, and then a bunch of hackers altered the face of the industry. We’ll see this pattern repeat itself across different sectors and in different industries (41).
6. As industries become decentralized, overall profits decrease:
The combined revenues of the remaining four [music industry giants] were 25 percent less than they had been in 2001. Where did the revenues go? Not to P2P players [Napster]. The revenue disappeared (50).
7. Put people into an open system and they’ll automatically want to contribute:
People take great care in making the articles objective, accurate, and easy to understand [on Wikipedia] (74).
8. When attacked, centralized organizations tend to become even more centralized:
As we saw in the case of the Apaches and the P2P players, when attacked decentralized organizations become even more decentralized (139).
Daily Kos: State of the Nation
Der Gründungszuschuß
by brooklynbadboy
Sat Dec 04, 2010 at 02:30:04 PM PST
One of the fascinating things I learned about during my trip to Germany last September is that funny-looking word in the title (pronounced something like "grun dungs zoo shooss"). As Harold Meyerson pointed out in The Washington Post, Germany's economy is kicking butt. Republicans, of course, hate this. To them, a big government, heavily unionized, social democracy like Germany is supposed to be the poster child for the wrong way to do things. Yet Germany prospers. But here's something even they would have difficulty arguing with: Germany's government helps the unemployed start businesses with start-up capital. Maybe we should consider giving something like this a try.
Der Gründungszuschuss roughly translates into "start-up grant." It is a program for the unemployed that gives a monthly amount of seed capital for those on unemployment. The grant is means-tested and is paid on top of unemployment, health and other benefits. For example, a married couple with children can get a grant up to just under $32,000! A single person who is unemployed and has no children can get up to just over $25,000. The benefits are paid out over a period of nine months. After that, there is an extension of benefits called the "building phase" that pays an additional $400 per month for six months.
The German government expects that 20 to 30 percent of these businesses will fail. No matter. As policy, they've decided that they'd rather have people with an entrepreneurial bent out doing something rather than sitting around. This money isn't just thrown away. There are an extensive state-sponsored classes that must be attended to learn how to start a business properly. A carefully written business plan must be submitted to a board. The government also supplies free business consulting to help get the start-up off the ground and avoid pitfalls. There is an extensive array of government seminars to help grantees manage their businesses to success. A person can pull out of the program at any time without fault, including for being called back to work. In fact, even if one is called back to work, they can still complete the program. The government requires grantees to spend at least 15 hours per week on their start-ups. (I had one of those Michael Moore "You've got to be kidding me" moments on that one.) Want more? The grant is tax free.
I learned about Der Gründungszuschuss from a friend in Cologne. (You can learn more about it by reading here, provided you read German. But you may be able to use one of those translators.) His older brother was laid off from an internet service provider in 2008, got the start-up grant in 2009. He now has a small search optimization consulting firm with a partner and a secretary. In two years, he went from unemployment right into tax-paying independent businessman. And he put someone else to work and got some private capital off the sidelines.
Just imagine if we could get something like that going here.
Saturday, December 04, 2010
WikiLeaks Archive - China’s Battle With Google - NYTimes.com
Cables Discuss Vast Hacking by a China That Fears the Web
By JAMES GLANZ and JOHN MARKOFF
As China ratcheted up the pressure on Google to censor its Internet searches last year, the American Embassy sent a secret cable to Washington detailing one reason top Chinese leaders had become so obsessed with the Internet search company: they were Googling themselves.
The May 18, 2009, cable, titled “Google China Paying Price for Resisting Censorship,” quoted a well-placed source as saying that Li Changchun, a member of China’s top ruling body, the Politburo Standing Committee, and the country’s senior propaganda official, was taken aback to discover that he could conduct Chinese-language searches on Google’s main international Web site. When Mr. Li typed his name into the search engine at google.com, he found “results critical of him.”
That cable from American diplomats was one of many made public by WikiLeaks that portray China’s leadership as nearly obsessed with the threat posed by the Internet to their grip on power — and, the reverse, by the opportunities it offered them, through hacking, to obtain secrets stored in computers of its rivals, especially the United States.
Extensive hacking operations suspected of originating in China, including one leveled at Google, are a central theme in the cables. The operations began earlier and were aimed at a wider array of American government and military data than generally known, including on the computers of United States diplomats involved in climate change talks with China.
One cable, dated early this year, quoted a Chinese person with family connections to the elite as saying that Mr. Li himself directed an attack on Google’s servers in the United States, though that claim has been called into question. In an interview with The New York Times, the person cited in the cable said that Mr. Li personally oversaw a campaign against Google’s operations in China but the person did not know who directed the hacking attack.
The cables catalog the heavy pressure that was placed on Google to comply with local censorship laws, as well as Google’s willingness to comply — up to a point. That coercion began building years before the company finally decided to pull its search engine out of China last spring in the wake of the successful hacking attack on its home servers, which yielded Chinese dissidents’ e-mail accounts as well as Google’s proprietary source code.
The demands on Google went well beyond removing material on subjects like the Dalai Lama or the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Chinese officials also put pressure on the United States government to censor the Google Earth satellite imaging service by lowering the resolution of images of Chinese government facilities, warning that Washington could be held responsible if terrorists used that information to attack government or military facilities, the cables show. An American diplomat replied that Google was a private company and that he would report the request to Washington but that he had no sense about how the government would act.
Yet despite the hints of paranoia that appear in some cables, there are also clear signs that Chinese leaders do not consider the Internet an unstoppable force for openness and democracy, as some Americans believe.
In fact, this spring, around the time of the Google pullout, China’s State Council Information Office delivered a triumphant report to the leadership on its work to regulate traffic online, according to a crucial Chinese contact cited by the State Department in a cable in early 2010, when contacted directly by The New York Times.
The message delivered by the office, the person said, was that “in the past, a lot of officials worried that the Web could not be controlled.”
“But through the Google incident and other increased controls and surveillance, like real-name registration, they reached a conclusion: the Web is fundamentally controllable,” the person said.
That confidence may also reflect what the cables show are repeated and often successful hacking attacks from China on the United States government, private enterprises and Western allies that began by 2002, several years before such intrusions were widely reported in the United States.
At least one previously unreported attack in 2008, code-named Byzantine Candor by American investigators, yielded more than 50 megabytes of e-mail messages and a complete list of user names and passwords from an American government agency, a Nov. 3, 2008, cable revealed for the first time.
Precisely how these hacking attacks are coordinated is not clear. Many appear to rely on Chinese freelancers and an irregular army of “patriotic hackers” who operate with the support of civilian or military authorities, but not directly under their day-to-day control, the cables and interviews suggest.
But the cables also appear to contain some suppositions by Chinese and Americans passed along by diplomats. For example, the cable dated earlier this year referring to the hacking attack on Google said: “A well-placed contact claims that the Chinese government coordinated the recent intrusions of Google systems. According to our contact, the closely held operations were directed at the Politburo Standing Committee level.”
The cable goes on to quote this person as saying that the hacking of Google “had been coordinated out of the State Council Information Office with the oversight” of Mr. Li and another Politburo member, Zhou Yongkang.” Mr. Zhou is China’s top security official.
But the person cited in the cable said it was Mr. Li’s subordinate, Liu Yunshan, director of the Propaganda Department, who orchestrated a campaign to force Google to abide by censorship regulations. Mr. Li and Mr. Zhou signed off at several points, the person said, including once around the time of the successful attack, last December. But the person did not know whether senior leaders directed the attack.
Still, the cables provide a patchwork of detail about cyberattacks that American officials believe originated in China with either the assistance or knowledge of the Chinese military.
For example, in 2008 Chinese intruders based in Shanghai and linked to the People’s Liberation Army used a computer document labeled “salary increase — survey and forecast” as bait as part of the sophisticated intrusion scheme that yielded more than 50 megabytes of electronic mail messages and a complete list of user names and passwords from a United States government agency that was not identified.
The cables indicate that the American government has been fighting a pitched battle with intruders who have been clearly identified as using Chinese-language keyboards and physically located in China. In most cases the intruders took great pains to conceal their identities, but occasionally they let their guard down. In one case described in the documents, investigators tracked one of the intruders who was surfing the Web in Taiwan “for personal use.”
In June 2009 during climate change talks between the United States and China, the secretary of state’s office sent a secret cable warning about e-mail “spear phishing” attacks directed at five State Department employees in the Division of Ocean Affairs of the Office of the Special Envoy for Climate Change.
The messages, which purport to come from a National Journal columnist, had the subject line “China and Climate Change.” The e-mail contained a PDF file that was intended to install a malicious software program known as Poison Ivy, which was meant to give an intruder complete control of the victim’s computer. That attack failed.
The cables also reveal that a surveillance system dubbed Ghostnet that stole information from the computers used by the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and South Asian governments and was uncovered in 2009 was linked to a second broad series of break-ins into American government computers code-named Byzantine Hades. Government investigators were able to make a “tenuous connection” between those break-ins and the People’s Liberation Army.
The documents also reveal that in 2008 German intelligence briefed American officials on similar attacks beginning in 2006 against the German government, including military, economic, science and technology, commercial, diplomatic, and research and development targets. The Germans described the attacks as preceding events like the German government’s meetings with the Chinese government.
Even as such attacks were occurring, Google made a corporate decision in 2006, controversial even within the company, to establish a domestic Chinese version of its search engine, called google.cn. In doing so, it agreed to comply with China’s censorship laws.
But despite that concession, Chinese officials were never comfortable with Google, the cables and interviews show.
The Chinese claimed that Google Earth, the company’s satellite mapping software, offered detailed “images of China’s military, nuclear, space, energy and other sensitive government agency installations” that would be an asset to terrorists. A cable sent on Nov. 7, 2006, reported that Liu Jieyi, an assistant minister of foreign affairs, warned the American Embassy in Beijing that there would be “grave consequences” if terrorists exploited the imagery.
A year later, another cable pointed out that Google searches for politically delicate terms would sometimes be automatically redirected to Baidu, the Chinese company that was Google’s main competitor in China. Baidu is known for scrubbing its own search engine of results that might be unwelcome to government censors.
Google conducted numerous negotiations with officials in the State Council Information Office and other departments involved in censorship, propaganda and media licensing, the cables show. The May 18, 2009, cable that revealed pressure on the company by Mr. Li, the propaganda chief, said Google had taken some measures “to try and placate the government.” The cable also noted that Google had asked the American government to intervene with China on its behalf.
But Chinese officials became alarmed that Google still did less than its Chinese rivals to remove material Chinese officials considered offensive. Such material included information about Chinese dissidents and human rights issues, but also about central and provincial Chinese leaders and their children — considered an especially taboo topic, interviews with people quoted in the cables reveal.
Mr. Li, after apparently searching for information online on himself and his children, was reported to have stepped up pressure on Google. He also took steps to punish Google commercially, according to the May 18 cable.
The propaganda chief ordered three big state-owned Chinese telecommunications companies to stop doing business with Google. Mr. Li also demanded that Google executives remove any link between its sanitized Chinese Web site and its main international one, which he deemed “an illegal site,” the cable said.
Google ultimately stopped complying with repeated censorship requests. It stopped offering a censored version of its search engine in China earlier this year, citing both the hacking attacks and its unwillingness to continue obeying censorship orders.
We become what we fear!
Howstuffworks "How Deja Vu Works"
 © Photographer: Yakobchuk | Agency: Dreamstime.com Many of the theories about déjà vu have to do with processes |
There are more than 40 theories as to what déjà vu is and what causes it, and they range from reincarnation to glitches in our memory processes. In this article, we'll explore a few of those theories to shed some light on this little understood phenomenon.
Déjà vu is a French term that literally means "already seen" and has several variations, including déjà vécu, already experienced; déjà senti, already thought; and déjà visité, already visited. French scientist Emile Boirac, one of the first to study this strange phenomenon, gave the subject its name in 1876.
Deja Vu: At a Glance Since déjà vu occurs in individuals with and without a medical condition, there is much speculation as to how and why this phenomenon happens. Need a quick summary? Click here for What is Déjà Vu? |
Hallucinations that are brought on by illness or drugs sometimes bring a heightened awareness and are confused with déjà vu. False memories that are brought on by schizophrenia can be confused with déjà vu as well. Unlike true déjà vu, which typically lasts from 10 to 30 seconds, these false memories or hallucinations can last much longer.
Types of Deja Vu
Quiz Corner Test your knowledge of deja vu with our Deja Vu Quiz. |
Defining types of déjà vu is a very slippery area. Those who have studied it have applied their own categories and differentiations -- each usually tied to a specific theory about what causes déjà vu. Alan Brown, a professor of psychology at South Methodist University and author of "The Déjà Vu Experience: Essays in Cognitive Psychology," has three categories for déjà vu. He believes there is déjà vu caused by biological dysfunction (e.g., epilepsy), implicit familiarity and divided perception. In 1983, Dr. Vernon Neppe, Director of the Pacific Neuropsychiatric Institute in Seattle, proposed four subcategories of déjà vu, including epileptic, subjective paranormal, schizophrenic and associative.
"A black cat went past us, and then I saw another that looked just like it," says Neo in "The Matrix." Trinity responds: "A déjà vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when they change something."
Chronic Deja Vu Recently, there have been studies of people who have what researchers are terming "chronic déjà vu." Four senior citizens in the United Kingdom have experienced déjà vu in a constant state. They refused to watch the news because they felt like they already knew what was going to be said (even though they really didn't). Or, they wouldn't go to the doctor because they felt like they had already been and didn't see the point. Researchers have suggested that these individuals have experienced a failure in the temporal lobe. The circuits that are activated when you remember something have gotten stuck in the "on" position, so to speak. This has essentially created memories that don't actually exist [ref]. |
- Associative déjà vu
The most common type of déjà vu experienced by normal, healthy people is associative in nature. You see, hear, smell or otherwise experience something that stirs a feeling that you associate with something you've seen, heard, smelled or experienced before. Many researchers think that this type of déjà vu is a memory-based experience and assume that the memory centers of the brain are responsible for it.
There are also high occurrences of déjà vu among people with temporal lobe epilepsy. Just before having a seizure they often experience a strong feeling of déjà vu. This has given researchers a slightly more reliable way of studying déjà vu, and they've been able to identify the areas of the brain where these types of déjà vu signals originate. However, some researchers say that this type of déjà vu is distinctly different from typical déjà vu. The person experiencing it may truly believe they've been through the exact situation before, rather than getting a feeling that quickly passes.
Déjà vu also occurs with some predictability in major psychiatric disorders, including anxiety, depression, dissociative disorders and schizophrenia.
Next, we'll look at how researchers have studied this phenomenon.
Studying Deja Vu
Déjà vu is extremely difficult to study because it occurs briefly, unannounced, only in certain people, and has no witnesses or physical manifestations other than the person saying, "hey, déjà vu!" Because of this, there is little firm research and no definitive explanations. Déjà vu studies must depend on personal descriptions and recollection for data. For two centuries people have tried to come up with reasons we experience déjà vu. From philosophers, to psychologists, to paranormal experts, they've all had their theories.
Emile Boirac was a French psychic researcher who was the first to use the term déjà vu in his book, "L'Avenir des Sciences Psychiques." He did not research the phenomenon in depth, however. Sigmund Freud theorized that these experiences resulted from repressed desires or memories related to a stressful event that people could no longer access as regular memory. Scientists used this theory, called paramnesia, to explain déjà vu for a large part of the 20th century.
Over the years, many scientists ignored déjà vu completely due to its frequent association with past life experiences, ESP and alien abductions. These associations gave the study of déjà vu a bit of a stigma. Recently, researchers have set aside some of those associations and have begun putting brain imaging technology to work. Firmly placing déjà vu within the study of memory, they hope to discover more about how memories are formed, stored and retrieved.
They have since determined that the medial temporal lobe is involved in our conscious memory. Within the medial temporal lobe are the parahippocampal gyrus, the rhinal cortex and the amygdala. John D.E. Gabrieli at Stanford University found in 1997 that the hippocampus enables us to consciously recall events. He also found that the parahippocampal gyrus enables us to determine what's familiar and what isn't (and without actually retrieving a specific memory to do it).
While about 60 percent of people say they have experienced déjà vu, the rates are highest among people between the ages of 15 and 25. The upper age varies among researchers, but most agree that déjà vu experiences decrease with age. There have also been higher reported occurrences among those with higher incomes, those who tend to travel more and those with higher education levels. Active imaginations and the ability to recall dreams has also been a commonality among people who report déjà vu experiences.
Some researchers also report that the more tired or stressed you are, the more likely you are to experience déjà vu. Other researchers, however, have seen just the opposite. They report that the more refreshed and relaxed you are, the more likely you are to experience déjà vu. Obviously, the jury is still out about a lot of things related to déjà vu.
One reported finding is that the more open-minded or politically liberal a person is, the more likely they are to experience déjà vu. However, this may also mean that the more open-minded you are, the more likely you are to talk about something potentially seen as "weird," like déjà vu.
Divided Attention (the Cell Phone Theory)
 Photo courtesy Dragan Sasic / Stock.xchng When we're on a cell phone and driving, our attention is divided. Déjà vu may work the same way. |
Based on this idea, Alan Brown proposed what he calls the cell phone theory (or divided attention). This means that when we are distracted with something else, we subliminally take in what's around us but may not truly register it consciously. Then, when we are able to focus on what we are doing, those surroundings appear to already be familiar to us even when they shouldn't be.
With this in mind, it is reasonable to see how we might walk into a house for the first time, perhaps while talking to our host, and experience déjà vu. It would work like this: before we've actually looked at the room, our brains have processed it visually and/or by smell or sound, so that when we actually look at it we get a feeling that we've been there before.
More Deja Vu Theories
The Full Deja Vu Experience Below are names for some of the many ways in which the déjà experience may manifest:
Déjà rencontré appears preferable to déjà trouvé for the already met experience because it specifically relates to interpersonal situations. Source: The Various Manifestations of Déjà Vu Experience |
Dutch psychiatrist Hermon Sno proposed the idea that memories are like holograms, meaning that you can recreate the entire three-dimensional image from any fragment of the whole. The smaller the fragment, however, the fuzzier the ultimate picture. Déjà vu, he says, happens when some detail in the environment we are currently in (a sight, sound, smell, et cetera) is similar to some remnant of a memory of our past and our brain recreates an entire scene from that fragment.
Other researchers also agree that some small piece of familiarity may be the seed that creates the déjà vu feeling. For example, you might go for a ride with a friend in an old 1964 Plymouth and have a strong déjà vu experience without actually remembering (or even being aware of the fact) that your grandfather had the same type of car and you're actually remembering riding in that car as a small child. Things like the smell and the look and feel of the seat or dashboard can bring back memories you didn't even know you had.
Dual Processing (or Delayed Vision)
Another theory is based on the way our brain processes new information and how it stores long- and short-term memories. Robert Efron tested an idea at the Veterans Hospital in Boston in 1963 that stands as a valid theory today. He proposed that a delayed neurological response causes déjà vu. Because information enters the processing centers of the brain via more than one path, it is possible that occasionally that blending of information might not synchronize correctly.
Efron found that the temporal lobe of the brain's left hemisphere is responsible for sorting incoming information. He also found that the temporal lobe receives this incoming information twice with a slight (milliseconds-long) delay between transmissions -- once directly and once again after its detour through the right hemisphere of the brain. If that second transmission is delayed slightly longer, then the brain might put the wrong timestamp on that bit of information and register it as a previous memory because it had already been processed. That could explain the sudden sense of familiarity.
"Memories" From Other Sources
This theory proposes that we have many stored memories that come from many aspects of our lives, including not only our own experiences but also movies, pictures we've seen and books we've read. We can have very strong memories of things we've read about or seen without actually experiencing, and over time, these memories may be pushed back in our minds. When in we see or experience something that is very similar to one of those memories, we might experience a feeling of déjà vu.
For example, as a child we may have seen a movie that had a scene in a famous restaurant or at a famous landmark. Then, as an adult, we visit the same location without remembering the movie, and the location appears to be very familiar to us.
Deja Vu and Precognitive Dreams
Some researchers, including Swiss scientist Arthur Funkhouser, firmly believe that precognitive dreams are the source of many déjà vu experiences. J.W. Dunne, an aeronautical engineer who designed planes in World War II, conducted studies in 1939 using students of Oxford University. His studies found 12.7 percent of his subjects' dreams to have similarities with future events. Recent studies, including one by Nancy Sondow in 1988, have had similar results of 10 percent.
These researchers also tied evidence of precognitive dreams to déjà vu experiences that occurred anywhere from one day to eight years later. The question has been raised about why the experiences themselves are typically mundane everyday things. One explanation from Funkhouser is that something more exciting is more likely to be remembered, making a déjà vu experience less likely.
 Francois Lo Presti/AFP/Getty Images From left: Denzel Washington, Paula Patton, Tony Scott and Jerry Bruckheimer at the French premiere of "Deja Vu." The film explores time travel, terrorist attacks and secret police forces. Déjà vu? Not so much. |
Although déjà vu has been studied as a phenomenon for over a hundred years and researchers have advanced tens of theories about its cause, there is no simple explanation for what it means or why it happens. Perhaps as technology advances and we learn more about how the brain works, we will also learn more about why we experience this strange phenomenon.
10 Things You Never Noticed in 2001: A Space Odyssey - Premiere.com
10 Things You Never Noticed in 2001: A Space Odyssey
We’ll probably never live long enough to get a chance to use a commercial space toilet.
The only thing Stanley Kubrick’s visionary sci-fi classic got wrong about the future was the year. By the time the year 2001 actually rolled around, much of what director Kubrick and author Arthur C. Clarke predicted hadn’t come true, exactly. But prophecy isn’t an exact science. The future they imagined is still unfolding.
Thanks to the magic of Blu-ray, we’ve compiled a list of fleeting moments from a movie stacked with iconic scenes. Kubrick’s attention to detail commands respect, regardless of whether you think 2001: A Space Odyssey is a breathtaking epic that tackles deep philosophical questions, or an overrated and pretentious excuse for a nap. Here are ten things you might not have noticed about the future predicted by 2001: A Space Odyssey.
1. The astronauts have iPads!
Clearly, this movie infiltrated the subconscious of Apple’s Steve Jobs. Dave Bowman and Frank Poole watch their iPads while having breakfast. Rant Alert: If their spaceship Discovery has artificial gravity, why are the humans forced to eat multi-colored paste with forks? What kind of future invents the iPad, but neglects inventing Hungry Man frozen dinners?
2. There’s a Hilton in Earth’s orbit!
Everyone from Richard Branson to President Obama expects space to become commercialized. In the future Kubrick predicted, this comes true – the now long defunct Pan Am airline flies people to a Hilton Hotel in the stars.
3. Space toilets are really complicated!
4. Waking up an astronaut in deep-space hibernation isn’t as complicated as using a space toilet!
5. Triggering explosive bolts in your space pod isn’t as complicated as using a space toilet!
6. Space food isn’t appetizing! At all!
If you’re strapped into a rocket hurtling towards a space station, you’re going to be eating food that can’t float around in zero gravity. Food that can be eaten through a straw. Tonight's dinner: liquid fish, corn, peas, and cheese!
7. Man travels to the moon!
The special effects in 2001 were so realistic, that some conspiracy theorists are convinced Kubrick was hired by the US government to help fake the Apollo moon landing footage. This makes some twisted sense: this shot of a lunar craft drifting toward the moon looks like the real thing. Of course, it’s just a scene from a movie shot in 1968… a year before the actual Apollo mission.
8. Sandwiches with the crusts cut off are delicious moon snacks!
While on the moon, dainty sandwiches are enjoyed.
9. There’s a Skype booth in the future that wasn’t, but will be!
10. There are nuclear weapons in space!
In one of the most famous scenes in 2001, a newly self-aware man-ape triumphantly throws a bone he has used as a weapon into the air. As the bone sails up, shots of a futuristic spacecraft are intercut in. This spacecraft is actually an orbiting nuclear device, and it was Kubrick’s way of connecting man’s first weapon to his ultimate. These nuclear spaceships were going to be used during the climax of the movie, but Kubrick opted for a more obscure and metaphysical ending. Putting weapons into space has been a controversial issue ever since the Russian’s put Sputnik into space. And it is a topic that is very contemporary: the US military depends heavily on communication and spy satellites. A few years ago, China knocked one of its own satellites out of orbit. And this past year, the US sent up a top-secret, space shuttle-like device into orbit. Both of these events point towards an inevitable race to arm space.
Did the Department Of Labor Miss 350,000 jobs in its tally of November employment? - The Curious Capitalist - TIME.com
Did the Labor Department Miss 350,000 Jobs?
A worker at Best Buy helps shoppers get carts on Black Friday (photo: Shannon Stapleton/REUTERS)
We might need a jobs recount.
The employment numbers came out on Friday morning for November and they were far lower than people were hoping for. But here's the problem: The employment picture might not be as disappointing as the number the Department of Labor reported. Why's that? The Labor Department failed to count just over 350,000 jobs in its final tally. Include those jobs into the mix, and the economy actually added nearly 400,000 jobs in the month of November. So why did November become such a downer? Here's why:
It all has to do with the retail sector. And the WSJ has a good take on this on their economics blog. Retail was one of the biggest negative surprises in the November jobs report. You would expect stores to have hired big in November, getting ready for the holiday season. And indeed all reports are that Black Friday and Cyber Monday were very strong for retailers. Yet, according to Labor Department's final numbers, not only did the retail sector not add jobs in November, stores fired workers--28,000 of them. Really?
No, not really. In reality, the retail sector added just over 300,000 new hires in the month of November. But the Labor Department didn't count those hires. That's because the Labor Department's final number of employment is seasonally adjusted. And since the retail sector disproportionately adds more workers this time of the year than the other 10 months, the Labor Department adjusts down the sector's employment numbers in November and December. So retail employment gets over counted in January and February when hiring is slow, and undercounted in November and December. The reason is to smooth the numbers, but it also distorts, particularly at times like these when the economy is hopefully at an inflection point. The result: In the Labor Department's final count, 350,000 retail jobs got excluded.
And that may make sense. Many of those jobs are seasonal and temporary. But if the retail sector continues to do well this holiday season, some stores may keep a good number of those employees. If so, November's disappointing job report might be just be setting the economy up for a surprisingly strong employment number for January.
Scripting News: Ask Not
To paraphrase JFK: Ask not what the Internet can do for you, ask what you can do for the Internet.
John F. Kennedy On Why WikiLeaks Matters | The Moderate Voice
John F. Kennedy On Why WikiLeaks Matters
Posted by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist in Arts & Entertainment, Economy, International, Law, Media, Miscellaneous, Places, Politics, Science & Technology, Society, War.
Dec 3rd, 2010 2 responses -->
As the US establishment, and many in the American media, have begun to build up hysteria against WikiLeaks and virtually calling for the assassination of Julian Assange, I am reminded of the warning by President John F. Kennedy which is so relevant even today (See You Tube). Kennedy warned that there was a “danger to the survival of our nation if our traditions don’t survive.”
Kennedy said: “The very word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society. Inherently and historically, we as a people are opposed to secret proceedings and concealment.”
The Guardian reports that “The US struck its first blow against WikiLeaks after Amazon.com pulled the plug on hosting the whistle-blowing website in reaction to heavy political pressure.” More here…
A post on Twitter says: “WikiLeaks: For a change, it’s not China but U.S. that is attacking a Web site and pressuring host & domain providers without a formal charge.”
Funny or mad!!!… In this Internet age the US government departments, including the US State Department, tells employees not to read WikiLeaks!!! The US State Department has directed its staff around the world not to surf the WikiLeaks website, according to employees. More here…
US company Tableau Software admits request from Senator Joe Lieberman made it withdraw graphics, while Social Security Agency warns staff viewing cables could be ‘criminal offence’. See here…
Meanwhile WikiLeaks founder Australian Julian Assange’s mother Christine is defending her son as fighting a good fight, saying she gave him a strong grounding in ethics. More here…
A Pakistani court today rejected a petition seeking a ban on WikiLeaks for releasing thousands of secret US diplomatic cables, with the judge saying the people must know the facts. More here…
Governments around the world today stressed that just because they are trying to crush WikiLeaks to death, it does not necessarily mean that you will be next, says a blogger. See here…
I wrote in an earlier post that the real danger to the USA’s security comes not from WikiLeaks or Osama bin Laden but from the private global banks… See here…
Ron Paul stands up for Assange - POLITICO.com Print View
Ron Paul stands up for Assange
Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) is taking a stand as one of Julian Assange’s few defenders in Washington, arguing that the WikiLeaks founder should get the same protections as the media.
Attorney General Eric Holder said this week that the Justice Department is examining whether Assange can be charged with a crime for posting hundreds of thousands of leaked government intelligence documents and diplomatic cables.
Many Republicans have gone even further in their attacks on Assange, especially former Arkansas GOP Gov. Mike Huckabee, who said this week that the source who leaked to the WikiLeaks founder should be tried for treason and executed if found guilty.
But in a Thursday interview with Fox Business, Paul said the idea of prosecuting Assange crosses the line.
“In a free society we're supposed to know the truth,” Paul said. “In a society where truth becomes treason, then we're in big trouble. And now, people who are revealing the truth are getting into trouble for it.”
“This whole notion that Assange, who's an Australian, that we want to prosecute him for treason. I mean, aren't they jumping to a wild conclusion?” he added. “This is media, isn't it? I mean, why don't we prosecute The New York Times or anybody that releases this?”
Paul followed up with a post to his Twitter account Friday morning: "Re: WikiLeaks — In a free society, we are supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, we are in big trouble.
