Friday, June 10, 2011

TSA Considering Banning Photography Of Checkpoints | Pixiq

TSA Considering Banning Photography Of Checkpoints

 

The Transportation Security Administration is considering changing its policy on photographing security checkpoints after several videos depicting questionable incidents between passengers and TSA screeners were posted on Youtube.

News of the possible changes in policy was posted Friday on the TSA Blog, the same blog that posted that it is permissible to photograph checkpoints, even though most screeners act as if it has always been illegal.

The reason it is considering changing its policy stems from a Youtube video that was recorded in Phoenix when a woman opted-out of the metal detectors and chose to get patted down by a TSA screener.

The woman began yelling hysterically that she had been molested by the screener.

Meanwhile, the woman’s son was recording the incident and continued to do so, even though several TSA screeners told him he was breaking the law.

It is impossible to tell whether the woman was molested in the video, but it’s clear that the TSA screeners were creating their own laws in dealing with the videographer -  as they’ve done so many times before.

This is what the TSA had to say about the incident:

You may have seen the video of a woman at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport who was upset about her screening experience. 

 TSA takes all allegations of improper screening seriously and investigates each claim to the fullest. After reviewing this passenger’s time at the checkpoint, we found that our security officers acted properly and neither the CCTV footage nor this  YouTube video support any of the allegations levied. Real violations of our protocols are worth every ounce of our energy to investigate, but this alleged incident does not meet that threshold. 

This incident has also raised many questions about whether or not passengers can film at checkpoints. This topic is currently under review, but you can read this blog post on our current  policy for photography at checkpoints.  

It doesn’t make sense to ban people from videotaping checkpoints just because a woman began yelling that she had been molested. If anything, more video cameras can provide more sides of the truth.

The real issue here is that TSA has made absolutely no effort to train its screeners on the current photography policy judging from my personal experiences as well many other embarrassing videos on Youtube.

And they probably find it easier to rewrite the policy to what the screeners already believe than make an attempt to educate them.

Whatever their reasons, it has nothing to do with keeping up safe from terrorists.

UPDATE: Mickey H. Osterreicher, attorney for the National Press Photographers Association, just sent an awesome letter to Janet Napolitano, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, regarding this matter. 

UPDATE II: The TSA updated its blog after this post was published to include the following paragraph:

***Update: 6/9/2011 - There have been many many different interpretations of the photography portion of this post, so I wanted to clarify things a bit. We recognize that using video and photography equipment is a constitutionally protected activity unless it interferes with the screening process at our checkpoints. While our current policy remains the same, TSA is reviewing our guidance to officers at the checkpoint to ensure consistent application. Our goal is to protect passenger’s rights, while safeguarding the integrity of the security process. ***

So does this mean that they are going to start training TSA screeners that photography is allowed?

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Thursday, June 9, 2011

New battery design could give electric vehicles a jolt

New battery design could give electric vehicles a jolt

Significant advance in battery architecture could be breakthrough for electric vehicles and grid storage.

today's news

‘Artificial leaf’ moves closer to reality


MIT researchers develop a device that combines a solar cell with a catalyst to split water molecules and generate energy.

Report: Natural gas can play major role in greenhouse gas reduction

June 9, 2011

Streamlined rules for robots

June 8, 2011
A sample of 'Cambridge crude' — a black, gooey substance that can power a highly efficient new type of battery. A prototype of the semi-solid flow battery is seen behind the flask.
Photo: Dominick Reuter

A radically new approach to the design of batteries, developed by researchers at MIT, could provide a lightweight and inexpensive alternative to existing batteries for electric vehicles and the power grid. The technology could even make “refueling” such batteries as quick and easy as pumping gas into a conventional car.

The new battery relies on an innovative architecture called a semi-solid flow cell, in which solid particles are suspended in a carrier liquid and pumped through the system. In this design, the battery’s active components — the positive and negative electrodes, or cathodes and anodes — are composed of particles suspended in a liquid electrolyte. These two different suspensions are pumped through systems separated by a filter, such as a thin porous membrane.

The work was carried out by Mihai Duduta ’10 and graduate student Bryan Ho, under the leadership of professors of materials science W. Craig Carter and Yet-Ming Chiang. It is described in a paper published May 20 in the journal Advanced Energy Materials. The paper was co-authored by visiting research scientist Pimpa Limthongkul ’02, postdoc Vanessa Wood ’10 and graduate student Victor Brunini ’08.

One important characteristic of the new design is that it separates the two functions of the battery — storing energy until it is needed, and discharging that energy when it needs to be used — into separate physical structures. (In conventional batteries, the storage and discharge both take place in the same structure.) Separating these functions means that batteries can be designed more efficiently, Chiang says.

The new design should make it possible to reduce the size and the cost of a complete battery system, including all of its structural support and connectors, to about half the current levels. That dramatic reduction could be the key to making electric vehicles fully competitive with conventional gas- or diesel-powered vehicles, the researchers say.

Another potential advantage is that in vehicle applications, such a system would permit the possibility of simply “refueling” the battery by pumping out the liquid slurry and pumping in a fresh, fully charged replacement, or by swapping out the tanks like tires at a pit stop, while still preserving the option of simply recharging the existing material when time permits.

Flow batteries have existed for some time, but have used liquids with very low energy density (the amount of energy that can be stored in a given volume). Because of this, existing flow batteries take up much more space than fuel cells and require rapid pumping of their fluid, further reducing their efficiency.

The new semi-solid flow batteries pioneered by Chiang and colleagues overcome this limitation, providing a 10-fold improvement in energy density over present liquid flow-batteries, and lower-cost manufacturing than conventional lithium-ion batteries. Because the material has such a high energy density, it does not need to be pumped rapidly to deliver its power. “It kind of oozes,” Chiang says. Because the suspensions look and flow like black goo and could end up used in place of petroleum for transportation, Carter says, “We call it ‘Cambridge crude.’”

The key insight by Chiang’s team was that it would be possible to combine the basic structure of aqueous-flow batteries with the proven chemistry of lithium-ion batteries by reducing the batteries’ solid materials to tiny particles that could be carried in a liquid suspension — similar to the way quicksand can flow like a liquid even though it consists mostly of solid particles. “We’re using two proven technologies, and putting them together,” Carter says.

In addition to potential applications in vehicles, the new battery system could be scaled up to very large sizes at low cost. This would make it particularly well-suited for large-scale electricity storage for utilities, potentially making intermittent, unpredictable sources such as wind and solar energy practical for powering the electric grid.

The team set out to “reinvent the rechargeable battery,” Chiang says. But the device they came up with is potentially a whole family of new battery systems, because it’s a design architecture that “is not linked to any particular chemistry.” Chiang and his colleagues are now exploring different chemical combinations that could be used within the semi-solid flow system. “We’ll figure out what can be practically developed today,” Chiang says, “but as better materials come along, we can adapt them to this architecture.”

Yury Gogotsi, Distinguished University Professor at Drexel University and director of Drexel’s Nanotechnology Institute, says, “The demonstration of a semi-solid lithium-ion battery is a major breakthrough that shows that slurry-type active materials can be used for storing electrical energy.” This advance, he says, “has tremendous importance for the future of energy production and storage.”

Gogotsi cautions that making a practical, commercial version of such a battery will require research to find better cathode and anode materials and electrolytes, but adds, “I don’t see fundamental problems that cannot be addressed — those are primarily engineering issues. Of course, developing working systems that can compete with currently available batteries in terms of cost and performance may take years.”

Chiang, whose earlier insights on lithium-ion battery chemistries led to the 2001 founding of MIT spinoff A123 Systems, says the two technologies are complementary, and address different potential applications. For example, the new semi-solid flow batteries will probably never be suitable for smaller applications such as tools, or where short bursts of very high power are required — areas where A123’s batteries excel.

The new technology is being licensed to a company called 24M Technologies, founded last summer by Chiang and Carter along with entrepreneur Throop Wilder, who is the company’s president. The company has already raised more than $16 million in venture capital and federal research financing.

The development of the technology was partly funded by grants from the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E). Continuing research on the technology is taking place partly at 24M, where some recent MIT graduates who worked on the project are part of the team; at MIT, where professors Angela Belcher and Paula Hammond are co-investigators; and at Rutgers, with Professor Glenn Amatucci.

The target of the team’s ongoing work, under a three-year ARPA-E grant awarded in September 2010, is to have, by the end of the grant period, “a fully-functioning, reduced-scale prototype system,” Chiang says, ready to be engineered for production as a replacement for existing electric-car batteries.

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Wednesday, June 8, 2011

DNA Can be influenced and reprogrammed by words and frequencies « Quantum Pranx

DNA Can be influenced and reprogrammed by words and frequencies

with 9 comments

 

by Grazyna Fosar and Franz Bludorf
Russian DNA Discoveries:
Original version

THE HUMAN DNA IS A BIOLOGICAL INTERNET and superior in many aspects to the artificial one. The latest Russian scientific research directly or indirectly explains phenomena such as clairvoyance, intuition, spontaneous and remote acts of healing, self healing, affirmation techniques, unusual light/auras around people (namely spiritual masters), mind’s influence on weather patterns and much more. In addition, there is evidence for a whole new type of medicine in which DNA can be influenced and reprogrammed by words and frequencies WITHOUT cutting out and replacing single genes.

Only 10% of our DNA is being used for building proteins. It is this subset of DNA that is of interest to western researchers and is being examined and categorized. The other 90% are considered “junk DNA.” The Russian researchers, however, convinced that nature was not dumb, joined linguists and geneticists in a venture to explore those 90% of “junk DNA.” Their results, findings and conclusions are simply revolutionary! According to them, our DNA is not only responsible for the construction of our body but also serves as data storage and in communication. The Russian linguists found that the genetic code, especially in the apparently useless 90%, follows the same rules as all our human languages. To this end they compared the rules of syntax (the way in which words are put together to form phrases and sentences), semantics (the study of meaning in language forms) and the basic rules of grammar.

They found that the alkalines of our DNA follow a regular grammar and do have set rules just like our languages. So human languages did not appear coincidentally but are a reflection of our inherent DNA.

The Russian biophysicist and molecular biologist Pjotr Garjajev and his colleagues also explored the vibrational behavior of the DNA. [For the sake of brevity I will give only a summary here. For further exploration please refer to the appendix at the end of this article.] The bottom line was: “Living chromosomes function just like solitonic/holographic computers using the endogenous DNA laser radiation.” This means that they managed for example to modulate certain frequency patterns onto a laser ray and with it influenced the DNA frequency and thus the genetic information itself. Since the basic structure of DNA-alkaline pairs and of language (as explained earlier) are of the same structure, no DNA decoding is necessary.

One can simply use words and sentences of the human language! This, too, was experimentally proven! Living DNA substance (in living tissue, not in vitro) will always react to language-modulated laser rays and even to radio waves, if the proper frequencies are being used.

This finally and scientifically explains why affirmations, autogenous training, hypnosis and the like can have such strong effects on humans and their bodies. It is entirely normal and natural for our DNA to react to language. While western researchers cut single genes from the DNA strands and insert them elsewhere, the Russians enthusiastically worked on devices that can influence the cellular metabolism through suitable modulated radio and light frequencies and thus repair genetic defects.

Garjajev’s research group succeeded in proving that with this method chromosomes damaged by x-rays for example can be repaired. They even captured information patterns of a particular DNA and transmitted it onto another, thus reprogramming cells to another genome. 
So they successfully transformed, for example, frog embryos to salamander embryos simply by transmitting the DNA information patterns! This way the entire information was transmitted without any of the side effects or disharmonies encountered when cutting out and re-introducing single genes from the DNA. This represents an unbelievable, world-transforming revolution and sensation! All this by simply applying vibration and language instead of the archaic cutting-out procedure! This experiment points to the immense power of wave genetics, which obviously has a greater influence on the formation of organisms than the biochemical processes of alkaline sequences.

Esoteric and spiritual teachers have known for ages that our body is programmable by language, words and thought. This has now been scientifically proven and explained. Of course the frequency has to be correct. And this is why not everybody is equally successful or can do it with always the same strength. The individual person must work on the inner processes and maturity in order to establish a conscious communication with the DNA. The Russian researchers work on a method that is not dependent on these factors but will ALWAYS work, provided one uses the correct frequency.

But the higher developed an individual’s consciousness is, the less need is there for any type of device! One can achieve these results by oneself, and science will finally stop to laugh at such ideas and will confirm and explain the results. And it doesn’t end there.
The Russian scientists also found out that our DNA can cause disturbing patterns in the vacuum, thus producing magnetized wormholes! Wormholes are the microscopic equivalents of the so-called Einstein-Rosen bridges in the vicinity of black holes (left by burned-out stars).
These are tunnel connections between entirely different areas in the universe through which information can be transmitted outside of space and time. The DNA attracts these bits of information and passes them on to our consciousness. This process of hypercommunication is most effective in a state of relaxation. Stress, worries or a hyperactive intellect prevent successful hypercommunication or the information will be totally distorted and useless.

In nature, hypercommunication has been successfully applied for millions of years. The organized flow of life in insect states proves this dramatically. Modern man knows it only on a much more subtle level as “intuition.” But we, too, can regain full use of it. An example from Nature: When a queen ant is spatially separated from her colony, building still continues fervently and according to plan. If the queen is killed, however, all work in the colony stops. No ant knows what to do. Apparently the queen sends the “building plans” also from far away via the group consciousness of her subjects. She can be as far away as she wants, as long as she is alive. In man hypercommunication is most often encountered when one suddenly gains access to information that is outside one’s knowledge base. Such hypercommunication is then experienced as inspiration or intuition. The Italian composer Giuseppe Tartini for instance dreamt one night that a devil sat at his bedside playing the violin. The next morning Tartini was able to note down the piece exactly from memory, he called it the Devil’s Trill Sonata.

For years, a 42-year old male nurse dreamt of a situation in which he was hooked up to a kind of knowledge CD-ROM. Verifiable knowledge from all imaginable fields was then transmitted to him that he was able to recall in the morning. There was such a flood of information that it seemed a whole encyclopedia was transmitted at night. The majority of facts were outside his personal knowledge base and reached technical details about which he knew absolutely nothing.

When hypercommunication occurs, one can observe in the DNA as well as in the human being special phenomena. The Russian scientists irradiated DNA samples with laser light. On screen a typical wave pattern was formed. When they removed the DNA sample, the wave pattern did not disappear, it remained. Many control experiments showed that the pattern still came from the removed sample, whose energy field apparently remained by itself. This effect is now called phantom DNA effect. It is surmised that energy from outside of space and time still flows through the activated wormholes after the DNA was removed. The side effect encountered most often in hypercommunication also in human beings are inexplicable electromagnetic fields in the vicinity of the persons concerned. Electronic devices like CD players and the like can be irritated and cease to function for hours. When the electromagnetic field slowly dissipates, the devices function normally again. Many healers and psychics know this effect from their work. The better the atmosphere and the energy, the more frustrating it is that the recording device stops functioning and recording exactly at that moment. And repeated switching on and off after the session does not restore function yet, but next morning all is back to normal. Perhaps this is reassuring to read for many, as it has nothing to do with them being technically inept, it means they are good at hypercommunication.

In their book “Vernetzte Intelligenz” (Networked Intelligence), Grazyna Gosar and Franz Bludorf explain these connections precisely and clearly. 
The authors also quote sources presuming that in earlier times humanity had been, just like the animals, very strongly connected to the group consciousness and acted as a group. To develop and experience individuality we humans however had to forget hypercommunication almost completely. Now that we are fairly stable in our individual consciousness, we can create a new form of group consciousness, namely one, in which we attain access to all information via our DNA without being forced or remotely controlled about what to do with that information. We now know that just as on the internet our DNA can feed its proper data into the network, can call up data from the network and can establish contact with other participants in the network. Remote healing, telepathy or “remote sensing” about the state of relatives etc. can thus be explained. Some animals know also from afar when their owners plan to return home. That can be freshly interpreted and explained via the concepts of group consciousness and hypercommunication. Any collective consciousness cannot be sensibly used over any period of time without a distinctive individuality. Otherwise we would revert to a primitive herd instinct that is easily manipulated.

Hypercommunication in the new millennium means something quite different: Researchers think that if humans with full individuality would regain group consciousness, they would have a god-like power to create, alter and shape things on Earth! AND humanity is collectively moving toward such a group consciousness of the new kind. Fifty percent of today’s children will be problem children as soon as the go to school. The system lumps everyone together and demands adjustment. But the individuality of today’s children is so strong that that they refuse this adjustment and giving up their idiosyncrasies in the most diverse ways.

At the same time more and more clairvoyant children are born [see the book “China’s Indigo Children” by Paul Dong or the chapter about Indigos in my book “Nutze die taeglichen Wunder” (Make Use of the Daily Wonders)]. Something in those children is striving more and more towards the group consciousness of the new kind, and it will no longer be suppressed. As a rule, weather for example is rather difficult to influence by a single individual. But it may be influenced by a group consciousness (nothing new to some tribes doing it in their rain dances). Weather is strongly influenced by Earth resonance frequencies, the so-called Schumann frequencies. But those same frequencies are also produced in our brains, and when many people synchronize their thinking or individuals (spiritual masters, for instance) focus their thoughts in a laser-like fashion, then it is scientifically speaking not at all surprising if they can thus influence weather.

Researchers in group consciousness have formulated the theory of Type I civilizations. A humanity that developed a group consciousness of the new kind would have neither environmental problems nor scarcity of energy. For if it were to use its mental power as a unified civilization, it would have control of the energies of its home planet as a natural consequence. And that includes all natural catastrophes!!! A theoretical Type II civilization would even be able to control all energies of their home galaxy. In my book “Nutze die taeglichen Wunder,” I have described an example of this: Whenever a great many people focus their attention or consciousness on something similar like Christmas time, football world championship or the funeral of Lady Diana in England then certain random number generators in computers start to deliver ordered numbers instead of the random ones. An ordered group consciousness creates order in its whole surroundings! [http://noosphere.princeton.edu/fristwall2.html] [1] When a great number of people get together very closely, potentials of violence also dissolve. It looks as if here, too, a kind of humanitarian consciousness of all humanity is created.

At the Love Parade, for example, where every year about one million of young people congregate, there has never been any brutal riots as they occur for instance at sports events. The name of the event alone is not seen as the cause here. The result of an analysis indicated rather that the number of people was TOO GREAT to allow a tipping over to violence.

To come back to the DNA: It apparently is also an organic superconductor that can work at normal body temperature. Artificial superconductors require extremely low temperatures of between 200 and 140°C to function. As one recently learned, all superconductors are able to store light and thus information. This is a further explanation of how the DNA can store information. There is another phenomenon linked to DNA and wormholes. Normally, these supersmall wormholes are highly unstable and are maintained only for the tiniest fractions of a second. Under certain conditions (read about it in the Fosar/Bludorf book above) stable wormholes can organize themselves which then form distinctive vacuum domains in which for example gravity can transform into electricity.

Vacuum domains are self-radiant balls of ionized gas that contain considerable amounts of energy. There are regions in Russia where such radiant balls appear very often. Following the ensuing confusion the Russians started massive research programs leading finally to some of the discoveries mentions above. Many people know vacuum domains as shiny balls in the sky. The attentive look at them in wonder and ask themselves, what they could be. I thought once: “Hello up there. If you happen to be a UFO, fly in a triangle.” And suddenly, the light balls moved in a triangle. Or they shot across the sky like ice hockey pucks. They accelerated from zero to crazy speeds while sliding gently across the sky. One is left gawking and I have, as many others, too, thought them to be UFOs. Friendly ones, apparently, as they flew in triangles just to please me. Now the Russians found in the regions, where vacuum domains appear often that sometimes fly as balls of light from the ground upwards into the sky, that these balls can be guided by thought. One has found out since that vacuum domains emit waves of low frequency as they are also produced in our brains.

And because of this similarity of waves they are able to react to our thoughts. To run excitedly into one that is on ground level might not be such a great idea, because those balls of light can contain immense energies and are able to mutate our genes. They can, they don’t necessarily have to, one has to say. For many spiritual teachers also produce such visible balls or columns of light in deep meditation or during energy work which trigger decidedly pleasant feelings and do not cause any harm. Apparently this is also dependent on some inner order and on the quality and provenance of the vacuum domain. There are some spiritual teachers (the young Englishman Ananda, for example) with whom nothing is seen at first, but when one tries to take a photograph while they sit and speak or meditate in hypercommunication, one gets only a picture of a white cloud on a chair. In some Earth healing projects such light effects also appear on photographs. Simply put, these phenomena have to do with gravity and anti-gravity forces that are also exactly described in the book and with ever more stable wormholes and hypercommunication and thus with energies from outside our time and space structure.

Earlier generations that got in contact with such hypercommunication experiences and visible vacuum domains were convinced that an angel had appeared before them. And we cannot be too sure to what forms of consciousness we can get access when using hypercommunication. Not having scientific proof for their actual existence (people having had such experiences do NOT all suffer from hallucinations) does not mean that there is no metaphysical background to it. We have simply made another giant step towards understanding our reality.

Official science also knows of gravity anomalies on Earth (that contribute to the formation of vacuum domains), but only of ones of below one percent. But recently gravity anomalies have been found of between three and four percent. One of these places is Rocca di Papa, south of Rome (exact location in the book “Vernetzte Intelligenz” plus several others). Round objects of all kinds, from balls to full buses, roll uphill. But the stretch in Rocca di Papa is rather short, and defying logic sceptics still flee to the theory of optical illusion (which it cannot be due to several features of the location).

All information is taken from the book “Vernetzte Intelligenz” von Grazyna Fosar und Franz Bludorf, ISBN 3930243237, summarized and commented by Baerbel. The book is unfortunately only available in German so far. You can reach the authors here: www.fosar-bludorf.com

[2]; Transmitted by Vitae Bergman
[ www.ryze.com/view.php?who=vitaeb ]
[3]
References: 1. http://noosphere.princeton.edu/fristwall2.html
2. http://www.fosar-bludorf.com
3. http://www.ryze.com/view.php?who=vitaeb

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Internet Censorship Bill Introduced

Internet Censorship Bill Introduced
By Stephen Lendman
6-7-11
 
During his presidential campaign, Obama pledged to "(s)upport the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet."
 
In fact, he failed to deliver on every major promise made, including the last frontier of press freedom, protected from censorship and corporate control.
 
Post-9/11, both he and Bush expanded intrusive government surveillance, including Internet monitoring of personal communications. On April 1, 2009 the Senate introduced two bills, endangering a free and open Internet - S. 773: Cybersecurity Act of 2009 and S. 778 to establish a White House cybersecurity czar.
 
Both measures included provisions to give federal authorities unprecedented Internet control by:
 
-- federalizing critical infrastructure, shifting power away from providers and users to Washington; and
 
-- letting the president shut down Internet traffic for alleged "national security" reasons or during a claimed "emergency."
 
Neither measure passed. Had they, personal privacy and security would have been compromised through one provision alone - by giving the Commerce Secretary access to all relevant data relating to critical infrastructure networks without restriction.
 
In other words, privacy and judicial review protections guaranteed under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Privacy Protection Act, and financial privacy regulations no longer would apply.
 
Under an administration appointed czar, other provisions would have let the executive shut down parts of the Internet, as well as businesses and organizations, not complying with national emergency declared orders.
 
In addition, on September 20, 2010, S. 3804: Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) was introduced. Its purpose - to destroy Internet freedom one domain at a time, by requiring their registrars/registries, ISPs, DNS (domain name system) providers, and others to block users from reaching certain websites.
 
If passed, COICA would have let Washington suppress free speech and block access to non-infringing material, inflicting enormous constitutional damage by requiring all Internet communication providers (including ISPs, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, and others) to rebuild their systems, giving Washington backdoor access to everyone's Internet's communications.
 
On November 18, 2010, COICA was reported to committee, then stalled without coming to the Senate floor for a vote.
 
Various other ways of subverting Net Neutrality have also circulated, including giving cable and telecom giants more control, letting them establish higher-priced lanes (two Internets) and censor unwanted content, destroying Internet freedom in the process.
 
An October 2007 global measure, overriding national sovereignty, also threatens Net Neutrality, consumer privacy, and civil liberties. Called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), secret negotiations seek to subvert them, ostensibly to protect copyrighted intellectual property, including films, photos, and songs. ACTA remains a work in progress, but developments going forward bear watching, especially if a global agreement is reached.
 
On May 27, the Foundation for Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) said the European Commission published a "final" ACTA text with few changes from its last known version. Since introduced, Western media, especially America's, have reported virtually nothing about this destructive measure, those backing it wish to enact with little or no public disclosure, let alone input over something this important.
 
Revised Senate Internet Censorship Bill
 
On May 12, Senator Patrick Leahy (D. VT) and nine other rogue senators introduced S. 968: Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 (PROTECT IP). Co-endorsers include:
 
-- Orrin Hatch (R. UT)
 
-- Charles Grassley (R. IO)
 
-- Charles Schumer (D. NY)
 
-- Diane Feinstein (D. CA)
 
-- Sheldon Whitehouse (D. RI)
 
-- Lindsey Graham ( R. SC)
 
-- Herbert Kohl (D. WI)
 
-- Chris Coons (D. DE)
 
-- Richard Blumenthal (D. CT)
 
Reported to committee on May 26, it was placed on the Senate calendar for a floor vote yet to occur.
 
Deceptively calling it a measure against selling copyrighted content and counterfeit goods, Leahy said it:
 
"will protect the investment American companies make in developing brands and creating content and will protect the jobs associated with those investments."
 
In fact, it's a smoke screen to introduce new censorship provisions that violate First Amendment freedoms, without which all others are at risk.
 
Like most others in Congress, Leahy is no democrat. He supports imperial wars, Wall Street pillage, corporate-run healthcare, agribusiness-empowering bills, and numerous other anti-populist measures harming millions while pretending to help them.
 
In September 2010, he introduced COICA. At the time, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) Richard Esguerra said "if there's anything we've learned about efforts to re-write copyright law to target 'piracy' online, it's that they are likely to have unintended consequences."
 
In fact, COICA and PROTECT IP run roughshod over First Amendment rights by censoring speech and chilling other freedoms.
 
On June 6, EFF alerted its followers to urge their congressional representatives to "reject this dangerous bill," calling it "a threatening sequel to last year's COICA" measure explained above.
 
If enacted, PROTECT IP will give federal authorities "unprecedented power to attack the Internet's domain name system (DNS)," by:
 
-- forcing ISPs and search engines to redirect or reject user attempts to reach certain cites; and
 
-- vaguely call DNS servers:
"server(s) or other mechanism(s) used to provide the Internet protocol addresses associated with a domain name."
 
This definition endangers other technologies, including operating systems, email and web clients, routers, and others able to provide IP addresses when given domain names like traditional DNS servers.
 
Calling PROTECT IP "COICA Redux," EFF's Abigail Phillips explained differences between both measures, expressing grave concerns about the new one, saying:
 
It includes "a private right of action for intellectual property owners (as well as government to) seek injunctions against websites (allegedly) 'dedicated to infringing activities' in addition to court orders against third parties providing services to those sites."
 
Its language also adds new third-party provider categories, including "interactive computer services" and "servers of sponsored links," requiring they no longer serve targeted sites.
 
Moreover, "new language no longer requires explicit action on the part of domain name registries and registrars," but still covers unauthorized domain name system server operators.
 
In addition, the measure requires government or private plaintiffs to identify infringing persons or entities before action is taken against a domain name. Nonetheless, doing so falls far short of protecting speech with plenty of wiggle room to violate it.
 
As a result, Phillips called PROTECT IP "no improvement on COICA." Moreover, in many ways it's worse, and may produce defensive countermeasures, including establishing alternative servers with total Internet access, creating possible new security vulnerabilities.
 
Currently, Senator Ron Wyden (D. OR) placed a hold on S. 968, providing concerned Internet users time to email, call, and/or write their congressional representatives, expressing opposition to this repressive act, essential to stop.
 
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
 
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
>

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Homeless feeding: 3 members of Orlando Food Not Bombs arrested for feeding homeless at Lake Eola - OrlandoSentinel.com

Three arrested, accused of illegally feeding homeless

Orlando police say they violated a city ordinance restricting the feedings.

Members of Orlando Food Not Bombs were arrested Wednesday when police said they violated a city ordinance by feeding the homeless in Lake Eola Park.

Jessica Cross, 24, Benjamin Markeson, 49, and Jonathan "Keith" McHenry, 54, were arrested at 6:10 p.m. on a charge of violating the ordinance restricting group feedings in public parks. McHenry is a co-founder of the international Food Not Bombs movement, which began in the early 1980s.

The group lost a court battle in April, clearing the way for the city to enforce the ordinance. It requires groups to obtain a permit and limits each group to two permits per year for each park within a 2-mile radius of City Hall.

Arrest papers state that Cross, Markeson and McHenry helped feed 40 people Wednesday night. The ordinance applies to feedings of more than 25 people.


"They intentionally violated the statute," said Lt. Barbara Jones, an Orlando police spokeswoman.

Police waited until everyone was served to make the arrests, said Douglas Coleman, speaking for Orlando Food Not Bombs.

"They basically carted them off to jail for feeding hungry people," said Coleman, who was not present. "For them to regulate a time and place for free speech and to share food, that is unacceptable."

Orlando Food Not Bombs has been feeding the homeless breakfast on Mondays for several years and dinner on Wednesdays for five years.

Police had not enforced the ordinance while the court battle continued. The U.S. District Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta ruled that city rules regulating how often large groups of people can be fed in a park do not violate the Constitution.

The penalty for violating Orlando's ordinance is 60 days in jail, a $500 fine or both.

Arrest documents state that Orlando Food Not Bombs received permits and fed more than 25 homeless people at Lake Eola Park on May 18 and 23. Coleman said the group rejected the permits.

On May 25, Orlando Food Not Bombs illegally fed a large group of homeless people, the police report states. The group on its website called for members to show up that day and defy the city ordinance, according to the report.

Officers said they found a press release on Markeson when they arrested him stating that group members planned to defy the ordinance Wednesday.

Bail was set at $250 for each person arrested. Cross and Markeson were released from jail early

Thursday. McHenry wants to stay in jail and let the legal process take its course, Coleman said.

sjacobson@tribune.com or 407-540-5981

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Sunday, June 5, 2011

Activist Post: New Decentralized Currency Stimulating Underground Barter Economy

New Decentralized Currency Stimulating Underground Barter Economy

New grassroots cyber currency, the Bitcoin, may provide the perfect vehicle to operate outside the establishment economy and snub the all-powerful banking cartels -- it's decentralized, quasi-anonymous, and its supply is regulated by an algorithm to actually create deflation over time.

Source: BitcoinMe.com
Eric Blair
Activist Post

The masses are beginning to understand that the greatest threat to human freedom is the international banking cartel and their debt-based monetary system. Together with governments, they squash any manifestation of a free marketplace and personal freedom. Between runaway money printing, corporate cartel control, subsidies and taxes, and regulations and fees; the free market is nothing more than an ideology -- for now.

As the "Too Big to Fail" private banks consolidate even further with the help of their central baking partners and government puppets, it would seem that they form an all-powerful cartel.  They force us to use their monopoly money to pay for all necessary goods and services.  They track every economic transaction to plunder as much manufactured taxes and fees as possible.  Income taxes are extracted to prop up the debt-based system, the Wall Street casino, the domestic surveillance prison, and endless wars. And on top of that, the consumer is ravaged by increasing inflation.  Indeed, the system smashes personal and economic freedom.

Incidentally, it seems the precise remedy to such a system would be decentralization of currency and banking, or functioning in an underground economy outside the system. There may be hope for accomplishing both with the new crypto-currency that is beginning to gain recognition, the Bitcoin. Can this decentralized barter currency free humanity from the grip of the slave masters and provide for a truly free-market economy?

First, what is a Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is a voluntary digital currency that can be transferred peer-to-peer over the Internet. The open-source cryptographic program secures the electronic transactions without the need for a third party, like a bank or PayPal. There are no transfer fees or centralized clearing house needed for peers to trade Bits. Bitcoins are held in a wallet that carries an anonymous address in the system.  Watch the brief video below for a concise description:

MIT's Technology Review recently reported on the functionality of the Bitcoin and its "booming" rise to $40 million in circulation:

In 2008, a programmer known as Satoshi Nakamoto—a name believed to be an alias—posted a paper outlining Bitcoin's design to a cryptography e-mail list. Then, in early 2009, he (or she) released software that can be used to exchange bitcoins using the scheme. That software is now maintained by a volunteer open-source community coordinated by four core developers.
...Nakamoto wanted people to be able to exchange money electronically securely without the need for a third party, such as a bank or a company like PayPal. He based Bitcoin on cryptographic techniques that allow you to be sure the money you receive is genuine, even if you don't trust the sender.
The report explains what makes the peer-to-peer currency secure and anonymous:
Once you download and run the Bitcoin client software, it connects over the Internet to the decentralized network of all Bitcoin users and also generates a pair of unique, mathematically linked keys, which you'll need to exchange bitcoins with any other client. One key is private and kept hidden on your computer. The other is public and a version of it dubbed a Bitcoin address is given to other people so they can send you bitcoins. Crucially, it is practically impossible—even with the most powerful supercomputer—to work out someone's private key from their public key. This prevents anyone from impersonating you. Your public and private keys are stored in a file that can be transferred to another computer, for example if you upgrade.
Understandably, many readers of this will be leery of a "cashless" currency due to the stigma attached to the idea by the global banking cartel's stated agenda of creating a "cashless society" allowing for total economic dominance.  However, the Bitcoin is the antithesis of centralized control. The nature of the peer-to-peer digital transfers of bits is uncontrollable, as we've seen with BitTorrents.

The shutting down of Napster back in the day and the DHS' endless efforts to seize "pirate" websites will never stop peer-to-peer sharing of information. With Bitcoins, the transaction takes place from your personal computer out into a vast network of servers that process the transaction into the recipient's anonymous wallet located in his computer.  This realization that this currency is virtually impossible to consolidate or shutdown would seem to make Bitcoins one of the biggest threats the control system has ever faced.

As evidence of Bitcoins being used to openly defy the system, an underground online drug trade has sprung up, as reported by Gawker.  This so-called "Amazon" of illegal drugs accepts only Bitcoins as payment and is virtually untraceable unless the authorities assign massive resources to the endeavor; and even if they shut down the website, another will likely pop up to replace it. It's probably not the kind of press that the founders of Bitcoin would like, but it underscores the unconquerable nature of voluntary exchange between two individuals and the Bitcoin technology. When an authority tries to prohibit products that people demand, black markets will always pop up. And as we've seen with the war on drugs, it is impossible to stop no matter how much they throw at it.

As for how the long-term supply and value is controlled, MIT reported:

Nakamoto's rules specify that the amount of bitcoins in circulation will grow at an ever-decreasing rate toward a maximum of 21 million. Currently there are just over 6 million; in 2030, there will be over 20 million bitcoins. 
Nakamoto's scheme includes one loophole, however: if more than half of the Bitcoin network's computing power comes under the control of one entity, then the rules can change. This would prevent, for example, a criminal cartel faking a transaction log in its own favor to dupe the rest of the community. 
It is unlikely that anyone will ever obtain this kind of control. 'The combined power of the network is currently equal to one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world,' says Garzik. 'Satoshi's rules are probably set in stone.'
It is unlikely any major retailers will sign on to accept Bitcoins because they are deeply entrenched in the establishment economy and are likely saddled with debt to the banking cartel.  The Bitcoin economy is more a grassroots opportunity for small businesses and individuals to sell used or self-produced products or services.  Look for Ebay or Amazon knock-offs to pop up and allow individuals to sell items.  Look for online casinos to spring up for Bitcoin players.  Look for local organic cooperatives to implement them.  Anything that a consumer desires that can be facilitated online can conceivably be done with an anonymous Bitcoin transaction in this emerging peer-to-peer barter market.

Nothing could be a more genuine example of a free market than two people voluntarily bartering for an item without a middleman or big brother snooping the transaction.  The banks serve no purpose in online commerce except that most people pay for things from money in banks.  Now, their role will seem to be diminished should the Bitcoin economy take off.  Bitcoin seems like the ideal online currency to support if one wishes for freedom and anonymity, or to protest the centralized power of the banking cartel and their tax-thirsty puppet regimes.

Maybe I want to believe in it too much, so tell me where I'm wrong in the comment section. Activist Post may soon accept donations in Bitcoins and add a miner to support its growth. Tell us if your research says it passes the smell test or not.

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Senators Want To Put People In Jail For Embedding YouTube Videos | Techdirt

Senators Want To Put People In Jail For Embedding YouTube Videos

from the not-understanding-the-technology dept

Okay, this is just getting ridiculous. A few weeks back, we noted that Senators Amy Klobuchar, John Cornyn and Christopher Coons had proposed a new bill that was designed to make "streaming" infringing material a felony. At the time, the actual text of the bill wasn't available, but we assumed, naturally, that it would just extend "public performance" rights to section 506a of the Copyright Act.

Supporters of this bill claim that all it's really doing is harmonizing US copyright law's civil and criminal sections. After all, the rights afforded under copyright law in civil cases cover a list of rights: reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works or perform the work. The rules for criminal infringement only cover reproducing and distributing -- but not performing. So, supporters claim, all this does is "harmonize" copyright law and bring the criminal side into line with the civil side by adding "performance rights" to the list of things.

If only it were that simple. But, of course, it's not. First of all, despite claims to the contrary, there's a damn good reason why Congress did not include performance rights as a criminal/felony issue: because who would have thought that it would be a criminal act to perform a work without permission? It could be infringing, but that can be covered by a fine. When we suddenly criminalize a performance, that raises all sorts of questionable issues.

Furthermore, as we suspected, in the full text of the bill, "performance" is not clearly defined. This is the really troubling part. Everyone keeps insisting that this is targeted towards "streaming" websites, but is streaming a "performance"? If so, how does embedding play into this? Is the site that hosts the content guilty of performing? What about the site that merely linked to and/or embedded the video (linking and embedding are technically effectively the same thing). Without clear definitions, we run into problems pretty quickly.

And it gets worse. Because rather than just (pointlessly) adding "performance" to the list, the bill tries to also define what constitutes a potential felony crime in these circumstances:

the offense consists of 10 or more public performances by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copyrighted works
So yeah. If you embed a YouTube video that turns out to be infringing, and more than 10 people view it because of your link... you could be facing five years in jail. This is, of course, ridiculous, and suggests (yet again) politicians who are regulating a technology they simply do not understand. Should it really be a criminal act to embed a YouTube video, even if you don't know it was infringing...? This could create a massive chilling effect to the very useful service YouTube provides in letting people embed videos.

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