Syrian Internet and Phone Blackout Enters Second Day

The Internet shutdown in the war-torn nation of Syria has entered its second day. Government media reports there are blaming a “fault in fiber optic cables,” according to a report from Al-Jazeera, the Dubai-based news organization that covers the Middle East.

The reports from SANA, the official Syrian government news agency, are also confirming reports I picked up last night via Twitter that domestic phone service within Syria is also down.

SANA’s explanation doesn’t pass the smell test, mainly because it would require the simultaneous failure of four separate fiber optic cables that bring bandwidth into the country. And there would the additional reports of service problems in countries that share the same cables. According to Google’s Transparency report, there are no such failures in Turkey, or Lebanon, or Cyprus, or Jordan.

Renesys, the U.S.-based research firm that tracks the health of Internet infrastructure around the world, shared via Twitter a map showing the routes of three undersea cables that service Syria. …

As we on the outside of all this speculate on reasons why the government would shut off Internet access, I have a few ideas. One thing I noticed as I drilled down into Google’s Transparency report for Syria was what to my eye appears to be an unusual rise in traffic from Syria to YouTube relatively early in the day. See the image below and look at the spike that occurs on May 7.

I’m just speculating here, but there have been reports of a significant massacre of at least 62 civilians by a pro-Assad paramilitary force in the coastal city of Banias on May 3 and May 4. I’ve noticed that there are several very grisly videos circulating on YouTube concerning this. (I’ve seen one that nearly made me sick, so I won’t show them to you…)

Perhaps the YouTube-related spike I noticed might coincide with increased interest inside Syria in these YouTube videos, and that the Assad government may find them enough of a threat that it would rather shut down the Internet while trying to find a way to block them or maybe try to scrub them.

There would also be a side benefit for the government side in disrupting communications capabilities of the rebel fighters, in order to keep them on the back foot. Meanwhile, any new offensives that the pro-Assad camp might have been planning can go on, and no one on the other side can share any new videos or other information about them with the outside world.

it bears repeating that the civil war in Syria has gone on for two years, and that somewhere between 70,000 and 75,000 people have died in it, most of them civilians.

http://allthingsd.com/20130508/syrian-internet-and-phone-blackout-enters-second-day/

Nun, two others in federal court for nuclear breach

When an elderly nun and two fellow peace activists walked undetected onto one of the nation’s most secure nuclear facilities last year, they wanted to call attention to the dangers of nuclear weapons.

Yet their actions in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, triggered a very different concern:

If three older peaceniks can easily trespass onto the Y-12 National Security Complex — once considered the “Fort Knox” for highly enriched uranium — just how safe are the nation’s nuclear weapons facilities from terrorists?

Sister Megan Rice, 83; Greg Boertje-Obed, 57; and Michael Walli, 63, will stand trial this week on federal charges of destroying U.S. government property, depredation against federal property exceeding $1,000, trespassing and injuring national-defense premises.

The last charge alone carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. The trial is scheduled to begin Tuesday at federal court in Knoxville, Tennessee. In the predawn hours of July 28, 2012, Rice, Boertje-Obed and Walli walked under the cover of darkness through the woods and up a hillside, approaching a chain-link fence surrounding the Oak Ridge nuclear facility. Armed with flashlights and a bolt cutter, they cut their way through the fence, fully expecting to be arrested on the spot. Instead, they walked nearly a mile, cutting through four fences in all, breaching what was supposed to be the most tightly secured uranium processing and storage facility in the country.

“When we got to the very high security fence where there’s a lethal force authorized … I thought, maybe we should turn around,” Boertje-Obed told CNN’s David Mattingly. But they didn’t. Hours later, the three activists were finally confronted by a guard after hoisting banners, spray-painting messages and splattering human blood on a building that houses highly enriched uranium. …

Since the incident, Congress has held a series of hearings and issued security recommendations to the Department of Energy and its National Nuclear Security Administration, which runs Y-12 and seven other nuclear weapons sites. Most recently, Deputy Energy Secretary Daniel Poneman testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in March that the Department of Energy has taken “several major actions … to improve security” since the Y-12 breach, including management changes and independent security reviews.

Today, changes at Y-12 are noticeable. A new security contractor is in charge. New signs and security fences are going up. While last year’s security breach shed light on systematic weaknesses at Y-12, a former nuclear reactor safety manager at the Sandia National Laboratories said he doesn’t think the nation’s nuclear weapons material were ever at any risk.

“What these people did was more like trespassing than gaining access to any weapons-grade material,” said Michael Allen, who is now a vice provost and dean at Middle Tennessee State University.

“Once they got in, they could spray paint things, but it’s just like if you got into Fort Knox, you wouldn’t know the combination to the locks.” …

via Nun, two others in federal court for nuclear breach – CNN.com.

U.S. Government Monitors All Phone Calls, All Emails And All Internet Activity

Big Brother is watching everything that you do on the Internet and listening to everything that you say on your phone. Every single day in America, the U.S. government intercepts and stores nearly 2 billion emails, phone calls and other forms of electronic communication. Former NSA employees have come forward and have described exactly what is taking place, and this surveillance activity has been reported on by prominent news organizations such as the Washington Post, Fox News and CNN, but nobody really seems to get too upset about it.Either most Americans are not aware of what is really going on or they have just accepted it as part of modern life. But where will this end? Do we really want to live in a dystopian “Big Brother society” where the government literally reads every single thing that we write and listens to every single thing that we say? Is that what the future of America is going to look like? If so, what do you think our founding fathers would have said about that?

Many Americans may not realize this, but nothing that you do on your cell phone or on the Internet will ever be private again. According to the Washington Post, the NSA intercepts and stores an astounding amount of information every single day… Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications. The NSA sorts a fraction of those into 70 separate databases.

But even the Washington Post may not have been aware of the full scope of the surveillance. In fact, National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney claims that the NSA has collected “20 trillion transactions” involving U.S. citizens… In fact, I would suggest that they’ve assembled on the order of 20 trillion transactions about U.S. citizens with other U.S. citizens.

And NSA whistleblowers have also told us that the agency “has the capability to do individualized searches, similar to Google, for particular electronic communications in real time through such criteria as target addresses, locations, countries and phone numbers, as well as watch-listed names, keywords, and phrases in email.”

So the NSA must have tremendous data storage needs. That must be why they are building such a mammoth data storage center out in Utah. According to Fox News, it will have the capability of storing 5 zettabytes of data… The NSA says the Utah Data Center is a facility for the intelligence community that will have a major focus on cyber security. The agency will neither confirm nor deny specifics. Some published reports suggest it could hold 5 zettabytes of data. Just one zettabyte is the equivalent of about 62 billion stacked iPhones 5′s– that stretches past the moon. Are you outraged by all of this?

You should be.

via » The U.S. Government Is Monitoring All Phone Calls, All Emails And All Internet Activity Alex Jones’ Infowars: There’s a war on for your mind!.

People are too stupid to realize how Total Information Awareness could be abused. If you witness a murder, for example, you will tell someone. For the sake of argument, say the murder was done by an organized crime group related to a big drug deal. You may not use email or the phone to talk about this, but the person you tell in person will. Now suppose the organized crime group gets access to the database. They search, find you are a witness, possibly even before you contact the police, and they bump you off. This doesn’t even require a government conspiracy, just bad security. It gets much worse from there.

Senate OKs Internet Sales Tax With Overwhelming Bipartisan Support

The United States Senate overwhelmingly supported a tax on Internet sales today, voting 70-24 in favor of the Marketplace Fairness Act. The outcome was expected after a similar non-biding show of approval passed the Senate with roughly the same number of votes, despite extraordinary opposition from eBay and other major Internet organizations.

As we’ve written about before, supporters argue that tax-free Internet retailers have an unfair advantage over their physical counterparts and it robs states of billions in revenue. Opponents counter that the current bill would create an unwieldy tax code labyrinth, which would be forced on startups and Internet retailers before software technology could manage the new tax.

The bill now heads to the House of Representatives for possible revision. TechCrunch’s sources on Capitol Hill say that broad support in the Senate makes it difficult for House members to oppose the legislation, but it may be modified to increase the threshold for businesses who have to collect online taxes, from $1M in revenue to $10M

This is one of those laws that affects almost everyone directly. I’m kinda surprised there’s not more of an uproar.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/06/senate-passes-internet-sales-tax/

… the pain smaller businesses stand to suffer will come in the form of lost time and attorneys’ fees from having to deal with the bureaucracies of the 46 states that collect sales tax – pain that the biggest retailers have the human and financial resources to withstand.

“The complexity is not first of all in the calculating of the tax,” Bieron says. “The reason this is the challenge to small businesses in particular is the number of state tax authorities who can come after you with their tax laws. … That’s a dramatic and negative change. And there’s no software for that.”

How about we all just give the Senate the finger and veto this? How about we take back our power and our country right now and add a People’s Veto to the way our country works? Senators, if you want more money for the States, stop the wars, don’t increase taxes.

FBI Report Implicates Saudi Government in 9/11

Contrary to the official narrative, 9/11 was state-sponsored terror. The only question is which state sponsored it.

A 9/11 Commissioner and Co-Chair of the Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 say in sworn declarations that the Saudi government is linked to the 9/11 attacks.

This week, the Miami Herald provided more evidence of a Saudi link:

A Saudi family who “fled” their Sarasota area home weeks before 9/11 had “many connections” to “individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001,” according to newly released FBI records.

One partially declassified document, marked “secret,” lists three of those individuals and ties them to the Venice, Fla., flight school where suicide hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi trained. Accomplice Ziad Jarrah took flying lessons at another school a block away.

Atta and al-Shehhi were at the controls of the jetliners that slammed into the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center, killing nearly 3,000 people. Jarrah was the hijacker-pilot of United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in a field in rural Pennsylvania.

The names, addresses and dates of birth of the three individuals tied to the flight school were blanked out before the records were released to BrowardBulldog.org amid ongoing Freedom of Information Act litigation.

The information in the documents runs counter to previous FBI statements. It also adds to concerns raised by official investigations but never fully explored, that the full truth about Saudi Arabia and the 9/11 attacks has not yet been told. … The documents are the first released by the FBI about its once-secret probe in Sarasota. Information contained in the documents flatly contradicts prior statements by FBI agents in Miami and Tampa who have said the investigation found no evidence connecting the al-Hijjis to the hijackers or the 9/11 plot.

Concerned residents in the gated community of Prestancia tipped the FBI, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, to the al-Hijjis’ sudden departure in late August 2001. The family left behind three cars, clothes, furniture, diapers, toys, food and other items.

[A] counterterrorism officer and Prestancia’s former administrator, Larry Berberich, both said an analysis of gatehouse security records — log books and snapshots of license tags — had determined that vehicles either driven by or carrying several of the future hijackers had visited the al-Hijji home. Phone records revealed similar, though indirect, ties to the hijackers, said the counterterrorism officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

*** An April 16, 2002, FBI report says “repeated citizen calls” led to an inspection of the home by agents of the Southwest Florida Domestic Security Task Force.

*** That person and a second individual were said to be flight students at Huffman Aviation — the flight school at the Venice Municipal Airport attended by hijackers Atta and al-Shehhi. The third person on the list “lived with flight students at Huffman Aviation” and was “arrested numerous times by the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office,” the report says.

*** A notice on the document indicates the censored information regarding the three individuals associated with the terrorist attacks is scheduled to remain classified for another 25 years — until March 14, 2038.

*** Al-Hijji, who following 9/11 worked for the Saudi oil company Aramco in England, could not be reached by phone or email last week. Aramco staff said there was no longer anyone by that name in the London office.

*** The FBI documents also disclose that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., queried Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller about the Sarasota investigation six days after its existence was disclosed in Broward Bulldog/Miami Herald story.

*** Similarly, Weich denied an assertion by then Sen. Bob Graham of Florida that the FBI had not turned over its Sarasota records to Congress. The bureau, he stated, made all of its records available and suggested they may have been overlooked by investigators. The documents the FBI has released do not mention other known aspects of the Sarasota investigation, including information provided to the FBI by al-Hijji’s former friend, Wissam Hammoud.

Hammoud, 47, is a federal prisoner classified by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons as an “International Terrorist Associate.” He is serving a 21-year sentence for weapons violations and attempting to kill a federal agent and a witness in a previous case against him. [S]hortly after his 2004 arrest, Hammoud told agents that al-Hijji considered Osama bin Laden a “hero,” may have known some of the hijackers, and once introduced Hammoud to fugitive al-Qaeda leader and ex-Miramar resident Adnan Shukrijumah. When reached last year, al-Hijji acknowledged having known Hammoud well. He did not, however, respond to a question about Hammoud’s allegations and said Shukrijumah’s name did not “ring a bell.”

*** Other FBI documents about Sarasota are known to exist, but were not released, including a report Graham says he read last year but can’t discuss because it is classified. The [Broward] Bulldog’s FOIA lawsuit asks U.S. District Judge William Zloch to order the FBI to produce all records of its Sarasota investigation, including the records seen by Graham. …

via » FBI Report Implicates Saudi Government in 9/11 Alex Jones’ Infowars: There’s a war on for your mind!.

Two former senators – one a 9/11 Commissioner, the other the co-chair of the joint Congressional inquiry into 9/11 – state in sworn declarations that the Saudi government backed the 9/11 attack.

The New York Times reports:

For more than a decade, questions have lingered about the possible role of the Saudi government in the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, even as the royal kingdom has made itself a crucial counterterrorism partner in the eyes of American diplomats.

Now, in sworn statements that seem likely to reignite the debate, two former senators who were privy to top secret information on the Saudis’ activities say they believe that the Saudi government might have played a direct role in the terrorist attacks.

“I am convinced that there was a direct line between at least some of the terrorists who carried out the September 11th attacks and the government of Saudi Arabia,” former Senator Bob Graham, Democrat of Florida, said in an affidavit filed as part of a lawsuit brought against the Saudi government and dozens of institutions in the country by families of Sept. 11 victims and others. Mr. Graham led a joint 2002 Congressional inquiry into the attacks.

washingtonsblog.com

More confusion to add to the 9/11 story. Will we ever have a clear picture of who really did what when?

Doctors plead to study Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s brain in bid to find “biological basis” for the Boston Bombings

… Neuroscientists in Boston are asking for a chance to examine the brain of one of the Marathon Bombing suspects to try and find some explanations for the attacks.

Dr Michael Craig Miller argued in the Boston Globe that Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s brain should be studied “as closely as our forensic experts have studied a few blocks along Boylston Street” – the scene of the double blasts on April 15.

Miller works as a psychiatrist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in the city, where Tamerlan died and his younger brother, Dzhohkar Tsarnaev, was treated after a stand-off with police.

He claimed in the Boston Globe that Tsarnaev’s brain is an “opportunity to examine important and interesting evidence that is there for the taking.”

Tsarnaev died after a battle with armed police on April 19 but his body has yet to be claimed.

Dr Miller said that Dr Robert Cantu and Dr Robert Stern of Boston University’s Center for the Study of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) have already expressed an interest in Tsarnaev’s brain.

CTE is a degenerative brain disease that was initially discovered in boxers. And Miller believes that Tamerlan’s boxing career could have caused this or another condition in the suspect.

Dr Miller concedes that: “We are not likely to agree about the meaning of what is found in the brain of the suspected bomber.”

He quoted Doctors Cantu and Stern who point out that any evidence of a brain disease “would not necessarily have been the cause of Tsarnaev’s premeditated, violent behavior.”

But Miller argued that in the aftermath of the bombings we have concentrated on “the aspects of politics and culture, or of social and family life, that may breed violent behavior.”

Dr Miller is asking to study Tamerlan’s brain as it “may teach us a small but important bit about the biology of violence. …

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2316851/Doctors-plead-study-Tamerlan-Tsarnaevs-brain-bid-biological-basis-Boston-Bombings.html

U.S. gives big, secret push to Internet surveillance

NSA director Keith Alexander, shown here in a file photo, who’s also the commander of the U.S. Cyber Command.

Justice Department agreed to issue “2511 letters” immunizing AT&T and other companies participating in a cybersecurity program from criminal prosecution under the Wiretap Act, according to new documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Senior Obama administration officials have secretly authorized the interception of communications carried on portions of networks operated by AT&T and other Internet service providers, a practice that might otherwise be illegal under federal wiretapping laws.

The secret legal authorization from the Justice Department originally applied to a cybersecurity pilot project in which the military monitored defense contractors’ Internet links. Since then, however, the program has been expanded by President Obama to cover all critical infrastructure sectors including energy, healthcare, and finance starting June 12.

“The Justice Department is helping private companies evade federal wiretap laws,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which obtained over 1,000 pages of internal government documents and provided them to CNET this week. “Alarm bells should be going off.”

Those documents show the National Security Agency and the Defense Department were deeply involved in pressing for the secret legal authorization, with NSA director Keith Alexander participating in some of the discussions personally. Despite initial reservations, including from industry participants, Justice Department attorneys eventually signed off on the project.

The Justice Department agreed to grant legal immunity to the participating network providers in the form of what participants in the confidential discussions refer to as “2511 letters,” a reference to the Wiretap Act codified at 18 USC 2511 in the federal statute books.

The Wiretap Act limits the ability of Internet providers to eavesdrop on network traffic except when monitoring is a “necessary incident” to providing the service or it takes place with a user’s “lawful consent.” An industry representative told CNET the 2511 letters provided legal immunity to the providers by agreeing not to prosecute for criminal violations of the Wiretap Act. It’s not clear how many 2511 letters were issued by the Justice Department.

In 2011, Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn publicly disclosed the existence of the original project, called the DIB Cyber Pilot, which used login banners to inform network users that monitoring was taking place. In May 2012, the pilot was turned into an ongoing program — broader but still voluntary — by the name of Joint Cybersecurity Services Pilot, with the Department of Homeland Security becoming involved for the first time. It was renamed again to Enhanced Cybersecurity Services program in January, and is currently being expanded to all types of companies operating critical infrastructure.

The NSA and DOJ declined to comment. Homeland Security spokesman Sy Lee sent CNET a statement saying:

DHS is committed to supporting the public’s privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties. Accordingly, the department has implemented strong privacy and civil rights and civil liberties standards into all its cybersecurity programs and initiatives from the outset, including the Enhanced Cybersecurity Services program. In order to protect privacy while safeguarding and securing cyberspace, DHS institutes layered privacy responsibilities throughout the department, embeds fair practice principles into cybersecurity programs and privacy compliance efforts, and fosters collaboration with cybersecurity partners.

Paul Rosenzweig, a former Homeland Security official and founder of Red Branch Consulting, compared the NSA and DOD asking the Justice Department for 2511 letters to the CIA asking the Justice Department for the so-called torture memos a decade ago. (They were written by Justice Department official John Yoo, who reached the controversial conclusion that waterboarding was not torture.) …

via U.S. gives big, secret push to Internet surveillance | Politics and Law – CNET News.

Conspiracy theory proven true: guilty verdict in Obama, Clinton ballot petition fraud

625 × 370

625 × 370

A jury in South Bend, Indiana has found that fraud put President Obama and Hillary Clinton on the presidential primary ballot in Indiana in the 2008 election.

Two Democratic political operatives were convicted in the illegal scheme after only three hours of deliberations in South Bend. They were found guilty on all counts.

Former longtime St. Joseph County Democratic party Chairman Butch Morgan Jr. was found guilty of felony conspiracy counts to commit petition fraud and forgery, and former county Board of Elections worker Dustin Blythe was found guilty of felony forgery counts and falsely making a petition, after being accused of faking petitions that enabled Obama, then an Illinois Senator, to get on the presidential primary ballot for his first run for the White House.

Morgan was accused of being the mastermind behind the plot.

According to testimony from two former Board of Election officials who pled guilty, Morgan ordered Democratic officials and workers to fake the names and signatures that Obama and Clinton needed to qualify for the presidential race. Blythe, then a Board of Elections employee and Democratic Party volunteer, was accused of forging multiple pages of the Obama petitions.

“I think this helped uphold the integrity of the electoral system,” the prosecutor, Stan Levco told reporters.

“Their verdict of guilt is not a verdict against Democrats, but for honest and fair elections,” he said.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/04/26/officials-found-guilty-in-obama-clinton-ballot-petition-fraud/

For those with disparaging essays about why people believe conspiracy theories, choke on this uncomfortable fact: Some conspiracies are true. People in government sometimes get caught and go to jail for it. Before a conviction, the conspiracy is just a theory. Only by looking carefully at facts, only with checks and balances can we know if our trust is properly placed. Keep an eye on your government. It’s your duty and your right.

The past presidential elections have been election fraud wars. I believe George W Bush stole both of his elections, so this is not limited to one party … but this is a good start. Keep going! With reforms in the ways votes are collected and counted, for better or worse, we could have fair elections.

We could request that the following writers please pull their heads out out of their butts and smell the fake names and real conspiracy:

The Voter-Fraud Myth

… Lorraine Minnite, a public-policy professor at Rutgers, collated decades of electoral data for her 2010 book, “The Myth of Voter Fraud,” and came up with some striking statistics. In 2005, for example, the federal government charged many more Americans with violating migratory-bird statutes than with perpetrating election fraud, which has long been a felony. She told me, “It makes no sense for individual voters to impersonate someone. It’s like committing a felony at the police station, with virtually no chance of affecting the election outcome.” … “Von Spakovsky said, “The idea that there’s some deep conspiracy is just laughable” …

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/10/29/121029fa_fact_mayer

I forgot to laugh.

… here’s the thing: Not only is voter fraud not rampant – it’s virtually nonexistent. The iron-clad word on the subject comes from the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, whose 2007 report, ‘The Truth About Voter Fraud,’ sorts through thousands of allegations going back to the 1990s in the most in-depth voter fraud study ever undertaken. …

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/pictures/the-voter-fraud-myth-debunked-20120612

Allegations are theories and virtually nonexistent is another way of saying the do exist.

“… why does the phantom of voter fraud keep appearing? The biggest reason is that powerful forces with very deep pockets are able to relentlessly push the message.

http://www.southernstudies.org/2010/11/why-the-voter-fraud-myth-wont-die.html

No phantom here, Scooby Doo. Those powerful forces with deep pockets aren’t lying.

“A conspiracy theory is immune to evidence, and that can pretty well serve as the definition of one.

http://www.salon.com/2013/04/24/why_people_believe_in_conspiracy_theories/

The evidence for this conspiracy theory was enough for a conviction. You can believe that this is a very rare event because it almost never happens, or you can believe that this is a rare event because people almost never get caught. Either way, it does happen.

Those who report on their government’s human rights abuses should care about the murder of Anna Politkovskaya

As a journalist, Anna Politkovskaya’s fearless coverage of the conflict and human rights situation in Chechnya earned her international recognition. It also brought harassment and intimidation from authorities. She was detained, threatened and poisoned because of her work. In October 2006, she was shot dead at her home in Moscow.

via Anna Politkovskaya | Amnesty International USA.

“The people on trial are connected to the murder, but it’s not clear how connected they are, or what their role is,” one source said. “It’s a very difficult, complicated case.” Staff at the paper were “pessimistic” that the mastermind would be caught, he said, adding that the defendants could be acquitted on appeal.

“The idea is to show that the guilty have been punished. In reality those behind the murder haven’t been apprehended,” says Natalia Estemirova, from the human rights organisation Memorial in Grozny, Chechnya’s capital. “The trial has been a farce. There has been no serious attempt to properly investigate.” …

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/feb/19/politkovskaya-trial-background-kremlin

“It is generally accepted that we Russians do not like ourselves much.” So wrote the late Politkovskaya (1958–2006) (Putin’s Russia, 2006, etc.), who paid with her life for her daring critiques of post-Soviet society.

This spirited collection, originally published by the journal Novaya Gazeta in 2007, opens with a self-interview taken from the journalist’s laptop after her death. In it, she accuses most of her journalistic colleagues in Russia with being koverny, or clowns, “whose job it is to keep the public entertained and, if they do have to write about anything serious, then merely to tell everyone how wonderful the Pyramid of Power is in all its manifestations.” The big-shoe phenomenon spreads far beyond Russia, of course, and Politkovskaya is not alone when she asks what the fate of those who refuse to play in the Big Top is—“They become pariahs,” she answers, though in her case it was worse still. Much of the collection concerns Russia’s war in Chechnya, which has quieted down since, but, only a few years ago, was raging—no thanks to orchestrated atrocities on the part of the Russian Army that Politkovskaya covered and uncovered. One was the so-called Shatoy Tragedy, in which Russian soldiers under the command of the Central Intelligence Directorate killed six Chechen civilians and burned their bodies.

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/anna-politkovskaya/journalism-worth-dying/

It is the time for journalists to seriously consider if fighting for human rights is worth one’s life. Included in this are bloggers like myself who range from amateur to professional journalists. Based on my belief that I have the right and duty as an American citizen to monitor and complain about my government, I have not been shy about speaking my mind. My posts over the years have been skeptical and critical of my government, and at times paranoid. I have done, I estimate, more than my fair share of my civic duty for my couch surfing now Facebooking American country-folk.

Do I now retire from defending human rights? Would I really die to save others, people I don’t know, from abuses such as torture and false imprisonment if it put people I do know and love in danger? If it was just myself, my own life on the line, that’s a different question, but there are no guarantees.  The world is changing. It is a time for soul-searching.

And you, readers of this blog, I don’t know the vast majority of you. Perhaps the weird crime news, funny animals and biology/technology stories are enough to keep this site interesting without using the soapbox to defend democracy and the US Constitution. When I hear a lie, why not, like everyone else, just complain to a few close friends and let it go at that? What drives me to publish and help the more easily fooled see possible deceptions? A sense of duty, compassion and fear of rising tyranny, I suppose. I could blame my 7th grade Civics teacher who said the country will fail if we don’t each do our part. If not me, who? Thus I have researched and written.

But how far will I take it?

I’m not saying this influences my decision, but I do have a question for you:

If this blog had no political/conspiracy information, would you be more or less likely to read it?

False White House explosion tweet roils market

A fake tweet from the account of the Associated Press sent stocks tumbling more than 140 points within minutes, erasing all of the day’s gains and then some, before bouncing back just as rapidly.

The erroneous tweet, which was posted around 1:07 p.m. ET, said “BREAKING: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.” The tweet was up for a few minutes before AP’s account was suspended, and presumably seen by many of AP’s nearly 2 million followers. The tweet was also retweeted by almost 1,500 other Twitter users.

By 1:10 p.m. ET, the Dow was down almost 13 points, or 0.1% on the day. Just prior to the tweet, the blue-chip index had been up about 0.9% for the day. Stocks fully recovered from the plunge a few minutes after hitting the low of the day, as investors realized the tweet had been made by a hacker and was not true.

From its corporate communications account, AP clarified within minutes that the tweet was “bogus” and later elaborate that its account had been hacked and the tweet was fake.

http://buzz.money.cnn.com/2013/04/23/ap-tweet-fake-white-house

Can someone explain exactly why the Dow falls on news like this?