"True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made."
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
05-16-08
Life-threatening Pneumonia Caused by Pneumonia Vaccine Prevnar, an anti-pneumonia vaccination given in the United Kingdom, likely causes a significantly worse form of pneumonia to develop. This life-threatening lung disease, called Serotype 1, has become ten times more prevalent in ten years.
Serotype 1 pneumonia causes the pleura, the lining of the lungs, to become infected. The disease is suffered primarily by children, who experience fear from difficulty breathing and severe pain. Treatment consists of surgical debridement, that is, scraping, of the pleura to remove the noxious material. You have to wonder how twisted the testing protocol had to be to let this drug ever get on the market. Click the image below to read more...
U.S. Using Food Crisis To Push GMO Crops
The Bush administration has slipped a controversial ingredient into the $770 million aid package it recently proposed to ease the world food crisis, adding language that would promote the use of genetically modified crops in food-deprived countries.
The value of genetically modified, or bio-engineered, food is an intensely disputed issue in the U.S. and in Europe, where many countries have banned foods made from genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Click the image below to read more...
Tamiflu Causes Mental Disorders In Teens
Concerns are rising over side effect of bird flu drug Tamiflu on teenagers. Tamiflu is Swiss-based Hoffman-La Roche's antiviral for general influenza A and B but is also used to combat bird flu. However, worries have surfaced about the possibility of the medicine causing mental disorders among teenagers. Click the image below to read more...
Chicago Citizens Reject Terror Drill Fearmongering
The latest opportunity for authorities to grandstand, fearmonger and practice processing citizens through a de facto internment camp fell flat on its face yesterday after just 350 out of an expected 4,000 turned up to participate in a mock terror drill at Chicago's Sears Centre Arena. Click the image below to read more...
Cox & Comcast Internet Subscribers Blocked
Cox Communications appears to be interfering with file-sharing by its Internet subscribers in the same manner that has landed Comcast Corp. in hot water with regulators, according to research obtained by The Associated Press.
A study based on the participation of 8,175 Internet users around the world found conclusive signs of blocked file-sharing connections only at three Internet service providers: Comcast and Cox in the U.S. and StarHub in Singapore. Click the image below to read more...
05-15-08
Bush: I Quit Golf Over Iraq War
US President George W. Bush said in an interview on Tuesday that he quit playing golf in 2003 out of respect for the families of US soldiers killed in the conflict in Iraq, now in its sixth year.
I'm sure the grieving parents and widows appreciates your sacrifice...you stupid son of a bitch! Click the image below to read more...
Ex-Officials: Bush Admininstration Ignored Iraq Corruption
The Bush administration repeatedly ignored corruption at the highest levels within the Iraqi government and kept secret potentially embarrassing information so as not to undermine its relationship with Baghdad, according to two former State Department employees. Click the image below to read more...
The Psychology of Propaganda and Elite Control
The use of propaganda was historically associated with communist regimes. Today, the attack on Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Senator Obama and the Black Church demonstrates that America's propaganda machine is working to manipulate the masses into accepting the rule of the elitists. Click the image below to read more...
Government and Medical Industry Decides Who Dies in the Event of Pandemic
The task force members come from prestigious universities, medical groups, the military and government agencies. They include the Department of Homeland Security, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services. The proposed guidelines are designed to be a blueprint for hospitals "so that everybody will be thinking in the same way" when pandemic flu or another widespread health care disaster hits, said Dr. Asha Devereaux. She is a critical care specialist in San Diego and lead writer of the task force report. Click the image below to read more...
Save the Internet
When we log onto the Internet, we take a lot for granted. We assume we'll be able to access any Web site we want, whenever we want, at the fastest speed, whether it's a corporate or mom-and-pop site. We assume that we can use any service we like -- watching online video, listening to podcasts, sending instant messages -- anytime we choose.
What makes all these assumptions possible is Network Neutrality. Network Neutrality -- or "Net Neutrality" for short -- is the guiding principle that preserves the free and open Internet.
The nation's largest telephone and cable companies -- including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner -- want to be Internet gatekeepers, deciding which Web sites go fast or slow and which won't load at all.
They want to tax content providers to guarantee speedy delivery of their data. They want to discriminate in favor of their own search engines, Internet phone services, and streaming video -- while slowing down or blocking their competitors.
These companies have a new vision for the Internet. Instead of an even playing field, they want to reserve express lanes for their own content and services -- or those from big corporations that can afford the steep tolls -- and leave the rest of us on a winding dirt road.
Click the image below to read more...
05-14-08
U.S. Reactivates Latin American Fleet After Nearly 60 Years
After 58 years, the United States Navy will reactivate the Fourth Fleet, which will be in charge of patrolling Latin American waters. The fleet had been deactivated following the end of the Second World War, but starting July 1st of this year, U.S. naval forces will have a high level command specifically dedicated to supervising the projects of its units in Latin America and the Caribbean. Venezuela & Ecuador...here we come! Click the image below to read more...
The Recession Is Just Beginning
JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s chief executive said Monday that while the crisis in the credit markets appears to be three-quarters over, he believes a U.S. recession is just beginning. Click the image below to read more...
Domestic Spying Far Outpaces Terrorism Prosecutions
The number of Americans being secretly wiretapped or having their financial and other records reviewed by the government has continued to increase as officials aggressively use powers approved after the Sept. 11 attacks. But the number of terrorism prosecutions ending up in court - one measure of the effectiveness of such sleuthing - has continued to decline, in some cases precipitously. Click the image below to read more...
US Confession: Weapons Were Not Made in Iran After All
In a sharp reversal of its longstanding accusations against Iran arming militants in Iraq , the US military has made an unprecedented albeit quiet confession: the weapons they had recently found in Iraq were not made in Iran at all. Click the image below to read more...
Bees Dying Off In Europe
The crisis hit its peak last weekend. Beekeepers from Germany's Baden-Württemburg reported hives full of thousands of dead bees. The worst-hit region, according to state officials, was along the upper Rhine river between the towns of Rastatt and Lorrach.
Germany's beekeepers were pointing fingers at one of Germany's largest companies, blaming a popular, recently-introduced pesticide called clothianidin for the recent die-off. Produced by Monheim-based Bayer CropScience, a subsidiary of German chemical giant Bayer AG, clothianidin is sold in Europe under the trade name Poncho...
"It's designed to attack the nervous systems of insects like nerve gas," says Hederer.
I wonder if the bee industry, here in the U.S., has figured this out yet? Click the image below to read more...
05-13-08
The Truth About Veteran Suicides
Eighteen American war veterans kill themselves every day. One thousand former soldiers receiving care from the Department of Veterans Affairs attempt suicide every month. More veterans are committing suicide than are dying in combat overseas.
These are statistics that most Americans don't know, because the Bush administration has refused to tell them. Since the start of the Iraq War, the government has tried to present it as a war without casualties. Click the image below to read more...
Army's Stop-Loss Program Rising
The number of soldiers forced to remain in the Army involuntarily under the military's controversial "stop-loss" program has risen sharply since the Pentagon extended combat tours last year, officials said Thursday. Anyone else starting to feel a draft coming on? Click the image below to read more...
Hawaii Needs You
Here's a little historical information most of you never knew. Hawaii use to be a sovereign nation until the United States overthrew it's last ruler, Lili'uokalani, with the help of local businessmen and the US Marines. Ever since then, it has been a protectorate and military base really no different than modern day Iraq.
Today there's a growing movement to re-establish Hawaii's sovereignty, via the Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement. Click the image below to read more about it and download a nice documentary showcasing the history of that island and how it was overthrown by the U.S. government.
Cell Phone Spying: Is Your Life Being Monitored?
Eavesdropping is easy. All it takes is a two-minute software install and someone can record your calls and monitor your text messages. They can even set up systems to be automatically alerted when you dial a certain number, then instantly patched into your conversation. Anyone who can perform a basic internet search can find the tools and figure out how to do it in no time. But the scarier stuff is what your phone can do when you aren't even using it! Click the image below to read more...
05-12-08
The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class
The financial decline of the middle class families began 30 years ago and continues to this day. Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Tyagi have the experience and are appropriate authorities on this phenomenon. They identify the primary reasons of it: fixed expenses. Those expenses which are constant and "come in every month" has increased substantially in the last 3 decades.
Remember in the 1980s when the acronym word "DINK" was in vogue? Double Income No Kids. It may have sounded hip then but DINKS earn less today than one person earned thirty years ago, in 1973!
It is a commonly known fact that middle class two-income earning families have been and still are losing economic ground. And they will continue to lose ground.
05-09-08
Contractors Gone Wild
Theft, hookers, melting down Iraqi gold to make cowboy spurs - all in a day's work for private military contractors in Iraq? Click the image below to read more...
Battle for Haditha: The Iraq Movie We've Been Waiting For
Nick Broomfield's pulse-pounding "Battle for Haditha" turns the infamous 2005 civilian massacre into a haunting classic about the inhumanity of war. Click the image below to read more...
The Final Investigation?
One million Democrats attempting to vote in this year's primaries found their names missing from voter rolls. WHERE THE HELL DID THEY GO?
Law professor Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and journalist Greg Palast are launching an investigation. We want to know: where are these votes? Who swiped them? How? And how do we prevent it from happening in November? Click the image below to read more...
How Americans Have Become Targets of Their Own Military
America is officially a country at war with itself. Click the image below to read more...
The Collapse of the United States is Accelerating : Oil in Euros vs. US Dollars
In the last eight years implementing the plans for the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) designed "to promote American global leadership" has backfired. Click the image below to read more...
05-08-08
Veterans Office Covering Up Soldier Suicide Rates
US lawmakers have accused the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) of being out of control and of covering up the high suicide rate among Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. Click the image below to read more...
Pentagon Targeted Iran for Regime Change After 9/11
Three weeks after the 9/11 terror attacks, former U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld established an official military objective of not only removing the Saddam Hussein regime by force but overturning the regime in Iran, as well as in Syria and four other countries in the Middle East, according to a document quoted extensively in then Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Douglas Feith's recently published account of the Iraq war decisions. Click the image below to read more...
Keeping The Gas Pumps Honest
Across the state, 25 fuel inspectors and supervisors have inspected more than 4300 gas stations since the beginning of 2007. And since then, they've discovered 662 faulty gas meters. In other words, along with the higher prices, roughly 15% of inspected gas pumps were not pumping an accurate amount of gas being purchased. While this report is regarding the Detroit area, there is no reason to assume this shit is not going down nation-wide! Click the image below to read more...
More Attacks on Social Security and Medicare
Last month, a bipartisan group of prominent budget experts had a press event at the Brookings Institution where they argued that Congress had to make major cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. They claimed large cuts in these programs were necessary in order to prevent the explosion in the budget deficit that is projected if these programs stay on their current course.
While these experts are right to point to the long-term fiscal problems facing the country, the real problem is not the budget and these key programs on which tens of millions of people depend. The real problem is the United States has a broken health care system, which is projected to get progressively more inefficient through time. Click the image below to read more...
DC Madam Predicted She Would Be Suicided
DC Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey predicted she would be "suicided" on several occasions both recently and as far back as 17 years ago - comments that now appear ominous in light of the announcement that the former head of a Washington escort service allegedly killed herself today. Click the image below to read more...
05-07-08
U.S. Has Nelson Mandela on Terrorist Watch List!
Nobel Peace Prize winner and international symbol of freedom Nelson Mandela is flagged on U.S. terrorist watch lists and needs special permission to visit the USA. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calls the situation "embarrassing," and some members of Congress vow to fix it. Give me a fucking break! Mandela is a world renown figure. How the hell did he get on there in the first place? Click the image below to read more...
US Base Is No Longer Welcomed in Ecuador
With 18 months left on its decade-long contract, the U.S. Forward Operating Location in Manta has few friends in this South American nation - and fewer still who believe that the agreement has any hope of being extended. Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa has vowed not to renew the base's contract beyond its November 2009 expiration. Click the image below to read more...
The Rise and Rise of Exxon's Take From America
How sad. Exxon Mobil, the universe's largest publicly traded company, which also happens to be enjoying some of its biggest profits ever thanks to the almost doubled price of oil during the past year, didn't quite live up to Wall Street expectations this week. In fact, its stock fell nearly 4% the day it announced its first quarter of 2008 earnings. No, that Exxon didn't quite live up to Wall Street expectations is just pre-election spin, ensuring that whichever candidate gets into the Oval Office doesn't try to take some of their profits away by taxing them. (Not that they'd have to worry if John McCain wins the election.) Click the image below to read more about it.
Monsanto's Harvest of Fear
Thanks to its ruthless persecution of farmers, Monsanto already dominates America's food chain with its genetically modified seeds. Click the image below to read more...
In the Last Gilded Age, People Stood Up to Greed - Why Aren't We?
Why don't Americans rise up against the kleptocracy like they did in the late nineteenth century? Click the image below to read more...
Do Blacks Still Believe in the American Dream?
What is the American Dream? MetLife said Americans generally define the American Dream as financial security, family and freedom from want. Blacks were more likely than others to include a comfortable retirement and successful career when defining the American Dream, MetLife said. Click the image below to read more...
05-06-08
Corporations Make Billions as Food Crisis Grows
Giant agribusinesses are enjoying soaring earnings and profits out of the world food crisis which is driving millions of people towards starvation, The Independent revealed on Sunday. And speculation is helping to drive the prices of basic foodstuffs out of the reach of the hungry. Click the image below to read more...
America's Dropout Crisis
Marc Morial participated in a conference organized by General Colin Powell in Washington, D.C., in April and learned that every 26 seconds one American high school student drops out of school - that's over 3,000 youth per day; nearly 10,000 youth each month; or 1.1 million young people a year. Click the image below to read more...
More U.S. Kids On Anti-Psychotic Drugs
American children take anti-psychotic medicines at about six times the rate of children in the United Kingdom, according to a comparison based on a new U.K. study. Does it mean U.S. kids are being over-treated? Or that U.K. children are being under-treated? Click the image below to read more...
The Suicide Drug
Drug company spin does not change the fact that Cymbalta has been linked to suicide -- even in otherwise mentally healthy people. Click the image below to read more...
Microsoft Discloses Government Backdoor on Windows Operating Systems
We've seen how the NSA is allowed to gather any kind of information they'd like (http://www.eff.org/issues/nsa-spying), we now have to contend with Microsoft attempting to do the same. Any way you'd like to market this, it reeks of a backdoor! Click the image below to read more...
05-05-08
America's Chemically Modified 21st Century Soldiers
Armed with potent drugs and new technology, a dangerous breed of soldier is being trained to fight America's future wars. Click the image below to read more...
Pentagon Expands Propaganda Reach with Foreign News Websites
The Pentagon is expanding "Information Operations" on the Internet with purposefully set up foreign news websites that are designed to look like independent media sources but in reality are nothing more than direct military propaganda. Click the image below to read more...
Al-Jazeera Journalist Freed From Guantanamo After 6 Years
An Al-Jazeera cameraman was released from U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay and returned home to Sudan early Friday after six years of imprisonment that drew worldwide protests. No charges were ever filed against him by the U.S. government! Click the image below to read more...
The Corporate Theft of the Public's Natural Right to Water
The heightened trend towards water privatization has gone almost undetected by the general public for well over a decade, despite the huge ramifications it is having on many lives. Public water advocates argue that it is a necessity of life and no individual or corporation has the right to seize ownership and place a value on the resource. Water is for life, not for profit. Click the image below to read more...
Post Carrier Accused of Warning Customer About 'Mail Cover' Surveillance
Federal prosecutors in Detroit say letter carrier Darlene Cry illegally tipped off a postal customer that he was the subject of a "mail cover" - a form of warrantless surveillance in which the envelope information on every card and letter received is secretly recorded by the Post Office, then passed to federal law enforcement or intelligence officials. You'd better believe that if they're monitoring your mail, they're also checking your email and internet activity! Click the image below to read more...
05-04-08
The Other Side of Outsourcing
What happens when the demands of the global economy with all of its excess baggage of Westernizing forces collide with the deeply held traditions of an age-old culture like India's? Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Thomas L. Friedman heads to the heart of the conflict and examines how this clash of cultures is affecting the everyday lives of Indian workers, many of them young people, who are caught in the middle. Learn how this noble, proud society is coping with a struggle unlike any it's ever faced: balancing the desire to benefit from the opportunities offered by the new world market with internal efforts to protect their cultural heritage from the eroding influence of American values.
05-03-08
Microsoft Serves Law Enforcement Free COFEE
This week, as first reported by CNET News.com, Microsoft talked publicly about COFEE, its free Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor. The company demonstrated the tool as part of a law enforcement conference held in Redmond.
COFEE is a USB drive that allows law enforcement to run more than 150 commands on a live computer system and save the results on the portable drive for later analysis. This preserves valuable information that could be lost if the computer had to be shut down and transported to a lab--files that are stored in active memory would otherwise be lost, for example.
COFEE was developed in 2006 by Ricci Ieong and Anthony Fung, both members of the High Tech Crime Investigators Associate's (HTCIA) Asia South Pacific Chapter. Fung now works for Microsoft's Internet Safety Enforcement team in Hong Kong and used to be on the police force there. Ieong is founder and principal consultant for eWalker Consulting.
COFEE consists of plain text scripts; the data collected from these scripts is routed to a provided USB drive. Although intended for use with a command line, there is also an option for GUI. Raw text captures generate either SH1 or md5 checksums. The results for an acquisition are then presented in either plain text or HTML. Each operation produces its own log file to help investigators.
Although Microsoft would not confirm any specific tools included within COFEE, it did say that all the tools were publicly available. A quick search by CNET revealed several free Windows-based digital forensic tool kits available for download. These include:
Several news reports have suggested that Microsoft is also providing law enforcement with new tools to defeat BitLocker in Windows Vista or access to a secret back door within Windows. A Microsoft spokesperson denied this, saying, "COFEE does not circumvent Windows Vista BitLocker encryption or undermine any protections in Windows through secret 'backdoors' or other undocumented means." Microsoft also stressed that COFEE is still in beta.
"The key to COFEE is not new forensic tools," said Tim Cranton, associate general counsel for Microsoft, "but rather the creation of an easy to use, automated forensic tool at the scene. It's the ease of use, speed, and consistency of evidence extraction that is key."
More than 2,000 officials are using it worldwide, according to Microsoft.
05-02-08
Could the Global Food Crisis Impact America?
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, in a recent meeting here with Bretton Woods Institution organizations, called for immediate and long-term measures to tackle a growing global food crisis. The rapidly escalating crisis of food availability has reached emergency proportions, he said. Click the image below to read more...
Reverend Jeremiah Wright: Anti-American Or A Man Speaking Truth To Power?
The hard truth has always been a difficult pill for America to swallow, and now certain topics that are usually ignored have become the focus of national discourse. Click the image below to read more...
Former Shill for Big Pharma Tells the Truth About Drug Testing
Erick Turner, a psychiatry professor at the Oregon State Health and Sciences University, woke up one day and realized that he was acting as a shill for pharmaceutical corporations. Worse, he was promoting drugs that not only provide very little benefit, but also do great harm. In spite of the benefits paid to him, including accommodations and thousands of dollars, and the ego satisfaction of being recognized as a "Very Important Person" by his fellow physicians, his conscience wouldn't let him continue. Click the image below to read more...
The RAND Corporation: America's University of Imperialism
For decades these self-professed saviors of the Western world helped precipitate U.S. foreign policy disasters like the Vietnam War. Click the image below to read more...
React Operating System ReactOS is an advanced free open source operating system providing a ground-up implementation of a Microsoft Windows XP compatible operating system. ReactOS aims to achieve complete binary compatibility with both applications and device drivers meant for NT and XP operating systems, by using a similar architecture and providing a complete and equivalent public interface.
ReactOS is the most complete working model of a Windows like operating system available. Consequently, working programmers will learn a great deal by studying ReactOS source code and even participating in ReactOS development. Click the image below to learn more about it...
05-01-08
Chevron Complicit in Human Rights Abuses
An environmental group is warning U.S. energy giant Chevron to clean up its act in Burma or face legal proceedings where the multinational's links to gross human rights violations in the military-ruled country could be exposed. Click the image below to read more...
Iran Dumps the U.S. Dollar in Oil Transactions
Iran, OPEC's second-largest producer, has completely stopped conducting oil transactions in U.S. dollars, a top Oil Ministry official said Wednesday, a concerted attempt to reduce reliance on Washington at a time of tension over Tehran's nuclear program and suspected involvement in Iraq. Oh shit! It's about to be on now. Click the image below to read more...
Powering Down the Patriot Act
In the wake of another damaging report detailing the bureau's abuse of its data-gathering power, Congress is seeking to limit the use of national security letters. Click the image below to read more...
Oil Could Hit $200 per Barrel!
Opec's president warned oil prices could hit $200 a barrel and there would be little the cartel could do to help. The comments made by Chakib Khelil, Algeria's energy minister, came as oil prices hit a historic peak close to $120 a barrel, putting further pressure on global economies. Click the image below to read more...
Americans Marrying for Health Insurance
In a newly released poll, 7 percent of Americans said they or someone in their household decided to marry in the last year so they could get health care benefits via their spouse. The survey found that health care costs outranked housing costs, rising food prices and credit card bills as a source of concern. Twenty-eight percent of those surveyed said they had experienced serious problems because of the cost of health care, compared with 29 percent who had problems getting a good job or a raise. Click the image below to read more...
