Anti American propaganda from North Korea

Anti American propaganda from North Korea
(This is one of the most tame images. Discretion.)

Anwar al-Awlaki: Solidifying the Power of the Presidency to Kill Americans

I hope to return to this soon.
If you don't know who al-Awlaki is please look at my previous posts
Who was Al Qaeda's Number 2
The Killing of Al-Awlaki 2
But as the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 is not yet fully complete I will not comment on the issue.

 But for Now here is a highly slanted opinion from Anonymous

MSNBC's Take

Pentagon: Cuts Loom Large

Thank You For Your Service: Connotations

NPR: Here and Now

What do you say when you see a soldier in uniform, in an airport, say, or another public place?
Well, it might surprise you to know that some members of the military are uncomfortable with the phrase “thank you for your service."

A Hot Flash in the Cold War With Pakistan (updated)

An United States Airstrike Kills 24 Pakistani Soldiers:
Pakistan Gaves US the OK for Airstrike (update)

Pakistan Reacts by closing much needed borders to NATO military.
Read the article from the Atlantic.

Barney Frank Steps Down

Representative of Massachusetts, Barney Frank announces that he will not be seeking reelection. He cited political polarization and redistricting as key reasons for not running. Congressman Frank is 71.

Frank-Dobbs Act.

This historic piece of legislation has been one of the Republican's go to assaults on Obama and the Democratic Incumbents. Perhaps this is because most people don't know what it is.
It is actually one of the biggest financial regulation reforms since the Great Depression and was enacted in 2007 to provide the federal government with more oversight over private industry.


Quote:
"If you read the journals about [Fank-Dobbs] you will hear people complaining because they say, 'we can't do much.' But I think what we did was to restrict some of the activity that added nothing to the real economy. They were just trading paper back and forth.
I mean these people were engaged in economic transactions which had enough relation to the real economy as much as fantasy football has to Sunday afternoon, 
except they were making money of it."- Frank Dobbs on MSNBC's Hardball 12 October 2011


He was also the first openly gay Congressman to serve.
Here Frank discusses the "Radical Homosexual Agenda."

Occupy Wall Street: The Fear of Shame

This make me beyond angry but I put this aside. What was the purpose of this? Was it to clear the walkway? Surely not as evidenced by the police officer who steps over them to take better aim at the protesters. Was the purpose a decision made by the powers that be that the Occupy Wall Street protests have gone on for too long? Was it out of boredom?



The Atlantic Magazine, through a quotation of George Orwell puts it that the police officer pepper sprayed the protester not because he wanted to do so, but because he feared what other would think if he backed down. Having realized it would be a nightmare to shoot students to the sounds of chants of "don't shoot students" electing to pepper spray, to the officer at least, was an attempt to retain dignity.

A dignity which was certainly lost.

Occupy Wall Street 101

Read the latest from the Movement's Website

84 Year old activist pepper sprayed in Seattle.

Game Theory and Cyber Attacks lead to Military Conflict: TED

Good afternoon. If you have followed diplomatic news in the past weeks, you may have heard of a kind of crisis between China and the U.S.regarding cyberattacks against the American company Google. Many things have been said about this. Some people have called a cyberwarwhat may actually be just a spy operation -- and obviously, a quite mishandled one. However, this episode reveals the growing anxiety in the Western world regarding these emerging cyber weapons.

It so happens that these weapons are dangerous.They're of a new nature: they could lead the worldinto a digital conflict that could turn into an armed struggle. These virtual weapons can also destroy the physical world. In 1982, in the middle of the Cold War in Soviet Siberia, a pipeline exploded with a burst of 3 kilotons, the equivalent of a fourth of the Hiroshima bomb. Now we know today -- this was revealed by Thomas Reed, Ronald Reagan's former U.S. Air Force Secretary -- this explosion was actually the result of a CIA sabotage operation, in which they had managed to infiltrate the IT management systems of that pipeline.

More recently, the U.S. government revealed that in September 2008, more than 3 million people in the state of Espirito Santo in Brazil were plunged into darkness, victims of a blackmail operation from cyber pirates. Even more worrying for the Americans, in December 2008 the holiest of holies, the IT systems of CENTCOM, the central command managing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, may have been infiltrated by hackerswho used these: plain but infected USB keys. And with these keys, they may have been able to get inside CENTCOM's systems, to see and hear everything, and maybe even infect some of them.As a result, the Americans take the threat very seriously. I'll quote General James Cartwright,Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who says in a report to Congress that cyberattacks could be as powerful as weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, the Americans have decided to spend over 30 billion dollars in the next five years to build up their cyberwar capabilities.

And across the world today, we see a sort of cyber arms race, with cyberwar units built up by countries like North Korea or even Iran. Yet, what you'll never hear from spokespeople from the Pentagon or the French Department of Defence is that the question isn't really who's the enemy, but actually the very nature of cyber weapons. And to understand why, we must look at how, through the ages, military technologies have maintained or destroyed world peace. For example, if we'd had TEDxParis 350 years ago, we would have talked about the military innovation of the day -- the massive Vauban-style fortifications -- and we could have predicted a period of stability in the world or in Europe. which was indeed the case in Europe between 1650 and 1750.

Engineers and Bomb Makers: TED

Master storyteller Malcolm Gladwell tells the tale of the Norden bombsight, a groundbreaking piece of World War II technology with a deeply unexpected result.

Thank you. It's a real pleasure to be here. I last did a TEDTalk I think about seven years ago or so. I talked about spaghetti sauce. And so many people, I guess, watch those videos. People have been coming up to me ever since to ask me questions about spaghetti sauce, which is a wonderful thing in the short term -- (Laughter) but it's proven to be less than ideal over seven years. And so I though I would come and try and put spaghetti sauce behind me.

The theme of this morning's session is Things We Make. And so I thought I would tell a story about someone who made one of the most precious objects of his era. And the man's name is Carl Norden. Carl Norden was born in 1880. And he was Swiss. And of course, the Swiss can be divided into two general categories: those who make small, exquisite, expensive objects and those who handle the money of those who buy small, exquisite, expensive objects. And Carl Norden is very firmly in the former camp. He's an engineer. He goes to the Federal Polytech in Zurich. In fact, one of his classmates is a young man named Lenin who would go on to break small, expensive, exquisite objects.

And he's a Swiss engineer, Carl. And I mean that in its fullest sense of the word. He wears three-piece suits; and he has a very, very small, important mustache; and he is domineering and narcissistic and driven and has an extraordinary ego; and he works 16-hour days; and he has very strong feelings about alternating current; and he feels like a suntan is a sign of moral weakness; and he drinks lots of coffee; and he does his best work sitting in his mother's kitchen in Zurich for hours in complete silence with nothing but a slide rule.

Occupy Oakland: Raw Footage

Hollywood seems to surprisingly supportive of the growing concerns against Capitalism

Occupy Wall Street: Two Perspectives

The Fed is supporting Bank of America and its $75 trillion in derivatives bets. What this means is that one quarter of the world's wealth (not income but wealth) is now gambling on the financial market.


The Dark Night Rises will use the Occupy Wall Street protesters as Extras

And in the other perspective of the day comes from Hollywood. While Occupy Wall Street Protesters find themselves attempted to be shutdown by the civil authorities, movies like the third installment of the Batman trilogy, The Dark Night Rises, continue to be filmed.

Masked Protector of Gotham Has His Eye on Wall Street Protesters

BP Oil Spill Update

It appears that pipeline with the robots that we all watched was the sideshow.


Reality:


Fib:



Fiction:

Afghanistan: Hearts and Mines

"Villagers from a violent part of southern Afghanistan say that Afghan troops, along with several American mentors, forced civilians to march ahead of soldiers on roads where the Taliban were believed to have planted bombs and landmines." [More from NPR]

Occupy Wall Street: Voices

"Using the “people’s mic” that is his own booming voice, U.S. Marine Sergeant Shamar Thomas, a veteran with two tours in Iraq to his name, delivers a powerful excoriation of the New York Police Department, chastising officers for hurting unarmed civilians.''



More Confrontations with Police: barricades and horses to stop people from marching.






And Some Silly Ones:

The United States' Secrets: War Post 9/11

Frontline's "Top Secret America"

     The Over Seas Contingency Operations, formally the Global War on Terror (G.W.O.T. got a make over back in 2009), has lead to a reshaping of American foreign policy.

Watch Top Secret America on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Transcript of Top Secret America

9/11 Commission Report (pdf)

2004 American Budget

The Surge is Working- by David Petraeus

"These buildings that─ they might only be
 four stories high, but they go down ten stories.
  And there’s a whole world down there, like
 shops and places to eat, that you don’t know
 about that’s just for them."
MICHAEL WILLIAMSON WITH THE WASHINGTON POST

"In a post-9/11 world,
 we weren’t going to be so prissy."
-HOMELAND SECURITY ADVISER FRAN TOWNSEND

The N.S.A. properties in Maryland total 8.6 million square feet of office space, 1.3 times as big as the Pentagon.(Photo by Sandra McConnell, N.S.A.)

more Pictures of "In Our Back Yards" by the Washington Post

Occupy Walls Street October 16: World Edition 950 protests in 80 countries

Occupy Wall Street protesters outside the Chase bank in New York's financial district. Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA

A protestor hurls a canister clashes in Rome during a demonstration against corporate greed and austerity measures. Photograph: Gregorio Borgia/AP

Tens of thousands of people take a part in a demostration in Puerta del Sol square in Madrid on Saturday, part of the global movement against corporate greeed. Photograph: Arturo Rodriguez/AP

The New York City Occupy Wall Street movement continues to spread, reaching the UK, Spain, and Italy. Live feed from Spanish Television or read more from the Guardian

“I stood my ground and said that we were within our rights,” Mr. Wilder said .

London: BBC Take 

“Occupy Yoido” may have an unfamiliar ring, but Yoido is the neighborhood in Seoul where South Korea’s biggest financial institutions are based.

In Private, Wall St. Bankers Dismiss Protesters as Unsophisticated Video

More Airstrikes in Yemen

Strikes believed to be carried out by American drones killed at least nine people in southern Yemen, and in the capital, Sana, security forces killed at least 12 protesters.


Read the Full Article

Voting: Suspicions of Computer voting machines become Grounded

In this clip computer programmer, Clinton Eugene Curtis, testifies under oath about being approached by elected representatives commit voter fraud through the use of electronic voting machines. As a former programmer for NASA and Exxon Mobil, Clinton explains how easy it would be to rig an election in Ohio and how difficult it would be to discover "bad code."

• The code may be inserted remotely
• can tamper tens of thousands of votes discretely
• The code can be programmed to "eat it itself"

The Simpsons are spot on with this one: Homer Simpson Tries to Vote for Obama

Occupy Wall Street Movement: Community

A new angle on Occupy Wall Street reveals the strong micro community that has formed in downtown New York City.





Right Here All Over (Occupy Wall St.) from Alex Mallis on Vimeo.


Directed by Alex Mallis + Lily Henderson
Cinematography by Ed David
Edited by Lily Henderson + Alex Mallis
Assistant Camera: Andrew McMullen + Diana Eliavoz
Assistant Producers: Dana Salvatore + Jillian Mason
Titles by Jason Drakeford.


The movement continues as it shifts from:
-why are you protesting?
                            -are you f*ing kidding me?
to:
the establishment of categories like environmental, health, internet, can get together and discuss what they believe in and how government can improve.

Occupy Wall Street: October 5

Finally some decent reporting on the Occupy Wall Street Movements.
Finally and answer to why the movement has no pithy message: "because the movement is genuine"

More on Occupy Wall Street

Manifesto:

"Declaration of the Occupation of New York City THIS DOCUMENT WAS ACCEPTED BY THE NYC GENERAL ASSEMBLY ON SEPTEMBER 29, 2011 As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies. As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known. They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage. They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses. They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation. They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization. They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices. They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions. They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right. They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay. They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility. They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance. They have sold our privacy as a commodity. They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit. They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce. They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them. They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil. They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit. They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit. They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media. They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt. They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas. They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. * To the people of the world, We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power. Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone. To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal. Join us and make your voices heard! *These grievances are not all-inclusive."

University Costs: American Edition

UK thinks it has it Rough

Department of Education: College Affordability and Transparency Center

• cool little website helps sort universities by type and tuition

top 25 most expensive tuitions among American four-year colleges:

1. Bates College ME $51,300*
2. Connecticut College CT $51,115*
3. Middlebury College VT $50,780*
4. Union College NY $50,439*
5. Colby College ME $50,320*
6. Sanford-Brown College (for-profit) VA $45,628
7. Sarah Lawrence College NY $41,968
8. Vassar College NY $41,930
9. George Washington University DC $41,655
10. Columbia University in the City of New York NY $41,316
11. Kenyon College OH $40,980
12. Colgate University NY $40,970
13. Carnegie Mellon University PA $40,920
14. Trinity College CT $40,840
15. Bucknell University PA $40,816
16. Tulane University of Louisiana LA $40,584
17. Skidmore College NY $40,420
18. St John's College NM $40,396
19. St John's College MD $40,392
20. Tufts University MA $40,342
21. Hobart William Smith Colleges NY $40,235
22. Bard College at Simon's Rock MA $40,165
23. Dickinson College PA $40,114
24. Wesleyan University CT $40,092
25. Bowdoin College ME $40,020

*"Comprehensive fee"-style tuituion includes room and board.

96% of the most expensive schools are private, not-for-profit institutions. 4% are private, for-profit. The public college

 with the most expensive tuition is Penn State, at $14,416.

36% of the top 25 most expensive schools are in New England, including four of the five most expensive. 28% are in New York.

24% of the schools on this list also appear on America's Top 20 Hippie Colleges.

0% of these schools have good football teams.