mcstain proclaims "growing military dissatisfaction"

zerohedge |  Conjuring images of "the kind of incrementalism that defined much of the Vietnam conflict," John McCain came out swinging today exposing the frustration top military officers have with President Obama's policies. "There’s a total lack of confidence in the president's leadership," the warmonger raged, adding - as perhaps a veiled threat - "there’s a level of dissatisfaction among the uniformed military that I’ve never seen in my time here."

Interestingly, as The Washington Times reports, Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, echoed McCain's comments, demanding that, The White House be "more inclusive in the decision-making process," rather than 'icing' The Pentagon out

"People who have spoken truth to power get retired," ranted McCain, "all you have to do is look at a map of the Middle East in 2009 and then compare it to a map of today," to see an utterly failed strategy.

Mr. McCain argued that the frustration on Capitol Hill and at the Pentagon stems from the administration’s “complete lack of any kind of coherent strategy, much less a strategy that would have any success on the battlefield” against Islamic State and the Assad regime.

“We’re sending 50 — count them, 50 — special operations soldiers to Syria, and they will have ‘no combat role,’ the president says,” said Mr. McCain. “Well, what are they being sent there for? To be recreation officers? You’re in a combat zone, and to say they’re not in combat is absurd.”

But the White House, he argued, has effectively blinded itself to such absurdities by promoting a system over the past seven years that suppresses dissenting voices.

"Compliant and easily led military leaders get promoted,” he said.

When it comes to actual policy, Mr. McCain lamented, the administration pursues half-measures and decisions, “when they are made, consistently disregard recommendations from the uniformed military.”

The failure to break Islamic State’s hold on Syria and Iraq, and its spread into North Africa, have resulted in “very poisoned relations that now exist between many in both houses of Congress and the president,” said Mr. McCain.

“There’s a total lack of confidence in the president’s leadership,” he said.

read more here...

Mr. McCain said Mr. Obama’s past claims that things were improving in the region have undercut his credibility today.

military has betrayed thousands of combat veterans...,

dailykos |  22,000 army soldiers with mental health, TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) issues have received misconduct discharges instead of treatment since 2009, an NPR investigation has found. They are denied benefits and pensions as a result. This is despite a law that was passed when previous instances of this pattern of behavior were uncovered.

      Daniel Zwerdling and Michael De Yoanna have an extensive report on the investigations done by NPR and Colorado Public Radio. (Audio will be available at 7:00pm EST) One of the key elements in breaking the story was 20 hours of recordings made secretly by a soldier who had been targeted for discharge, despite plenty of evidence he had serious medical issues. Fort Carson is the main subject of the investigation, but the practice has also been found at other posts. From the NPR story:

...an investigation, based on hours of secret recordings from James, hundreds of pages of confidential documents from Fort Carson, and interviews with dozens of sources both inside and outside the base. And that evidence suggests the Army failed to pursue key evidence in its investigation, ruling out claims of mistreatment from nine other war veterans without ever interviewing or even contacting the men.

And according to figures acquired by NPR and CPR under the Freedom of Information Act, the Army has been pushing out soldiers diagnosed with mental health problems not just at Fort Carson but at bases across the country.

The figures show that since January 2009, the Army has "separated" 22,000 soldiers for "misconduct" after they came back from Iraq and Afghanistan and were diagnosed with mental health problems or TBI. As a result, many of the dismissed soldiers have not received crucial retirement and health care benefits that soldiers receive with an honorable discharge.

   Read the whole report; listen to the audio. This is damnable stuff. The Army generals continue to whitewash the problem; until heads roll in the upper ranks, this is likely to continue. This is the kind of thing a functioning Congress should be investigating. It will be interesting to see how far this story goes, and if any of the presidential campaigners will pick up on it.

the war on drugs only works if people support it

theantimedia |  “If an addict comes into the Gloucester Police Department and asks for help, an officer will take them to the Addison Gilbert Hospital, where they will be paired with a volunteer ‘ANGEL’ who will help guide them through the process. We have partnered with more than a dozen additional treatment centers to ensure that our patients receive the care and treatment they deserve — not in days or weeks, but immediately.

“If you have drugs or drug paraphernalia on you, we will dispose of it for you. You will not be arrested. You will not be charged with a crime. You will not be jailed.

“All you have to do is come to the police station and ask for help. We are here to do just that.”

Five months since the program launched, Campanello reports positive results: over 260 addicts have been placed in treatment. This summer, shoplifting, breaking and entering, and larceny dropped 23% from the same period last year. “We are seeing real people get the lives back,” he said. “And if we see a reduction in crime and cost savings that is a great bonus.”

Other police officers are following suit. John Rosenthal is the co-founder of Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Initiative, a nonprofit that helps police departments around the country adopt programs similar to Gloucester’s. Rosenthal says almost 40 departments in nine states (Connecticut, Ohio, Florida, Illinois, Maine, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania, and Vermont) have adopted at least some aspects of the program, and 90 more departments want to get involved.

Though the specifics of the programs vary, they all aim to treat addicts. Police are even participating through Veterans Affairs, as opiate addiction is high among veterans.

The program, which Campanello has funded with money seized during drug arrests, has been well-received by departments that implement similar strategies. John Gill, a police officer in Scarborough, Maine, said his local police station saw a “profound” change. He credits Gloucester with the courage to go through with it: “It was the Gloucester ANGEL project which showed us that a relatively modest-sized police agency could have a real impact. And like Gloucester, we couldn’t afford to wait until the perfect solution came along.”

the democratic principle can only survive where life seriously imitates art

monbiot |  What have governments learnt from the financial crisis? I could write a column spelling it out. Or I could do the same job with one word. Nothing.

Actually, that’s too generous. The lessons learned are counter-lessons, anti-knowledge, new policies that could scarcely be better designed to ensure the crisis recurs, this time with added momentum and fewer remedies. And the financial crisis is just one of multiple crises – in tax collection, public spending, public health, above all ecology – that the same counter-lessons accelerate.

Step back a pace and you see that all these crises arise from the same cause. Players with huge power and global reach are released from democratic restraint. This happens because of a fundamental corruption at the core of politics. In almost every nation, the interests of economic elites tend to weigh more heavily with governments than those of the electorate. Banks, corporations and land owners wield an unaccountable power, that works with a nod and a wink within the political class. Global governance is beginning to look like a never-ending Bilderburg meeting.

As a paper by the law professor Joel Bakan in the Cornell International Law Journal argues, two dire shifts have been happening simultaneously. On one hand, governments have been removing the laws that restrict banks and corporations, arguing that globalisation makes states weak and effective legislation impossible. Instead, they say, we should trust those who wield economic power to regulate themselves.

On the other hand, the same governments devise draconian new laws to reinforce elite power. Corporations are given the rights of legal persons. Their property rights are enhanced. Those who protest against them are subject to policing and surveillance of the kind that’s more appropriate to dictatorships than democracies. Oh, state power still exists all right – when it’s wanted.

Many of you have heard of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). These are supposed to be trade treaties, but they have little to do with trade, and much to do with power. They enhance the power of corporations while reducing the power of parliaments and the rule of law. They could scarcely be better designed to exacerbate and universalise our multiple crises: financial, social and environmental. But something even worse is coming, the result of negotiations conducted, once more, in secret: a Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), covering North America, the EU, Japan, Australia and many other nations.

Only through WikiLeaks do we have any idea of what is being planned. It could be used to force nations to accept new financial products and services, to approve the privatisation of public services and to reduce the standards of care and provision. It looks like the greatest international assault on democracy devised in the past two decades. Which is saying quite a lot.

even Nature whistling past the graveyard and kicking the can down the road?

theconversation |  A sustainable Australia is possible – but we have to choose it. That’s the finding of a paper published today in Nature.

The paper is the result of a larger project to deliver the first Australian National Outlook report, more than two years in the making, which CSIRO is also releasing today.

As part of this analysis we looked at whether achieving sustainability will require a shift in our values, such as rejecting consumerism. We also looked at the contributions of choices made by individuals (such as consuming less water or energy) and of choices made collectively by society (such as policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions).

We found that collective policy choices are crucial, and that Australia could make great progress to sustainability without any changes in social values.

Competing views 

Few topics generate more heat, and less light, than debates over economic growth and sustainability.

At one end of the spectrum, “technological optimists” suggest that the marvellous invisible hand will take care of everything, with market-driven improvements in technology automatically protecting essential natural resources while also improving living standards.

Unfortunately, there is no real evidence to back this, particularly in protecting unpriced natural resources such as ocean fisheries, or the services provided by a stable climate. Instead the evidence suggests we are already crossing important planetary boundaries.

Other the other end of the spectrum, people argue that achieving sustainability will require a rejection of economic growth, or a shift in values away from consumerism and towards a more ecologically attuned lifestyles. We refer to this group as advocating “communitarian limits”.

A third “institutional reform” approach argues that policy reform can reconcile economic and ecological goals – and is attacked from one side as anti-business alarmism, and from the other as indulging in pro-growth greenwash.

the kernal of the argument

WaPo |  It took years for the Internet to reach its first 100 computers. Today, 100 new ones join each second. And running deep within the silicon souls of most of these machines is the work of a technical wizard of remarkable power, a man described as a genius and a bully, a spiritual leader and a benevolent dictator.

Linus Torvalds — who in person could be mistaken for just another paunchy, middle-aged suburban dad who happens to have a curiously large collection of stuffed penguin dolls — looms over the future of computing much as Bill Gates and the late Steve Jobs loom over its past and present. For Linux, the operating system that Torvalds created and named after himself, has come to dominate the exploding online world, making it more popular overall than rivals from Microsoft and Apple.

But while Linux is fast, flexible and free, a growing chorus of critics warn that it has security weaknesses that could be fixed but haven’t been. Worse, as Internet security has surged as a subject of international concern, Torvalds has engaged in an occasionally profane standoff with experts on the subject. One group he has dismissed as “masturbating monkeys.” In blasting the security features produced by another group, he said in a public post, “Please just kill yourself now. The world would be a better place.”

There are legitimate philosophical differences amid the harsh words. Linux has thrived in part because of Torvalds’s relentless focus on performance and reliability, both of which could suffer if more security features were added. Linux works on almost any chip in the world and is famously stable as it manages the demands of many programs at once, allowing computers to hum along for years at a time without rebooting.

Yet even among Linux’s many fans there is growing unease about vulnerabilities in the operating system’s most basic, foundational elements — housed in something called “the kernel,” which Torvalds has personally managed since its creation in 1991. Even more so, there is concern that Torvalds’s approach to security is too passive, bordering on indifferent.

don't be stupid or degenerate - avoid chemsex with your digital butt plug and you'll be just fine...,

gizmodo |  Security researchers have come across a new kind of Android malware, which purports to be a well-known app but then exposes your phone to root attacks—and is virtually impossible to remove.

The new malware has been found in software available on third-party app stores. The apps in question use code from official software that you can download from Google Play like Facebook and Twitter, reports Ars Technica, so they initially seem innocuous and even provide the exact same functionality.

But in fact they’re injected with malicious code, which allows them to gain root access to the OS. In turn, a series of exploits are installed on the device as system applications, which makes them incredibly hard—for most people, impossible—to remove. Fist tap Big Don.

android is a linux fork

wikipedia |  Android is a mobile operating system (OS) currently developed by Google, based on the Linux kernel and designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Android's user interface is based on direct manipulation, using touch gestures that loosely correspond to real-world actions, such as swiping, tapping and pinching, to manipulate on-screen objects, along with a virtual keyboard for text input. In addition to touchscreen devices, Google has further developed Android TV for televisions, Android Auto for cars, and Android Wear for wrist watches, each with a specialized user interface. Variants of Android are also used on notebooks, game consoles, digital cameras, and other electronics. As of 2015^[update], Android has the largest installed base of all operating systems.^[11] It is the second most commonly used mobile operating system in the United States, while iOS is the first.^[12]

Initially developed by Android, Inc., which Google bought in 2005,^[13] Android was unveiled in 2007, along with the founding of the Open Handset Alliance – a consortium of hardware, software, and telecommunication companies devoted to advancing open standards for mobile devices.^[14] As of July 2013^[update], the Google Play store has had over one million Android applications ("apps") published, and over 50 billion applications downloaded.^[15] An April–May 2013 survey of mobile application developers found that 71% of developers create applications for Android,^[16] and a 2015 survey found that 40% of full-time professional developers see Android as their priority target platform, which is comparable to Apple's iOS on 37% with both platforms far above others.^[17] At Google I/O 2014, the company revealed that there were over one billion active monthly Android users, up from 538 million in June 2013.^[18]

Android's source code is released by Google under open source licenses, although most Android devices ultimately ship with a combination of open source and proprietary software, including proprietary software required for accessing Google services.^[3] Android is popular with technology companies that require a ready-made, low-cost and customizable operating system for high-tech devices.^[19] Its open nature has encouraged a large community of developers and enthusiasts to use the open-source code as a foundation for community-driven projects, which add new features for advanced users^[20] or bring Android to devices originally shipped with other operating systems. At the same time, as Android has no centralised update system most Android devices fail to receive security updates: research in 2015 concluded that almost 90% of Android phones in use had known but unpatched security vulnerabilities due to lack of updates and support.^[21][22] The success of Android has made it a target for patent litigation as part of the so-called "smartphone wars" between technology companies.^[23

broad spectrum bioweapons exploiting narrowband degeneracy as delivery system...,

independent |  The rise of 'chemsex' - sex under the influence of illegal drugs - is putting people at risk of HIV and other STIs, health experts have warned.

People who are taking GHB, GBL and crystal meth to enhance sexual pleasure and reduce inhibitions are jeopardising their both sexual and mental health, a study found.

Its growing popularity, particularly among gay men, has led doctors to warn that HIV rates and sexually-transmitted diseases cases are rising rapidly. 

Sex during the illegal drug-fuelled sessions is often unprotected - with those having chemsex reporting an average five sexual partners per session, according to the British Medical Journal. 

'These drugs are often used in combination to facilitate sexual sessions lasting several hours or days with multiple sexual partners,' it reported.

'Mephedrone and crystal meth are physiological stimulants, increasing heart rate and blood pressure, as well as triggering euphoria and sexual arousal.

'GHB (and its precursor GBL) is a powerful psychological disinhibitor and also a mild anaesthetic.'

The experts said the increase in chemsex was also putting people at risk of serious mental health problems caused by drug dependencies.>The authors of the report said there were many barriers for people who want to get help, including the shame and stigma often associated with drug use and ignorance of available drug services.

Some services are now developing specific chemsex and 'party drug' clinics, with specialist mental health support and help for withdrawing from the drugs.

But they warned that users often describe 'losing days' - not sleeping or eating for up to 72 hours - which 'may harm their general health'.

original wudan at war with the west - on an undeclared front - don zaluchi style...,

miamiherald |  The drug deaths of the three young men this year shared a common thread, one that ties them to scores of other overdose, suicide, accident and even murder victims in Miami-Dade and Broward counties: The synthetic substances medical examiners found in their bodies most likely arrived though the China Pipeline, which delivers illegal drugs, sold as bulk research chemicals on the Internet, to stateside dealers through the mail.

Authorities are scrambling to shut down the pipeline but they acknowledge that it remains the primary source of an array of dangerous so-called designer drugs flowing into South Florida. The grim result: a rising number of addicts, emergency room visits and deaths — particularly related to newer, more potent synthetics like infamous flakka and the less known —but even more lethal —fentanyl.

“This is Breaking Bad gone wild,” said George Hime, assistant director of the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner’s toxicology lab. “There is no quality control. They don’t even know what they’ve created. Is it something that can cause pleasure for a short period of time? Yes. But it could also kill you.”

Flakka has run rampant among the homeless and in poor corners of Broward, offering a cheap and powerful rush aptly described as “$5 insanity.” Flakka, street slang for a chemical called alpha-PVP, induced one man up the coast in Brevard County to strip, proclaim himself the Norse god Thor and try to have sex with a tree. Two other men, suffering a serious flakka-fueled lapse in judgment, tried to break into Fort Lauderdale police headquarters.

Fentanyl users haven’t produced such attention-grabbing crazy rages, but the drug has quietly proven even deadlier in South Florida, according to a Miami Herald review of medical examiner records in both Miami-Dade and Broward counties. A fast-acting painkiller 50 times more potent than heroin, it has been used as a surgical analgesic for decades.

But investigators believe that underground labs in China fueling the synthetics pipeline have concocted illegal fentanyl as well as chemically tweaked “analogs” that are typically sold as heroin or mixed with it.

“Fentanyl and its analogs are often laced in heroin and are extremely dangerous, more so than alpha-PVP,” said Diane Boland, director of the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s toxicology lab. “People are dying at an alarming rate, especially those who believe they are using heroin when it’s in fact fentanyl. A small dose is enough to cause death.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article36723141.html#storylink=cpy

if I'm not large and in-charge, then phuggit, I'm out!!!

theatlantic |  Since 1998, people all over the world have been living healthier and living longer. But middle-aged, white non-Hispanics in the United States have been getting sicker and dying in greater numbers. The trend is being driven primarily by people with a high-school degree or less.

That's the sobering takeaway from a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published this week.

The study authors sum it up:

Between 1978 to 1998, the mortality rate for U.S. whites aged 45 to 54 fell by 2 percent per year on average, which matched the average rate of decline in the six countries shown, and the average over all other industrialized countries. After 1998, other rich countries’ mortality rates continued to decline by 2 percent a year. In contrast, U.S. white non-Hispanic mortality rose by half a percent a year. No other rich country saw a similar turnaround.

That means “half a million people are dead who should not be dead,” Angus Deaton, the 2015 Nobel laureate in economics and co-author of the paper, told The Washington Post. “About 40 times the Ebola stats. You’re getting up there with HIV-AIDS.”

The reasons for the increased death rate are not the usual things that kill Americans, like diabetes and heart disease. Rather, it’s suicide, alcohol and drug poisonings, and alcohol-related liver disease.

The least-educated are worst off: All-cause mortality among middle-aged Americans with a high-school degree or less increased by 134 deaths per 100,000 people between 1999 and 2013, but there was little change in mortality for people with some college. The death rate for the college-educated fell slightly.

g.i.joe - say it isn't so...?

chicagotribune |  Two months and three days after Fox Lake police Lt. Charles Joseph Gliniewicz's death, authorities announced Wednesday they believe the veteran officer took his own life in a carefully staged suicide designed to cover up extensive criminal acts. 

Investigators say they believe two others were involved in criminal activity and that investigation remains ongoing. 

Though the announcement answers a key question about his death, authorities continue to look into related matters. Lake County State’s Attorney Mike Nerheim said the results of the investigation have been turned over to his office, as well as to the FBI, for investigation and potential prosecution of alleged crimes that are not related to his shooting but were uncovered during the investigation into it. Nerheim declined to go into further detail.

Gliniewicz was under increasing levels of stress from scrutiny of his management of the Fox Lake Police Explorers program, George Filenko, commander of the Lake County Major Crimes Task Force, said Wednesday.

Gliniewicz had been stealing and laundering money from the Explorers post, spending the money on travel, mortgage payments, adult websites and unaccounted cash withdrawals, Filenko said.

The announcement that Gliniewicz’s death was a suicide marks the completion of a 180-degree turn for an investigation that began with hundreds of officers, as well as dogs and helicopters, searching for suspects who apparently never existed. In the weeks that followed, Lake County, Illinois authorities downplayed the possibility that Gliniewicz had committed suicide while they followed leads and reviewed forensic test results.

there but for the grace of god: pretending to be pro-life but really just pro-______________?

NYTimes |  When the nation’s long-running war against drugs was defined by the crack epidemic and based in poor, predominantly black urban areas, the public response was defined by zero tolerance and stiff prison sentences. But today’s heroin crisis is different. While heroin use has climbed among all demographic groups, it has skyrocketed among whites; nearly 90 percent of those who tried heroin for the first time in the last decade were white.

And the growing army of families of those lost to heroin — many of them in the suburbs and small towns — are now using their influence, anger and grief to cushion the country’s approach to drugs, from altering the language around addiction to prodding government to treat it not as a crime, but as a disease.

“Because the demographic of people affected are more white, more middle class, these are parents who are empowered,” said Michael Botticelli, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, better known as the nation’s drug czar. “They know how to call a legislator, they know how to get angry with their insurance company, they know how to advocate. They have been so instrumental in changing the conversation.”

Mr. Botticelli, a recovering alcoholic who has been sober for 26 years, speaks to some of these parents regularly.

Their efforts also include lobbying statehouses, holding rallies and starting nonprofit organizations, making these mothers and fathers part of a growing backlash against the harsh tactics of traditional drug enforcement. These days, in rare bipartisan or even nonpartisan agreement, punishment is out and compassion is in.

The presidential candidates of both parties are now talking about the drug epidemic, with Hillary Rodham Clinton hosting forums on the issue as Jeb Bush and Carly Fiorina tell their own stories of loss while calling for more care and empathy.

one minute a high and mighty overseer, the next minute a ________________?

HuffPo |  Columbia man Sean Groubert, 32, made headlines in September 2014 when he shot an unarmed black man at a gas station who was reaching for his driver's license after the state trooper ordered him to. Groubert fired three times, striking Levar Edward Jones once in the hip.

"I was just getting my license," Jones says in dash cam footage after being shot.  "Sir, why was I shot? All I did was reach for my license. I'm coming from work."

Groubert was ultimately fired from the department and charged with assault and battery. In February, Jones received a $285,000 settlement.

Court papers released Monday show that on Oct. 18, Groubert and his wife, Morgan, were arrested for shoplifting from a Columbia Walmart, according to WYFF4. Groubert, who now works as a truck driver, was out on bond.

"Please keep me out of jail," the former cop told a judge Monday. Prosecutors contend that the Grouberts switched price tags on food to change the total price of $135 to just $30, according to Live 5 News. 

Groubert faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted for his felony charges stemming from the shooting. A trial date for those charges has not yet been set.

kunstler mops the floor with the cathedral...,

kunstler |  At a moment in history when the US is beset by epochal problems of economy, energy, ecology, and foreign relations, campus life is preoccupied with handwringing over the hurt feelings of every imaginable ethnic and sexual group and just as earnestly with the suppression of ideological trespassers who don’t go along with the program of exorcisms. A comprehensive history of this unfortunate campaign has yet to be written, but by the time it is, higher education may lie in ruins. It is already burdened and beset by the unintended consequences of the financial racketeering so pervasive across American life these days. But in promoting the official suppression of ideas, it is really committing intellectual suicide, disgracing its mission to civilized life.

I had my own brush with this evil empire last week when I gave a talk at Boston College, a general briefing on the progress of long emergency. The audience was sparse. It was pouring rain. The World Series was on TV. People are not so interested in these issues since the Federal Reserve saved the world with free money, and what I had to say did not include anything on race, gender, and white privilege.

However, after the talk, I went out for dinner with four faculty members and one friend-of-faculty. Three of them were English profs. One was an urban planner and one was an ecology prof. All of the English profs were specialists in race, gender, and privilege. Imagine that. You’d think that the college was a little overloaded there, but it speaks for the current academic obsessive-compulsive neurosis with these matters. Anyway, on the way to restaurant I was chatting in the car with one of the English profs about a particular angle on race, since this was his focus and he tended to view things through that lens. The discussion continued at the dinner table and this is what ensued on the Internet (an email to me the next morning):

On Oct 29, 2015, at 4:37 PM, Rhonda Frederick wrote:

This is what I posted on my social medias, am sharing with you and your agent.

Yesterday, novelist/journalist James Howard Kunstler was invited to give a talk at BC (see his bio at http://www.bc.edu/offices/lowellhs/calendar.html#1028).

At the post-talk dinner, he said “the great problem facing African Americans is that they aren’t taught proper English, and that … academics are too preoccupied with privilege and political correctness to admit this obvious fact.” No black people (I presume he used “African American” when he meant “black”) were present at the dinner. I was not at the dinner, but two of my friends/colleagues were; I trust their recollections implicitly. Whether Kunstler was using stereotypes about black people to be provocative, or whether he believed the ignorance he spouted, my response is the same: I cannot allow this kind of ignorance into my space and I am not the one to cast what he said as a “teachable moment.” I do think there should be a BC response to this, as the university paid his honorarium and for his meal. Here’s some contact information for anyone interested in sharing your thoughts on how BC should spend its money:

Lowell Humanities Series at Boston College (http://www.bc.edu/offices/lowellhs/about.html)

vice-chair of the dnc wants to know "what is the policy/what is the mission?"

civilbeat |  Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a frequent critic of the Obama administration’s military policies, was scheduled to appear as the lead guest on HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher” live on Friday at 4 p.m. (10 p.m. EST). But her recent comments left little doubt as to how she’d react to the deployment: Only days ago, she told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer there is “no reason for (U.S. military personnel) to go and to be deployed into these situations” in Syria.

Military actions being taken against the Islamic State now are being pursued under the 2001 and 2002 AUMF, which authorized use of military force against Iraq. Their use in pursuing broader goals in the Middle East goes back to the George W. Bush administration. Obama submitted a proposed new AUMF in February, but under House Speaker John Boehner, Congress failed to take up the authorization.

Up to 50 Special Operations advisers, who will not take part in direct combat, are expected to comprise the new deployment, which the White House described as “an intensification of a strategy that the president announced more than a year ago.”

theatrics but no hard questions for granny goodness...,

RT |  The one question that has not been answered during Hillary Clinton’s grilling before a US Congress committee over the deadly 2012 attack in Benghazi, was “What was the policy that was being carried out that led to the deaths of these four men?” 

The attack on the US consulate in Libya resulted in the deaths of four US citizens on September 11, 2012.

The four who were found dead in the aftermath of the Benghazi chaos of that night were the US Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens; Sean Smith who, significantly, was known as “Vile Rat” in his online gaming community; and two former US Navy SEALs and Central Intelligence Agency contractors (CIA), Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.

These four public servants answered the call to serve the policy of the US government. Their deaths in the service of their country are truly tragic. However, the question that has not been answered in all of the hoopla over the proceedings of the Select Committee are: “What was the policy that was being carried out that led to the deaths of these four men?” It is the avoidance of even asking that question in public, let alone answering it, that is the proverbial elephant in the room.

The top Democrat on the Select Committee is Representative Elijah Cummings from Maryland, who in a moment of selective outrage, exclaimed to rousing applause from the audience, “We’re better than that! We are so much better! We’re a better country! We’re better than using taxpayer dollars to try to destroy a campaign! That’s not what America is all about!” But, apparently, using taxpayer dollars to destroy one country and literally wipe another country off the map — that’s OK, I guess. Because, at the time of last week’s hearing, U.S. Embassy in Libya personnel weren’t even in Libya! They’re operating from Malta, after President Obama’s policy to destroy Libya was so effective. How much questioning about that took place in the eleven-hour hearing?

16 times the hon.bro.preznit said "no boots on the ground in syria"

usatoday |  Since 2013, President Obama has repeatedly vowed that there would be no "boots on the ground" in Syria.

But White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the president's decision Friday to send up to 50 special forces troops to Syria doesn't change the fundamental strategy: "This is an important thing for the American people to understand. These forces do not have a combat mission."

Earnest said the promises of "no boots on the ground" first came in the context of removing Syrian President Bashar Assad because of his use of chemical weapons. Since then, Syria has become a haven for Islamic State fighters.

Here's a recap of Obama's no-boots pledge:

basil sydney portrays BD and perfectly depicts why your species is doomed...,

wikipedia |  Michael Cannon (Richard Burton) returns to London after the Second World War and places advertisements in the personal column of various newspapers (The Daily Telegraph distributed miniaturised copies of the newspaper showing the 'ad' at U.K. cinemas after each performance of the film), in which "Biscuit" tries to get in touch with "Sea Wife". Eventually Cannon, who is Biscuit, receives a letter summoning him to the Ely Retreat and Mental Home. There he meets an ill man nicknamed "Bulldog" (Basil Sydney). Bulldog tries to persuade Biscuit to give up the search. A flashback reveals the backstory.

In 1942, people crowd aboard a ship, the San Felix, to get away before Singapore falls to the Japanese Army. Biscuit is brusquely shouldered aside by a determined older man (later nicknamed Bulldog) (Basil Sydney), who insists the ship's black purser ("Number Four") (Cy Grant) evict the people from the cabin he has reserved. However, when he sees that it is occupied by children and nuns, he reluctantly relents. The nun with her back to him is the beautiful young Sister Therese ("Sea Wife") (Joan Collins). Later, the San Felix is torpedoed by a submarine. Biscuit, Sea Wife, Bulldog and Number Four manage to get to a small liferaft. Only Number Four knows that Sea Wife is a nun; she asks him to keep her secret.

It soon becomes evident that Bulldog is a racist who does not trust Number Four. Later, they encounter a Japanese submarine whose captain at first refuses to give aid, but gives them food and water when Number Four talks to him in Japanese, though what he said is kept a secret between him and Sea Wife.

After nearly being swamped by a vessel that passes by so quickly they do not have a chance to signal for help, they eventually make it to a deserted island. When Number Four finds a machete, they build a raft. Number Four insists on keeping the machete to himself, which heightens Bulldog's distrust. Meanwhile, Biscuit falls in love with Sea Wife; she is tempted, but rejects his romantic advances without telling him why.

Finally, they are ready to set sail. Bulldog tricks Number Four into going in search of his missing machete, then casts off without him. When Biscuit tries to stop him, Bulldog knocks him unconscious with an oar. Number Four tries to swim to the raft, but is killed by a shark.

The survivors are eventually picked up by a ship, and Biscuit is taken to a hospital for a long recovery. By the time he is discharged, Sea Wife has gone.

Thus, he searches for her via the newspaper advertisements. Bulldog tells Biscuit that Sea Wife died on the rescue ship. Heartbroken, Biscuit leaves the grounds and walks past two nuns without noticing that Sea Wife is one of them. She watches him go in silence.

the heart wants what it wants...,

thisamericanlife |  When Jesse first started getting letters from Pamala, he couldn’t believe his luck. He'd been waiting all his life to fall in love—and then he started getting these letters from the perfect woman. Vulnerable. In need of protection. Classic beauty. He was totally devoted. They corresponded for years. And when something happens that really should change how he feels about her— he just can’t give it up.

to get to the creamy sheeple nougat, you have to get through us....,

technically and infrastructurally easy to fix, politically - next to impossible...,

WaPo |  To begin, a conclusion: The Internet, whatever its many virtues, is also a weapon of mass destruction.

We have been distracted from focusing on that potential by a succession of high-profile cyberattacks, including China vacuuming up more than 22 million federal employee records, North Korea’s humiliating shot across the bow of Sony Pictures Entertainment and a barrage of cyberlarceny directed at U.S. banks and businesses, much of which has originated in Russia and Ukraine. Each of these targets was protected by firewalls and other defenses. But the Internet is inherently vulnerable. It was never intended to keep intruders out. It was designed to facilitate the unimpeded exchange of information, giving attackers a built-in advantage over defenders. If that constitutes an ongoing threat to commerce (and it does), it also represents a potentially catastrophic threat to our national security — and not just in the area of intelligence-gathering. The United States’ physical infrastructure is vulnerable. Our electric power grids, in particular, are highly susceptible to cyberattacks, the consequences of which would be both devastating and long-lasting.

Deregulation of the electric power industry has resulted in a network of more than 3,000 companies, some of which are well protected, many of which are not, but all of which are interconnected. Hacking into the most vulnerable could lead to a domino-like penetration of even the most secure companies. The automated programs (known as supervisory control and data acquisition systems) that control the supply and demand of electricity nationwide are, for the most part, standardized and therefore highly accessible. Multiple sources in the intelligence community and the military tell me that Russia and China have already embedded cyber-capabilities within our electrical systems that would enable them to take down all or large parts of a grid. Iran’s capabilities are believed to be close behind. North Korea is working toward such a goal. George Cotter, a former chief scientist at the National Security Agency, told me that he fears groups such as the Islamic State may soon be able to hire capable experts and assemble the necessary equipment, which is available on the open market.

EU narrowly rejects predatory militarist digital proctology

HuffPo |  In June of this year, the White House rejected the idea of dropping charges filed against Snowden under the Espionage Act. The former CIA contractor fled the U.S. in 2013 and resides in Moscow.

“The fact is that Mr Snowden committed very serious crimes, and the U.S. government and the Department of Justice believe that he should face them,” Obama administration spokesman Josh Earnest told the Guardian at the time. “That’s why we believe that Mr Snowden should return to the United States, where he will face due process and have the opportunity to make that case in a court of law.”

Snowden faces the possibility of extradition to the U.S. should he enter any of the EU’s 28 member countries. At the time of his departure, Snowden applied for -- and was denied -- asylum in Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain. The FBI pursued him relentlessly, even notifying Scandinavian countries in advance of their intent to extradite him should he leave Moscow via a connecting flight through any of their countries.

The new EU proposition specifically asks countries to "drop any criminal charges against Edward Snowden, grant him protection and consequently prevent extradition or rendition by third parties, in recognition of his status as whistle-blower and international human rights defender." 

Snowden called the vote a "game-changer" on Twitter, adding, "This is not a blow against the US Government, but an open hand extended by friends. It is a chance to move forward."

buy high, sell low - the definition of stupid

oilprice |  That’s what Congress is considering as it eyes selling oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to pay for certain projects in its latest spending plan.

The last time the U.S. bought oil for the SPR in 2000 through 2005, oil prices were rising (Figure 1). Now Congress wants to sell oil when prices are the lowest in a decade and continuing to fall.

meanwhile, quietly watching at the other end of your holomorphically encrypted butt plug android...,

bloomberg |  When Google-parent Alphabet Inc. reported eye-popping earnings last week its executives couldn’t stop talking up the company’s investments in machine learning and artificial intelligence.

For any other company that would be a wonky distraction from its core business. At Google, the two are intertwined. Artificial intelligence sits at the extreme end of machine learning, which sees people create software that can learn about the world. Google has been one of the biggest corporate sponsors of AI, and has invested heavily in it for videos, speech, translation and, recently, search.

For the past few months, a “very large fraction” of the millions of queries a second that people type into the company’s search engine have been interpreted by an artificial intelligence system, nicknamed RankBrain, said Greg Corrado, a senior research scientist with the company, outlining for the first time the emerging role of AI in search.

RankBrain uses artificial intelligence to embed vast amounts of written language into mathematical entities -- called vectors -- that the computer can understand. If RankBrain sees a word or phrase it isn’t familiar with, the machine can make a guess as to what words or phrases might have a similar meaning and filter the result accordingly, making it more effective at handling never-before-seen search queries.

Unique Questions

The system helps Mountain View, California-based Google deal with the 15 percent of queries a day it gets which its systems have never seen before, he said. For example, it’s adept at dealing with ambiguous queries, like, “What’s the title of the consumer at the highest level of a food chain?” And RankBrain’s usage of AI means it works differently than the other technologies in the search engine.

“The other signals, they’re all based on discoveries and insights that people in information retrieval have had, but there’s no learning,” Corrado said.

Keeping an edge in search is critical to Google, and making its systems smarter and better able to deal with ambiguous queries is one of the ways it can keep a grip on time-starved users, who are now mostly searching using their mobile devices. “If you say Google people think of search,” Corrado said.

securing the hegemonic aether for you peasants against you peasants others...,

So let's start with fully homomorphic encryption. It's a particular type of encryption scheme, different from what you have seen so far, which lets you encrypt data-- so that is the first arrow pointing from the user to the cloud. She encrypts her data and stores it in the cloud. And then the magic sauce is a procedure that lets the cloud take this encrypted data and do computations on the underlying data. Remember, the cloud doesn't see what's inside, and yet, magically, it can do computations on it. And what it gets at the end of it is the encrypted result of this computation. Once the cloud gets the encrypted result, it sends the encrypted result back to the user. Now the user has the key. She can open the box, decrypt, and what does she learn? She learns the result of the computation. We let the user use the cloud for everything that she wanted to do, except now she also has privacy. So the bottom line of fully homomorphic encryption is that it lets you do anything that you want to do on plain text data you can see, it lets you do on encrypted data which you cannot see. 

What kind of security do I want from homomorphic encryption? The standard notion of security, the golden standard these days in cryptography, is the notion of indistinguishablility of ciphertexts, or semantic security. This was a notion developed by Shafi Goldwasser and Silvio Micali back in the '80s. And what that says is that, number one, encryption has to be probabilistic. In other words, if you encrypt a message twice, you should get completely different ciphertexts. Encryption injects randomness into the process, and the ciphertext looks different every time you encrypt it. Now, what that means is that if you see a stream of ciphertexts passing by, you won't even know if there are any repeats in this ciphertext. It doesn't let you figure that out. This is a very, very strong notion of security. Again, just to be clear, indistinguishability of ciphertexts says that you, as an adversary, can pick two messages. You pick. It's your choice. They have to have the same length, because from the ciphertext, you can tell what the length of the message is. So I'm not trying to hide the length information. So you pick two messages, same length. Send it to me. I, as the challenger for you, will pick a random one of the two messages and encrypt them using this probabilistic encryption, and send it back to you. Your job is to figure out which message I encrypted. If you manage to figure this out, you've won. So I say that an encryption system is secure, semantically secure, or indistinguishably secure, if there is no way that you can win in this game. So that is the notion of security I need from encryption. That is the notion of security that I need from fully homomorphic encryption as well. Now that we know what homomorphic encryption is, and what kind of security notion you want it to satisfy, let's take a step towards trying to see how we can achieve it. 

So what is homomorphic encryption? Again, the new magic sauce is a way to take encryptions of plaintexts-- data-- together with the function that you're interested in computing, and somehow coming up with an encryption of f of this data, the function applied on this data. So before we even start talking about how to do this, we have to figure out, what is this function? How do I represent this function? Is it a C program? Is it a Java program? Is it-- what is it? Is it a hardware circuit? How do we represent these functions? Well, for me today, and in all the literature on homomorphic encryption and, in fact, secure multiparty computation, the standard way to represent functions, computations, is through a circuit. So what's a circuit? You have two types of gates here, addition gates and multiplication gates. Now, I can define this over any field. So if I define it over a field of size 2, these are basically XOR and AND gates. But I could do something more general if I wanted. So how is the circuit defined? You basically put together XOR gates, addition gates, and multiplication gates, or AND gates, in this form of a tree or a graph. And you feed the circuit inputs that comes from the top, and every time the circuit computes either the addition or the multiplication of the bits that are fed into it, and that keeps going. So this is a model of computation, and that is a model I am going to work with. When I say function, I mean a circuit computing the function. 

Now, you might say what happens if I want a computer program or extra data? Turns out that I can convert a program into a circuit, as long as I know its running time. So if you don't have infinite loops in your program, you can undraw the program into a circuit, and that's what I will work with. Now, there is a separate line of research, very interesting work, which deals with how to compute on programs directly without undrawing them and turning them into circuits. Once you've fixed your model of computation, once you have circuits, you think about it, and you realize that if you want to compute a circuit on encrypted inputs-- encrypted bits, here, let's say-- all you have to do is to add encrypted bits and multiply encrypted bits. In other the words, you want an encryption system where given encryption of x1 and encryption of x2, two bits or two numbers, x1 and x2, you should be able to turn it into an encryption of x1 plus x2, as well as an encryption of x1 times x2. If you can do this, you can go through the circuit step by step. Every time you will have an encryption of the wire off the circuit and you will keep going. You will get the encrypted result. That's what we're going to do today.

splendid irony calling the digital catheter android

NYTimes |  For years, Google, now known as Alphabet, has supported two operating systems on two very different tracks: Android and Chrome. But now the company is nodding in the direction of Android.

Google is working toward allowing its low-cost Chromebook computing devices to work on the popular Android operating system. The work will take place over the next year, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Google is not indicating it plans to stop development of Chrome OS, but making Android work on Chromebooks opens the door to one of the few products that Chrome OS, the lesser-known operating system, had to itself.

Chrome OS should not be confused with Google’s popular Chrome web browser.

News of the shift was first reported earlier Thursday by The Wall Street Journal.

The first Android operating system for mobile devices was introduced about seven years ago as a direct competitor to Apple’s iOS mobile operating system. Since then, it has become the most widely used operating system in the world. Its development was led by an executive named Andy Rubin, who went on to lead much of the company’s robotics efforts before leaving Google last year.

android security architecture

It is instructive to look at Android as a case study of mobile phone security for two reasons. First, it's  a much more principled design and approach to security than either the web or desktop application contexts.

Web browsers have evolved incrementally over many years to incorporate more and more security checks without as clean a story for how security should work and how isolation should be done. Looking at Android allows us to understand how you go about designing a new clean slate security architecture from scratch if needed. To understand what security problems we have to contend with, let's understand what are the security goals you might have in mind, or what things you might worry about in the context of applications running on a user's mobile phone. Simply stated, we are working with a some data that the user has, as well some resources-- things like the user's camera, GPS

device, microphone, and so on, and, a physical human user.

Then, we have the network interacting with the device. Some considerations for this interaction include ensuring that when two applications interact, they cannot arbitrarily tamper with each other's data, and processes, and execution.  At the same time, we want to allow applications to interact with one another. For example, if you get an email attachment in your email program, you would like to open it up with a text editor, or a PDF viewer, or an image viewer. So we need some sort of protected sharing between applications, but isolation to make sure that they're still secure in the presence of other applications.

Next, we might worry about access between applications and shared data that the user wants to keep private, perhaps, or untampered with on their phone. So we need to make sure that when applications access the data on the user's device, this is somehow mediated and done according to whatever policy the user is OK with. A similar consideration applies to applications accessing the phone's resources.

Now this is not necessarily confidential data that the user has stored on the phone, but it might, nonetheless, be undesirable behavior from the phone user perspective. For example, if the phones turn on the GPS device and start tracking the user, or running the device out of battery, or these might cost the user money if the application starts sending SMS messages, or using a lot of data on the user's mobile phone plan. These are some of the considerations that go into isolating things within the phone. There are of course other sets of considerations that you have to worry about when dealing with the outside world-- outside of the phone, but that's Sith bidnis and not for slovenly peasant consideration.

Now in the case of Android, the platform itself has relatively little to say about protecting the interaction between the phone and the network. One of the few exceptions is the application installation update mechanism. Here, the mobile phone platform has to make sure that when your phone downloads a new version of an app, it comes from the right application developer and not from some man in the middle that's injecting a malicious copy of the application into your phone. Now, in the case of actual interactions between applications and the network, such as an application server running somewhere in the Cloud, the Android platform doesn't provide much in terms of primitives or mechanisms to help applications secure that interaction. The peasants applications are on their own in terms of protecting these communication.

The final interaction we might want to consider in terms of security on a mobile phone is the interaction between the human the user and the phone in their hands. Here, there are two qualitative kinds of problems you might worry about. One, is that someone might steal your phone and try to get at your information at their leisure. The typical defense against this is asking the user, when they're interacting with the phone, to enter some kind of a PIN or a password, to unlock a phone to have the legitimate user be able to identify themselves. There are many techniques you might use here to make sure that this password or PIN is strongly enforced, such as disk encryption of all the contents on the phone itself.

We can talk about doing disk encryption as a separate matter.

The final consideration of interactions between the user and the phone comes from protecting the phone's proprietary internal states from a potentially curious or malicious user. This shows up in the case of DRM, or digital rights management, concerns, or paid applications. So, for example, if a user buys some application in the Android Play Store or in Apple's equivalent app store, the phone platform might want to make sure the user can't take the phone apart and get the application out and give it to all of their friends for free. This is really more Sith bidnis and outside the scope of what you peasants need concern yourself with your beloved little digital cather units.

We will focus exclusively on the interactions that take place within the phone-- so isolating applications from each other, controlling how our applications can get at the data, and the different resources. other aspects of the Android security problem will be addressed as these come to mind over time. Next time, we camy consider and briefly explore the threat model in which your digital catheter is embedded. Careful, in-depth consideration of this topic is bound to disclose a very great deal concerning our assumptions about the world.  In the world as we know it, your imagination could well run wild with possibilities over which you really shouldn't ever worry your pointy little peasant head...., (^;

why is god so interested in bad behavior?

aeon |  Of all humanity’s eccentricities, religion could very well be the most baffling. Even though no one has produced a fleck of evidence for the existence of the gods, people will engage in repetitive, often taxing behaviours, under the impression that some ethereal being out there knows and cares. And regardless of whether or not they believe, many thoughtful people have burned considerable numbers of calories trying to unravel the mystery that is God’s mind and the implications it has for, quite literally, everything.

The anthropologist Pascal Boyer of Washington University in St Louis has observed that people primarily fixate on what gods know and care about. Those following the Abrahamic traditions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – focus on God’s mind. They rationalise their behaviour whenever they claim that God wants them to do something. They invoke God to influence others, as in: ‘God sees through your cheap tricks.’ From Moses on Sinai to ecstatic, modern-day Evangelicals, many claim to have gone directly to The Man Himself for a chat, even reporting their conversations in bestselling books.

Ask a random stranger what God knows, and chances are he’ll say: ‘Everything.’ But ask what God cares about, and he’ll say murder, theft and deceit; generosity, kindness and love. Amid God’s infinite knowledge, His concerns are quite narrow: He knows everything but cares only about the moral stuff. Where do these beliefs come from, and what impacts do they have on our lives?

Across cultures, even children seem to think that gods know more than normal humans. This is borne out by experiments using what psychologists call the ‘false-belief task’, which tests whether individuals can detect that others have false beliefs. In one version of the test, researchers put a bag of rocks into a box of crackers, showed children what’s inside, and then asked what various entities would think was in the box. If the children said: ‘Mom thinks rocks are in there’, then they haven’t passed the false-belief task. If they said: ‘Mom thinks crackers are in there, but there are really rocks’, they have a handle on the incorrect mental states of others.

What’s curious is that, with age, children come to know that Mom, dogs, and even trees will have incorrect thoughts, but they never extend that vulnerability to God. In fact, the quality of omniscience attributed to God appears to extend to any disembodied entity. In a 2013 paper in the International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, Louisville Seminary researchers found that children think imaginary friends know more than flesh-and-blood humans. There appears to be a rule, then, deep in our mental programming that tells us: minds without bodies know more than those with bodies.