students hiding academic talent and dropping activities to avoid bullying

guardian | Many bullying experts rightly focus on the plight of vulnerable children targeted by bullies but, before now, I wonder how many of us considered being intelligent or talented a vulnerability? More than 90% of the 1,000 11-16 year-olds we recently surveyed said they had been bullied or seen someone bullied for being too intelligent or talented. Worryingly, this means our children and young people are shying away from academic achievement for fear of victimisation.

Almost half of children and young people (49.5%) have played down a talent for fear of being bullied, rising to 53% among girls. One in 10 (12%) said they had played down their ability in science and almost one in five girls (18.8%) and more than one in 10 boys (11.4%) are deliberately underachieving in maths – to evade bullying.

The government has recently pledged funding to develop a new maths course for sixth-formers based on the assumption that current maths courses are inaccessible to youngsters who can't see the relevance of the subject to their lives. What our findings are telling us though, is that there is more at play here. And we want government to take note.

What used to be left in the playground is now following children home, through social media. And what may have been historically viewed as a short-term problem, which many of us endured during our school days – but not necessarily beyond – can have a dramatic impact on our young people's futures. Fist tap Dale.

the parents should be punished for failure to invest in their children...,

usatoday | A fourth-grade teacher in southern Idaho is being criticized after having her students use permanent markers to draw on the faces of classmates who failed to meet reading goals.

Some parents and administrators say the punishments given to nine students in Summer Larsen's class were inappropriate and left the children feeling shamed.

Cindy Hurst said recently her 10-year-old son came home from school Nov. 5 with his entire face — including his eyelids — scribbled on with green, red and purple markers.

"He was humiliated, he hung his head and wanted to go wash his face," Hurst told The Times-News of Twin Falls. "He knows he's a slow reader. Now he thinks he should be punished for it."

Larsen, who has taught at the school for six years, didn't respond to requests for comment. But Cassia County School District Superintendent Gaylen Smyer confirmed what took place in her classroom, though he didn't name Larsen.

The students were allowed to choose their own incentive to meet the reading goal, but instead of a reward, the class chose a punishment: Students who failed to meet the goal could either stay inside at recess until it was met, or have their faces written on by classmates who met the goals.

Nine students didn't meet the goals, the paper reported Friday. Three chose to forgo recess, and the other six chose to have their faces marked on.

"Although all the students in the class agreed to the incentive, once it occurred it was not so well received. Nor should it have been," Smyer said.

currencies of the future..,

lfb | Banking industry insiders are upset with Amex and Wal-Mart, that also is offering prepaid cards, because these prepaid accounts would amount to uninsured deposits, according to Andrew Kahr, who wrote a scathing piece on the issue for American Banker.

Kahr rips into the idea with this analogy:

“To provide even lower ‘discount prices,’ should Wal-Mart rent decaying buildings that don’t satisfy local fire laws and building codes — and offer still better deals to consumers? And why should Walmart have to honor the national minimum wage law, any more than Amex honors state banking statutes? With Bluebird, Amex can already violate both the Bank Holding Company Act and many state banking statues.”

Kahr is implying that regulated fractionalized banking is safe and sound, while prepaid cards provided by huge companies like Amex and Wal-Mart is a shady scheme set up to rip off consumers. The fact is, in the case of IndyMac, panicked customers forced regulators to close the S&L by withdrawing only 7% of the huge S&L’s deposits. It was about the same for WaMu and Wachovia when regulators engineered sales of those banks being run on. Bitcoin supporters, unlike the general public, are well aware of fractionalized banking’s fragility.

Maybe what the banking industry is really afraid of is the Amexes and Wal-Marts of the world creating their own currencies and banking systems. Wal-Mart has tried to get approval to open a bank for years, and bankers have successfully stopped the retail giant for competing with them.

However, prepaid credit cards might be just the first step toward Wal-Mart issuing their own currency — Marts — that might initially be used only for purchases in Wal-Mart stores. But over time, it’s not hard to imagine Marts being traded all over town and easily converted to dollars, pesos, Yuan, or other currencies traded where Wal-Mart has stores. Fist tap Dale.

walmart strike spreading to your area, here are 9 reasons why it matters...,

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

policymic | The first retail worker strike against Wal-Mart has spread from Los Angeles, where it began last week, to stores in a dozen cities, a union official said Tuesday. According to the Huffington Post, Wal-Mart workers walked off the job in Dallas, Seattle, the San Francisco Bay area, Miami, the Washington, D.C., area, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Chicago and Orlando, said Dan Schlademan, director of the United Food and Commercial Workers' Making Change At Wal-Mart campaign. Workers also went on strike in parts of Kentucky, Missouri and Minnesota, he said.

Tuesday's walkouts included 88 workers from 28 stores ... a fraction of the 1.4 million who work at Wal-Mart, the world's largest private employer. Until Friday, when about 60 Wal-Mart employees walked off the job for a day in LA, no Wal-Mart retail workers had ever gone on strike, the union said.

The workers are protesting company attempts to "silence and retaliate against workers for speaking out for improvements on the job," according to a United Food and Commercial Workers news release. Walmart workers, who are not unionized, have long complained of low pay and a lack of benefits.

These workers must be heard. Here are 9 reasons why:

a tale of two discounters...,

cbsnews | This holiday season, the biggest discount chains in the U.S. will tell the tale of two very different shoppers: Those that have and those that have not.

Walmart (WMT), the world's largest retailer, on Thursday acknowledged that its low-income shoppers continue to struggle in the economy and issued an outlook for the fourth quarter -- which encompasses the holiday shopping period -- that falls below Wall Street estimates. On the same day, its smaller rival Target (TGT), which caters to more affluent shoppers, said it expects results during the quarter to exceed the Street's projections.

The two discounters offer valuable insight into how Americans will spend in November and December, a period that's traditionally the busiest shopping period of the year. Some merchants depend on the holiday shopping season for up to 40 percent of their annual sales, but economists watch the period closely to get a temperature reading on the overall mood of American consumers.

The forecasts seem to confirm a trend that has taken shape during the economic downturn. Well-heeled shoppers spend more freely as the economy begins to show new signs of life, while consumers in the lower-income brackets continue to hold tight to their purse strings even as the housing and stock markets rebound.

Walmart and Target both are discounters, but they cater to different customers. Walmart, which says its customers' average household income ranges from $30,000 to $60,000, hammers its low-price message and focuses on stocking basics like tee shirts and underwear along with household goods. But Target, whose customers have a median household income of $64,000 a year, is known for carrying discounted designer clothes and home decor under the same roof as detergent and dishwashing liquid.

peace of mind for the left behind...,

NYTimes | On a clear morning in May, Ron Douglas left his home in exurban Denver, eased into his Toyota pickup truck and drove to a business meeting at a Starbucks. Douglas, a bearded bear of a man, ordered a venti double-chocolate-chip Frappuccino — “the girliest drink ever,” he called it — and then sat down to discuss the future of the growing survivalist industry.

Many so-called survivalists would take pride in keeping far away from places that sell espresso drinks. But Douglas, a 38-year-old entrepreneur and founder of one of the largest preparedness expos in the country, isn’t your typical prepper.

At that morning’s meeting, a strategy session with two new colleagues, Douglas made it clear that he doesn’t even like the word “survivalist.” He believes the word is ruined, evoking “the nut job who lives out in the mountains by himself on the retreat.” Instead, he prefers “self-reliance.”

When prompted by his colleagues to define the term, Douglas leaned forward in his chair. “I’m glad you asked,” he replied. “Take notes. This is good.”

For the next several minutes, Douglas talked about emergency preparedness, sustainable living and financial security — what he called the three pillars of self-reliance. He detailed the importance of solar panels, gardens, water storage and food stockpiles. People shouldn’t just have 72-hour emergency kits for when the power grid goes down; they should learn how to live on their own. It’s a message that Douglas is trying to move from the fringe to the mainstream.

“Our main goal is to reach as many people and get the word out to as many people as we can, to get them thinking and moving in this direction,” he said. “Sound good?”

The preparedness industry, always prosperous during hard times, is thriving again now. In Douglas’s circles, people talk about “the end of the world as we know it” with such regularity that the acronym Teotwawki (tee-ought-wah-kee) has come into widespread use. The Vivos Group, which sells luxury bunkers, until recently had a clock on its Web site that was ticking down to Dec. 21, 2012 — a date that, thanks to the Mayan calendar, some believe will usher in the end times. But amid the alarmism, there is real concern that the world is indeed increasingly fragile — a concern highlighted most recently by Hurricane Sandy. The storm’s aftermath has shown just how unprepared most of us are to do without the staples of modern life: food, fuel, transportation and electric power. Fist tap Arnach.

how many times does history repeat itself?

at saviour's day?!?!?! these two killed more black people than the kkk...,

paul newman left out a bunch of historical details...,

it didn't end with the boxer rebellion...,

wikipedia | The Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, known by foreigners as the Boxers, or "Yihe Magic Boxing", was a secret society founded in the northern coastal province of Shandong consisting largely of people who had lost their livelihoods due to imperialism and natural disasters.^[6] The group originated from the Lí sect of the Ba gua religion group.^[7] Foreigners came to call the well-trained, athletic young men "Boxers" due to the martial arts and calisthenics they practiced. The Boxers' primary feature was spirit possession, which involved "the whirling of swords, violent prostrations, and chanting incantations to Taoist and Buddhist spirits."^[8]

The Boxers believed that through training, diet, martial arts, and prayer they could perform extraordinary feats, such as flight. Further, they popularly claimed that millions of spirit soldiers would descend from the heavens and assist them in purifying China of foreign influences. The Boxers consisted of local farmers/peasants and other workers who were made desperate by disastrous floods and widespread opium addiction and laid the blame on Christian missionaries, Chinese Christians, and the Europeans colonizing their country. Missionaries were protected under the policy of extraterritoriality. Chinese Christians were alleged also to have filed false lawsuits.^[9] The Boxers called foreigners "Guizi" (鬼子, literally: demons), a deprecatory term, and condemned Chinese Christian converts and Chinese working for foreigners. The Boxers were only lightly armed with rifles and swords, claiming supernatural invulnerability towards blows of cannon, rifle gunshots, and knife attacks. The Boxers were typical of millennarian movements, such as the American Indian Ghost Dance, often rising in societies under extreme stress.^[10]

Several secret societies in Shandong predated the Boxers. In 1895, Yuxian, a Manchu who was then prefect of Caozhou and would later become provincial governor, acquired the help of the Big Sword Society in fighting against bandits. Although the Big Swords had heterodox practices, they were not seen as bandits by Chinese authorities. Their efficiency in defeating banditry led to a flood of cases overwhelming the magistrates' courts, to which the Big Swords responded by executing the bandits that were apprehended.^[11] The Big Swords relentlessly hunted the bandits, but the bandits converted to Catholic Christianity, gaining them legal immunity from prosecution and also placed them under the protection of the foreigners. The Big Swords responded by attacking bandit Catholic churches and burning them.^[12] As a result, Yuxian executed several Big Sword leaders, but did not punish anyone else. More secret societies started emerging after this.^[13]

The early years saw a variety of village activities, not a broad movement or a united purpose. Like the Red Boxing school or the Plum Flower Boxers, the Boxers of Shandong were more concerned with traditional social and moral values, such as filial piety, than with foreign influences. One leader, for instance, Zhu Hongdeng (Red Lantern Zhu), started as a wandering healer, specializing in skin ulcers, and gained wide respect by refusing payment for his treatments.^[14] Zhu claimed descent from Ming dynasty Emperors, since his surname was the surname of the Ming Imperial Family. He announced that his goal was to "Revive the Qing and destroy the foreigners" ("Fu Qing mie yang").^[15]

it started with piracy in the caribbean...,

It starts with piracy in the Caribbean, which gives way to growing sugar there - and forcing slaves from Africa to work them. Trade with India brings wealth to men like Robert Clive who progress from trader to governor. The empire grows piecemeal as chartered companies take over large tracts of foreign territory - answering only to head office in the City of London. Illegal opium sold to China makes a fortune for British businessmen - but sparks a war with the Chinese emperor.

Druglibrary | IN a vague way, we are familiar with the "opium evil" in China, and some of us have hazy ideas as to how it came about. The China Year Book for 1916 has this to say on the subject: "The poppy has been known in China for 12 centuries, and its medicinal use for 9 centuries. . . . It was not until the middle of the 17th century that the practice of mixing opium with tobacco for smoking purposes was introduced into China. This habit was indulged in by the Dutch in Java, and by them taken to Formosa, whence it spread to Amoy and the mainland generally. There is no record to show when opium was first smoked by itself, but it is thought to have originated about the end of the 18th century. Foreign opium was first introduced by the Portuguese from Goa at the beginning of the 18th century. In 1729, when the foreign import was 200 chests, the Emperor Yung Ching issued the first anti-opium edict, enacting severe penalties on the sale of opium and the opening of opium-smoking divans. The importation, however, continued to increase, and by 1790 it amounted to over 4,000 chests annually. In 1796 opium smoking was again prohibited, and in 1800 the importation of foreign opium was again declared illegal. Opium was now contraband, but the fact had no effect on the quantity introduced into the country, which rose to 5,000 chests in 1820; 16,000 chests in 1830; 20,000 chests in 1838, and 70,000 chests in 1858."

The China Year Book makes no mention of the traders who carried these chests of opium into China. The opium came from India, however, and the increase in importation corresponds with the British occupation of India, and the golden days of the East India Company. "Opium was now contraband, but that fact had no effect on the quantity introduced into the country," smuggled in wholesale by the enterprising British traders.

China was powerless to protect herself from this menace, either by protests or prohibition. And as more and more of the drug was smuggled in, and more and more of the people became victims of the habit, the Chinese finally had a tea-party, very much like our Boston Tea Party, but less successful in outcome. In 1839, in spite of the fact that opium smoking is an easy habit to acquire and had been extensively encouraged, the British traders found themselves with 20,000 chests of unsold opium on their store-ships, just below Canton. The Chinese had repeatedly appealed to the British Government to stop these imports, but the British Government had turned a persistently deaf ear. Therefore the Emperor determined to deal with the matter on his own account. He sent a powerful official named Lin to attend to it, and Lin had a sort of Boston Tea Party, as we have said, and destroyed some twenty thousand chests of opium in a very drastic way. Mr. H. Wells Williams describes it thus: "The opium was destroyed in the most thorough manner, by mixing it in parcels Of 200 chests, in trenches, with lime and salt water, and then drawing off the contents into an adjacent creek at low tide."

After this atrocity, followed the first Opium War, when British ships sailed up the river, seized port after port, and bombarded and took Canton. Her ships sailed up the Yangtsze, and captured the tribute junks going up the Grand Canal with revenue to Peking, thus stopping a great part of China's income. Peace was concluded in 1843, and Great Britain came out well. She recompensed herself by taking the island of Hongkong; an indemnity Of 21 million dollars, and Canton, Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo and Shanghai were opened up as "treaty ports"-for the importation of opium and the "open-door" in general.

Mr. Wells, in his "Middle Kingdom" describes the origin of this first war with England: "This war was extraordinary in its origin as growing chiefly out of a commercial misunderstanding; remarkable in its course as being waged between strength and weakness, conscious superiority and ignorant pride; melancholy in its end as forcing the weaker to pay for opium within its borders against all its laws, thus paralyzing the little moral power its feeble government could exert to protect its subjects. . . . It was a turning point in the national life of the Chinese race, but the compulsory payment of six million dollars for the opium destroyed has left a stigma upon the English name."

He also says, "The conflict was now fairly begun; its issue between the parties so unequally matched --one having almost nothing but the right on its side, the other assisted by every material and physical advantage-could easily be foreseen" and again, after speaking of it as being unjust and immoral, he concludes "Great Britain, the first Christian power, really waged this war against the pagan monarch who had only endeavored to put down a vice harmful to his people. The war was looked upon in this light by the Chinese; it will always be so looked upon by the candid historian, and known as the Opium War."

Within fifteen years after this first war, there was another one, and again Great Britain came off victorious. China had to pay another indemnity, three million dollars, and five more treaty ports were opened up. By the terms of the Treaty of Tientsin, the sale of opium in China was legalized in 1858.

From a small pamphlet, "Opium: England's Coercive Policy and Its Disastrous Results in China and India" by the Rev. John Liggins, we find the following: "As a specimen of how both wars were carried on, we quote the following from an English writer on the bombardment of Canton: 'Field pieces loaded with grape were planted at the end of long, narrow streets crowded with innocent men, women and children, to mow them down like grass till the gutters flowed with their blood.' In one scene of carnage, the Times correspondent recorded that half an army of 10,ooo men were in ten minutes destroyed by the sword, or forced into the broad river. " The Morning Herald " asserted that "a more horrible or revolting crime than this bombardment of Canton has never been committed in the worst ages of barbaric darkness."

Naturally, therefore, after the termination of these two wars, China gave up the struggle. She had fought valiantly to protect her people from opium, but the resources of a Christian nation were too much for her. Seeing therefore that the opium trade was to be forced upon her, and that her people were doomed to degradation, she decided to plant poppies herself. There should be competition at least, and the money should not all be drained out of the country. Thus it came about that after 1858 extensive tracts of land were given over to poppy production. Whole provinces or parts of provinces, ceased to grow grain and other necessities, and diverted their rich river bottoms to the raising of opium. Chinese opium, however, never supplanted Indian opium, being inferior to that raised in the rich valley of the Ganges. The country merely had double quantities of the drug, used straight or blended, to suit the purse or taste of the consumer.

Then, in 1906, the incredible happened. After over a hundred years of steady demoralization, with half her population opium addicts, or worse still, making enormous profits out of the trade, China determined to give up opium. In all history, no nation has ever set itself such a gigantic task, with such a gigantic handicap. China, a country of immense distances, with scant means of communication; with no common language, a land where only the scholars can read and write, suddenly decided to free herself from this vice. The Emperor issued an edict saying that in ten years' time all opium traffic must cease, and an arrangement was made with Great Britain whereby this might be accomplished. To the honor of America be it said that we assisted China in this resolution. We agreed to see her through.

A bargain was then made between China and Great Britain, in 1907, China agreeing to diminish poppy cultivation year by year for a period of ten years, and Great Britain agreeing to a proportional decrease in the imports of Indian opium. A three years' test was first agreed to, a trial of China's sincerity and ability, for Great Britain feared that this was but a ruse to cut off Indian opium, while leaving China's opium alone in the field. At the end of three years, however, China had proved her ability to cope with the situation. Thus, for a period of ten years, both countries have lived up to their bargain, the amount of native and foreign opium declining steadily in a decreasing scale. April 1, 1917, saw the end of the accomplishment.

China's part was most difficult. In the remote, interior provinces, poppies were grown surreptitiously, connived at by corrupt officials who made money from the crops. However, drastic laws were enacted and severe penalties imposed upon those who broke them. If poppy cultivation could not be stopped, England would not hold to her end of the bargain. Not only was there a nation of addicts to deal with, but these could obtain copious supplies of opium from the foreign concessions, over which the Chinese had no control. We shall show, in another article, to what extent this was carried on. Yet somehow, in some manner, the impossible happened. Year by year, little by little, one province after another was freed from poppy cultivation, until in 1917, China was practically free from the native-grown drug, and foreign importation had practically ended.

In this manner, first by large smuggling, then by two opium wars, was China drugged with opium. And in this manner, and to this extent, has she succeeded in freeing herself from the curse. But in one way, she is not free. She has no control over the extra-territorial holdings of European powers, for in each treaty port are the foreign concessions already mentioned-German, Austrian, British, French, Russian. And in these concessions, opium may be procured. Simply by crossing an imaginary line, in such cities as Shanghai and Hongkong, can the Chinese buy as much opium as they choose. China will never be rid of this menace till she is rid of these extraterritorial holdings. Opium shops, licensed by foreign governments, are always ready to supply her people with the forbidden drug.

We say that the China market is closed. So it is, in one way. But the British Opium Monopoly is not ended. The year 1917 saw a tremendous blow dealt to the British opium dealers, but other markets will be found. There are other countries than China whose inhabitants can be taught this vice. The object of this discussion is to consider these other countries, and to see to what extent the world is menaced by this possibility.

everything you think you know about white working class voters is wrong

theatlantic | The white working class depends on government assistance more than the population as a whole, yet its members heavily favor smaller government and lower taxes -- and they strongly believe that the poor are too dependent on government programs.

Nearly half of the white working class (46 percent) reported receiving Social Security or disability benefits in the poll, versus 38 percent of the overall population; they were also slightly more likely to receive food stamps and unemployment benefits than the general population. Six in 10 white working-class voters said the federal government should cut back on services and reduce taxes. And three-fourths agreed with the idea that "poor people have become too dependent on government assistance programs." If Romney is able to get past his "47 percent" comments, this may be why: Even those who frequently depend on government strongly dislike the idea of dependency and entitlement.

The white working class has often been depicted as the backbone of the Tea Party, angered by what they perceive as Obama's socialistic policies and, in the president's own memorable phrase, "clinging to guns or religion." But the poll knocks down some of these myths:

* They're not the Tea Party: Only about 13 percent of white working-class voters consider themselves part of the Tea Party, and 34 percent say they share its values. Among college-educated whites, the numbers are about the same -- 10 percent and 31 percent, respectively.

* They're not unusually religious: About half (48 percent) go to church at least once a month, and 60 percent say religion is important to them. That's about the same as the general population. The white working class is more heavily evangelical, however -- 36 percent describe themselves as evangelicals, versus 21 percent of the overall population.

* They're not culture warriors: On the wedge issues of abortion and same-sex marriage, white working-class voters are pretty evenly divided. They favor abortion being legal in all or most cases, 50 percent to 45 percent, and oppose allowing gays to marry, 50 percent to 43 percent. Less than 5 percent of these voters said abortion or gay marriage was the most important issue, as opposed to 53 percent who cited the economy.

* They want to tax the rich: Contra Joe the Plumber, these voters aren't opposed to spreading the wealth around. "In fact, white working-class Americans display a strong strain of economic populism," the report states: 70 percent of them believe the economic system unfairly favors the wealthy, and 62 percent want to raise taxes on incomes over $1 million. And there's a clear reason both candidates have accused each other of favoring outsourcing: 78 percent of white working-class voters blame corporations moving jobs overseas for America's economic woes.

gov. martinez: romney "set us back" as a party...,

yahoo | After two days of meetings at the Republican Governors Association conference this week, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez heard a lot about the party's need to reach new constituencies--particularly women and ethnic minorities--but few specifics about how.

As a Republican governor of Mexican descent who won all but four counties in a Democratic state, Martinez has ideas for how the party can reach voters who traditionally support Democrats. But it's going to take some work--and a touch of humility--from her colleagues.

"Republicans need to stop making assumptions, and they need to start talking to younger people, people of color, and ask them--not talk to them--ask them, What is it that we can do better? How do we earn your vote? How do we earn the ability for you to see that we can be the party that will make your life better and that of your children?" Martinez said in an interview after the conference here. "But we can't be the ones that come and tell them how things are going to be and how we have all the solutions."

President Barack Obama in 2012 expanded his lead among Hispanics, black voters, Asians and women, according to exit polling, leaving many Republicans wondering what they need do to adapt to the nation's rapidly shifting demographics.

The topic has dominated much of the party's post-election soul searching. Some have placed part of the blame on the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, who wrote off nearly half the electorate as inevitable Obama voters when he told donors at a closed-door fundraiser last spring that 47 percent of the population would support Obama "no matter what." Martinez criticized Romney's comments when they were reported in September, and on Wednesday reiterated that she found them "ridiculous."

"It's a ridiculous statement to make. You want to earn the vote of every single person you can earn, whether they be someone who relies on," she said. "Why would you ever write off 47 percent?"

racists don't understand that if you want people to like you, you need to like them first

romney understands his magical thinking better than you do!

Romney quotes Cleon Skausen , boasts passionately about being a bishop and state leader in his church, the second coming in Jerusalem and Missouri, jes dayyum...., is it any wonder this cat couldn't run as himself?!?

when try'na impress a skeezer and reckless teabaggery go wrong...,

NYTimes | Mr. Humphries, who was identified on Wednesday by law enforcement colleagues, took the initial complaint from Jill Kelley, a Tampa woman active in local military circles and a personal friend, about anonymous e-mails that accused her of inappropriately flirtatious behavior toward Mr. Petraeus.

The subsequent cyberstalking investigation uncovered an extramarital affair between Mr. Petraeus and Paula Broadwell, his biographer, who agents determined had sent the anonymous e-mails. It also ensnared Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, after F.B.I. agents discovered what a law enforcement official said on Wednesday were sexually explicit e-mail exchanges between him and Ms. Kelley.

A spokesman for Ms. Kelley provided her version of events in two conference calls with reporters on Wednesday. Ms. Kelley’s concern when she took the e-mails to Mr. Humphries was that she feared the sender was “stalking” Mr. Petraeus and General Allen, said the spokesman, who asked not to be identified.

“She asks the agent, ‘What do you make of this?’ ” the spokesman said. “The agent said: ‘This is serious. They seem to know the comings and goings of a couple of generals.’ ”

General Allen himself had received a similar anonymous e-mail message, sent by someone identified as “kelleypatrol,” advising him to stay away from Ms. Kelley. The general forwarded it to Ms. Kelley, and they discussed a concern that someone was cyberstalking them.

On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said he had asked the Senate to postpone a confirmation hearing for General Allen’s next assignment while the department’s inspector general reviewed his e-mail correspondence with Ms. Kelley, which was discovered by F.B.I. agents investigating her initial complaint.

Pentagon officials said the review covered more than 10,000 pages of documents that included “inappropriate” messages. But associates of General Allen have said that the two exchanged about a dozen e-mails a week since meeting two years ago and that his messages were affectionate but platonic.

A law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, disputed that assertion on Wednesday, saying some messages were clearly sexual. Investigators were confident “the nature of the content warranted passing them on” to the inspector general, the official said.

if this is the very best the military has to offer, that splains some things...,

National Journal | They were said to be generals cut from the same cloth, David Petraeus and John Allen: whip-smart, adaptable, erudite and above reproach. Indeed Allen was Petraeus’s hand-picked successor in Afghanistan, having served as deputy commander at Centcom in Tampa, Fla., first under Petraeus, then under Marine Gen. James Mattis. Petraeus and Allen, the soldier and the Marine, represented, in other words, the very best that the U.S. military has to offer.

And yet, in less than a week, the careers of two very different men may be ruined as a result of alleged inappropriate behavior with women.

It was scandalous enough when Petraeus stepped down as CIA director after an FBI investigation uncovered his extramarital affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell. The latest hairpin plot twist came early Tuesday when the Defense Department abruptly announced that the nomination of Allen, the outgoing commander in Afghanistan, to be commander of NATO forces was “on hold” pending an investigation by the FBI and the Pentagon inspector general related to his relationship with Jill Kelley – the woman who kicked off the FBI probe by reporting threatening emails she had received from Broadwell, and who has denied having any relationship with Petraeus beyond family friend.

A senior U.S. defense official told National Journal on Tuesday that investigators are now looking into “potentially inappropriate communications” between Allen and Kelley, 37, a doctor’s wife who worked at Centcom in Florida. According to The Washington Post, in the course of the Petraeus-Broadwell probe, the FBI uncovered between 20,000 and 30,000 documents — most of them e-mails —shared between Kelley and Allen.

In the end, Petraeus’ downfall marks the formal finish to a career that had in some ways passed its peak. The influence of his signature contribution to U.S. military doctrine—expensive counterinsurgency programs that take years to implement, with little to show in the way of results, as in Afghanistan —has been fading.

As for Allen, his tenure in Afghanistan is proving at least as troubled as Petraeus’, beset by “green-on-blue” attacks by Afghan soldiers and officials on allied troops, and a stubborn Taliban supported by Pakistani elements across the border.

During a visit to Afghanistan I made last May, he came across as sober and largely humorless in manner as he described in intellectual terms his strategic plans in Afghanistan. “There is this sense, and it’s a very Western sense I think, that there is a Napoleonic decisive battle that tends to end wars. In counterinsurgency, it’s much less about that than about creating an enduring capacity that grows and compounds on itself over time," Allen said. "And that’s what’s happened.”

He was far less of a glamorous or show-boating figure than Petraeus. Nevertheless, he’s now one of the leading men in a national soap opera.

the real lesson boys and girls, is, if you're sketchy, use Tor and PGP

slate | Using the dead-drop tactic can certainly reduce the chances that sweeping surveillance dragnets will gobble up your communications—but it is not exactly secure. The method was used by the planners of the Madrid train bombings in 2004, which killed 191 people, helping them to operate below the radar of Big Brother. However, law enforcement agencies over the years have grown accustomed to terrorists using the dead drop, and technologies have been developed to help counter it.

An interception tool developed by the networking company Zimbra, for instance, was specifically designed to help combat email dead drops. Zimbra’s “legal Intercept” technology allows law enforcement agencies to obtain “copies of email messages that are sent, received, or saved as drafts from targeted accounts.” An account that is under surveillance, with the help of Zimbra’s technology, will secretly forward all of its messages, including drafts, to a “shadow account” used by law enforcement. This may have been how the FBI was able to keep track of all correspondence being exchanged between Petraeus and Broadwell.

(It’s also worth noting that archived draft emails stored alongside sent and received messages on Google’s servers can actually be obtained by law enforcement with very little effort. Due to the outdated Electronic and Communications and Privacy Act, any content stored in the cloud can be obtained by the government without a warrant if it’s older than six months, as Wired reported last year.)

What this means is that if Petraeus and Broadwell had been savvy enough to use encryption and anonymity tools, their affair would probably never have been exposed. If they had taken advantage of PGP encryption, the FBI would have been able to decipher their randy interactions only after deploying Trojan-style spyware onto Broadwell’s computer. Further still, if the lovers had only ever logged into their pseudonymous Gmail accounts using anonymity tools like Tor, their real IP addresses would have been masked and their identities extremely difficult to uncover.

But then it is unlikely that they ever expected to come under FBI surveillance. Their crime was a moral one, not a felony, so there was no real reason to take extra precautions. In any other adulterous relationship a pseudonym and a dead drop would be more than enough to keep it clandestine, as my Slate colleague Farhad Manjoo noted in an email.

Broadwell slipped up when she sent the harassing emails—as that, as far as we know, is what ended up exposing her and Petraeus to surveillance. Whether the harassment was serious enough to merit email monitoring is still to be established, as Emily Bazelon writes on “XX Factor.” It goes without saying, however, that the real error here was ultimately made by Petraeus. If he had stayed faithful to his wife of 38 years in the first place, he’d still be in charge at the CIA—and I wouldn’t be writing about how he could have kept his adultery secret more effectively by using encryption.

fbi's surveillance state abuse is the real scandal...,

guardian | So not only did the FBI - again, all without any real evidence of a crime - trace the locations and identity of Broadwell and Petreaus, and read through Broadwell's emails (and possibly Petraeus'), but they also got their hands on and read through 20,000-30,000 pages of emails between Gen. Allen and Kelley.

This is a surveillance state run amok. It also highlights how any remnants of internet anonymity have been all but obliterated by the union between the state and technology companies.

But, as unwarranted and invasive as this all is, there is some sweet justice in having the stars of America's national security state destroyed by the very surveillance system which they implemented and over which they preside. As Trevor Timm of the Electronic Frontier Foundation put it this morning: "Who knew the key to stopping the Surveillance State was to just wait until it got so big that it ate itself?"

It is usually the case that abuses of state power become a source for concern and opposition only when they begin to subsume the elites who are responsible for those abuses. Recall how former Democratic Rep. Jane Harman - one of the most outspoken defenders of the illegal Bush National Security Agency (NSA) warrantless eavesdropping program - suddenly began sounding like an irate, life-long ACLU privacy activist when it was revealed that the NSA had eavesdropped on her private communications with a suspected Israeli agent over alleged attempts to intervene on behalf of AIPAC officials accused of espionage. Overnight, one of the Surveillance State's chief assets, the former ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, transformed into a vocal privacy proponent because now it was her activities, rather than those of powerless citizens, which were invaded.

With the private, intimate activities of America's most revered military and intelligence officials being smeared all over newspapers and televisions for no good reason, perhaps similar conversions are possible. Put another way, having the career of the beloved CIA Director and the commanding general in Afghanistan instantly destroyed due to highly invasive and unwarranted electronic surveillance is almost enough to make one believe not only that there is a god, but that he is an ardent civil libertarian.

The US operates a sprawling, unaccountable Surveillance State that - in violent breach of the core guarantees of the Fourth Amendment - monitors and records virtually everything even the most law-abiding citizens do. Just to get a flavor for how pervasive it is, recall that the Washington Post, in its 2010 three-part "Top Secret America" series, reported: "Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications."

partisan teabaggery pulled the petraeus story off the rails

mockpaperscissors | Talking Points Memo pulls out the four most telling paragraphs from the NYTimes (paywall) story about the convoluted Patraeus affair story:

Ms. Kelley, a volunteer with wounded veterans and military families, brought her complaint to a rank-and-file agent she knew from a previous encounter with the F.B.I. office, the official also said. That agent, who had previously pursued a friendship with Ms. Kelley and had earlier sent her shirtless photographs of himself, was “just a conduit” for the complaint, he said. He had no training in cybercrime, was not part of the cyber squad handling the case and was never assigned to the investigation.

But the agent, who was not identified, continued to “nose around” about the case, and eventually his superiors “told him to stay the hell away from it, and he was not invited to briefings,” the official said. The Wall Street Journal first reported on Monday night that the agent had been barred from the case.

Later, the agent became convinced — incorrectly, the official said — that the case had stalled. Because of his “worldview,” as the official put it, he suspected a politically motivated cover-up to protect President Obama. The agent alerted Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, who called the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, on Oct. 31 to tell him of the agent’s concerns.

The official said the agent’s self-described “whistle-blowing” was “a little embarrassing” but had no effect on the investigation.

So… the shirtless FBI Agent–who’s advances were spurned by the ingenue Jill Kelley went to the GOP Majority Leader Eric Cantor to tip him that a scandal was brewing that could help the GOP, you know, because of his world view.

The little factoid that kept confusing me as this stupid story unfolded was why Cantor was briefed and the President wasn’t, and now we know: Teabagging. This sad and stupid story now officially has no legs. I hope that Mrs. Petraeus gets a good settlement and that miserable little rat-fucker General gets what he deserves.