6th Post Ever REDUX - Information and Biological Revolutions

Global Governance Challenges — Summary of a Study Group

It was this subtitle that really, really baked my noodle and sent me down the rabbit hole of spiraling cogitations and digital collaborations concerning the nature of things as they presently stand - and the shape of things to come.

This report summarizes the issues that arose and the discussions held during the meetings of a 1998-1999 study group focusing on global governance of information technology and biotechnology. The goal was to bring a policy perspective to bear on a discussion of new technological developments through a series of free-flowing and exploratory presentations and discussions.

Download it and read it in its entirety when you get a chance...,

This repost is a public service to any and all readers who may wonder concerning the fundamental purpose and motivation underlying this exercise in "current events" (l'actualité) review and summarization. I am obsessively curious about - and more than a little rebellious toward - that human micro-minority which has arrogated to itself the prerogative of two-legged livestock management. Decades of observation and analysis have disinclined me toward the belief that this micro-minority identifies itself as our "good shepherds". Instead, I suspect that something far more Kanamitic is afoot in the Empyrean reaches of human governance. 

enjoy the show and never become distracted...,

The Capitalist Network that Runs the World

theinternetpost | According to company 10K filings to the SEC, the Four Horsemen of Banking are among the top ten stock holders of virtually every Fortune 500 corporation.[1]

So who then are the stockholders in these money center banks?

This information is guarded much more closely. My queries to bank regulatory agencies regarding stock ownership in the top 25 US bank holding companies were given Freedom of Information Act status, before being denied on “national security” grounds. This is rather ironic, since many of the bank’s stockholders reside in Europe.

One important repository for the wealth of the global oligarchy that owns these bank holding companies is US Trust Corporation – founded in 1853 and now owned by Bank of America. A recent US Trust Corporate Director and Honorary Trustee was Walter Rothschild. Other directors included Daniel Davison of JP Morgan Chase, Richard Tucker of Exxon Mobil, Daniel Roberts of Citigroup and Marshall Schwartz of Morgan Stanley. [2]

J. W. McCallister, an oil industry insider with House of Saud connections, wrote in The Grim Reaper that information he acquired from Saudi bankers cited 80% ownership of the New York Federal Reserve Bank- by far the most powerful Fed branch- by just eight families, four of which reside in the US. They are the Goldman Sachs, Rockefellers, Lehmans and Kuhn Loebs of New York; the Rothschilds of Paris and London; the Warburgs of Hamburg; the Lazards of Paris; and the Israel Moses Seifs of Rome.

CPA Thomas D. Schauf corroborates McCallister’s claims, adding that ten banks control all twelve Federal Reserve Bank branches. He names N.M. Rothschild of London, Rothschild Bank of Berlin, Warburg Bank of Hamburg, Warburg Bank of Amsterdam, Lehman Brothers of New York, Lazard Brothers of Paris, Kuhn Loeb Bank of New York, Israel Moses Seif Bank of Italy, Goldman Sachs of New York and JP Morgan Chase Bank of New York. Schauf lists William Rockefeller, Paul Warburg, Jacob Schiff and James Stillman as individuals who own large shares of the Fed. [3] The Schiffs are insiders at Kuhn Loeb. The Stillmans are Citigroup insiders, who married into the Rockefeller clan at the turn of the century.

Eustace Mullins came to the same conclusions in his book The Secrets of the Federal Reserve, in which he displays charts connecting the Fed and its member banks to the families of Rothschild, Warburg, Rockefeller and the others. [4]

The control that these banking families exert over the global economy cannot be overstated and is quite intentionally shrouded in secrecy. Their corporate media arm is quick to discredit any information exposing this private central banking cartel as “conspiracy theory”. Yet the facts remain.

playing with that rahowa fire...,

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

please don't judge all caucasians by the actions of a few...,

HuffPo | Boston Marathon bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev befriended a brain-damaged anti-U.S. government conspiracy theorist through their mother's health care aide job years before the deadly attack, a lawyer said Tuesday.

Attorney Jason Rosenberg, who represents the family of Donald Larking, said Larking shared publications with the brothers and discussed theories including that the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and the Newtown, Conn., elementary school shooting didn't happen or the U.S. government was behind them.

The attorney said the Tsarnaev family had a relationship with the Larkings that started years ago when the brothers' mother began working as a personal care assistant for Larking's wife, a quadriplegic since birth.

Rosenberg said Larking, who lives in West Newton, just west of Boston, was shot in the head in 1974 in an attempted robbery while working in a convenience store. He said Larking suffered brain damage that led to problems with his decision-making and judgment.

Authorities say the Tsarnaev brothers orchestrated the April 15 marathon bombing, in which two pressure cookers loaded with shrapnel exploded near the finish line, killing three people and injuring more than 260 others. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev pleaded not guilty last month to charges including using a weapon of mass destruction to kill. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died after a shootout with police a few days after the bombing.

Rosenberg said Tuesday the Tsarnaev brothers got to know Larking while substituting for their mother sometimes by helping to care for his wife. The attorney said the brothers "helpful" and "kind" to the couple and Larking shared his views with them as he found anti-U.S. government websites and became angrier and irrational.

The lawyer's account first emerged in a Wall Street Journal article, which included Tamerlan Tsarnaev's former landlady talking about publications that had been in his Cambridge apartment.

Landlady Joanna Herlihy told The Associated Press she salvaged publications after authorities had searched the apartment and items were discarded. She confirmed that among them were an Alabama-based publication that uses a Confederate flag on its website and a weekly publication that the Southern Poverty Law Center calls anti-Semitic.

Rosenberg said Tuesday he doesn't think Larking helped the Tsarnaev brothers, ethnic Chechens from Russia, formulate ideas but may have made them believe others felt as they did.

"(They) were seeing someone who was Caucasian and was born in America who was saying the same things," the attorney said.

right wing extremism and peasanthood don't mix...,

theatlanticwire | Alleged Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev become absorbed in magazines about wild conspiracy theories, mass killings and white supremacy, all courtesy of a convalescent older gentleman who has trouble facing "the realities of the world," according to his lawyer.

Yesterday, the BBC program Panorama reported on the telling reading material authorities found in the dead Tsarnaev brother's apartment. There were, for example, magazines that sympathized with Hitler, promoted a white supremacist agenda, and outlined how other mass murderers had performed their crimes.

The Wall Street Journal tracked down the individual who gave those magazines to Tsarnaev: 67-year-old Donald Larking. Larking was a client of Zubeidat Tsarnaev, who made a living in the U.S. caring for the elderly. Larking had been left with disabilities after surviving being shot in the face during a robbery at his job 40 years ago.

Larking subsequently became interested in magazines that pushed right-wing conspiracy theories about 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombings, and the Newtown school massacre. Tsarnaev, already a fan of conspiracy sites like InfoWars and Islamist websites, became close with the older man:

Ms. Tsarnaev began asking Tamerlan Tsarnaev or his brother to care for Mr. Larking when she wasn't available to work. Mr. Larking's wife, Rosemary, a quadriplegic, also needed help at home. Mr. Tsarnaev seemed to have found a kindred spirit in Mr. Larking. They became friends and had animated talks about politics, people close to the Larking family said.

Tamerlan started reading the anti-Semitic American Free Press and absorbed the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

unspeakable busy mumbling about "terra" again...,

atimes | When the going gets tough, count on the Ministry of Truth to get going.

The end of Ramadan was imminent. The jihadi chattering classes of that fuzzy entity, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), went on overdrive. It was jailbreak galore from Libya to Pakistan via Iraq. And all this in perfect synch with two successive fatwas issued by that perennial bogeyman, former Osama bin Laden sidekick Ayman "Doctor Evil" al-Zawahiri.

Imagine a rushed crisis meeting at the highest levels of the Orwellian/Panopticon complex: "Gentlemen, we have a golden opportunity here. We are under siege by defector spy Edward Snowden - liberated by the Soviets - and that terrorist hack Greenwald. Snowden may be winning: even among US public opinion, there's a growing perception we may be more of a threat than al-Qaeda.

So we must show we are vigilantly protecting our freedoms. Yes; we're gonna scream Terra, Terra, Terra!"

The bottom line is that the Bush-Obama continuum never ceases to reassure us - not to mention that old fox al-Zawahiri. Doctor Evil, as warped a strategist as he is, figured out a while ago that if the "al-Qaeda" global bogeyman myth is now "stronger than ever" it's thanks to the Obama administration and its poodles, European and Persian Gulf-based, with their Three Stooges strategy from Libya to Syria. Afghanistan is a completely different story; there's no "historical" al-Qaeda left, only a handful in the Pakistani tribal areas.

So al-Zawahiri knew the bogeyman would inevitably be resurrected, in total synch with his recent fatwas, because "long" - or "infinite" - war equals perpetual funding for the Orwellian/Panopticon complex. And a convenient foreign enemy is essential; no one in Washington could possibly admit on the record the real "enemy", as in strategic competitor, is the Chinese dragon.

Doctor Evil and the Orwellian/Panopticon complex are on the same side - and that explains why he'll be allowed to be a motor mouth fatwa machine for as long as he wants, and won't be nabbed like some patsy in the underwear bomber mould. The complex is back in offense. Reform the NSA? Interfere with our metadata? What for? We have just alerted the US government to "pre-9/11" levels of terrorist chatter!

AQAP might well decide not to participate in this worldwide "pre-9/11" script. Real jihadis, after all, are not foolish enough to be caught by XKeystroke. So here's a Dylanesque riddle for you. All along the watchtower, a false flag is approaching - said the joker to the thief. There's too much Terra confusion, and we won't get no relief.

what if your country begins to change and no one notices? welcome to post-constitutional america...,

tomdispatch | Close your eyes for a moment, think about recent events, and you could easily believe yourself in a Seinfeldian Bizarro World [5].  Now, open them and, for a second, everything looks almost familiar... and then you notice that a dissident is fleeing a harsh and draconian power, known for its global surveillance practices [6], use of torture, assassination campaigns [7], and secret prisons [8], and has found a haven in a heartless world in... hmmm... Russia.  That dissident, of course, is Edward Snowden, just granted a year’s temporary asylum [9] in Russia, a.k.a. the defender of human rights and freedom 2013, and so has been released from a Washington-imposed imprisonment in Moscow’s international air terminal and the threat of far worse [10].

Now, close your eyes, open them again, and for just a moment, doesn’t the world look a little more orderly?  After all, a draconian imperial power has taken one of its own dissidents, who wanted to reveal the truth about its cruel war practices and global diplomatic maneuverings, thrown him in prison without charges, abused and mistreated him, brought him before a drumhead military court and, on essentially trumped up charges of “espionage,” convicted him [11] of just what its leaders wanted to convict him of.  That power, of course, must be Russia and all’s right with the world... oops, I mean, that’s U.S. Army Private First Class Bradley Manning [12] and the “evil empire” that mistreated him is... gulp... the United States.

Think about it for a moment: if Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a place of asylum for American dissidents and the U.S. is doing a reasonable job of imitating aspects of the old USSR, we are on Bizarro Earth, aren't we?

Today, former State Department whistleblower [13] Peter Van Buren, author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People [14], considers how America’s distant wars have come home and how, under that pressure, this country is morphing into something unrecognizable.  Worse yet, it’s quite possible that we’re only at the beginning of that transformation.  To give but a small example of what the future might hold, psychiatrist and author [15] Jonathan Shay, famous for his work with traumatized Vietnam veterans, suggested in Daedalus [16] in 2011 that no one knows what it means for similarly traumatized employees of our Warrior corporations [17], the rent-a-gun “veterans” of our recent war zones to come home to no health care and no support system.  And he offered an eerie, if provocative, comparison to the footloose German veterans of World War I who, in the 1920s, joined the Freikorps [18] and played their part in the radicalization and then Nazification of that country. 

“I am not saying,” he wrote, “that I know that the Weimar Republic would still exist today, with all that implies about a different course to history, if Germany had had Vet Centers and VA Mental Health Clinics. But historians generally agree that the Freikorps contributed to the weakening of the new German political fabric in the immediate aftermath of World War I.”  His is a chilling reminder that, wherever we are now, it might just be a rest stop on some bizarro road to hell. -Tom

in 2011 the fbi allowed informants to commit 5600 crimes

usatoday | The FBI gave its informants permission to break the law at least 5,658 times in a single year, according to newly disclosed documents that show just how often the nation's top law enforcement agency enlists criminals to help it battle crime.

The U.S. Justice Department ordered the FBI to begin tracking crimes by its informants more than a decade ago, after the agency admitted that its agents had allowed Boston mobster James "Whitey" Bulger to operate a brutal crime ring in exchange for information about the Mafia. The FBI submits that tally to top Justice Department officials each year, but has never before made it public.

Agents authorized 15 crimes a day, on average, including everything from buying and selling illegal drugs to bribing government officials and plotting robberies. FBI officials have said in the past that permitting their informants — who are often criminals themselves — to break the law is an indispensable, if sometimes distasteful, part of investigating criminal organizations.

"It sounds like a lot, but you have to keep it in context," said Shawn Henry, who supervised criminal investigations for the FBI until he retired last year. "This is not done in a vacuum. It's not done randomly. It's not taken lightly." 

USA TODAY obtained a copy of the FBI's 2011 report under the Freedom of Information Act. The report does not spell out what types of crimes its agents authorized, or how serious they were. It also did not include any information about crimes the bureau's sources were known to have committed without the government's permission.

Crimes authorized by the FBI almost certainly make up a tiny fraction of the total number of offenses committed by informants for local, state and federal agencies each year. The FBI was responsible for only about 10% of the criminal cases prosecuted in federal court in 2011, and federal prosecutions are, in turn, vastly outnumbered by criminal cases filed by state and local authorities, who often rely on their own networks of sources.

"The million-dollar question is: How much crime is the government tolerating from its informants?" said Alexandra Natapoff, a professor at Loyola Law School Los Angeles who has studied such issues. "I'm sure that if we really knew that number, we would all be shocked." Fist tap Arnach.

fbi ran a child porn site for two weeks...,

gizmodo | Last November, the FBI raided a bulletin board-style site that was known to be a home of child pornography. But rather than shutting it down, they decided to keep it running—and see just how many users they could identify.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Bureau agents posed as child porn dealers, actively distributing pornography while the site was under their control—just as other agencies perform sting operations with drugs and prostitution. 

It's not yet clear if the technique worked that well: in the two week period, the FBI attempted to identify 5,600 users who had shared over 10,000 images of children, but s0 far it's only known that one suspect's computers have been seized. Still, it might be too early to judge. The investigation is still, apparently, in its early stages and, while nobody has yet been prosecuted, charges are believed to be forthcoming.

What can, perhaps, be judged, is the ethical position of distributing child pornography to incriminate suspects. Is it worse than supplying drugs in a sting? Or is it fair game given the end result? What do you think? [San Francisco Chronicle via Verge]

half of tor sites compromised, including tormail...,

twitlonger | The founder of Freedom Hosting has been arrested in Ireland and is awaiting extradition to USA.

In a crackdown that FBI claims to be about hunting down pedophiles, half of the onion sites in the TOR network has been compromised, including the e-mail counterpart of TOR deep web, TORmail.

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/courts/fbi-bids-to-extradite-largest-childporn-dealer-on-planet-29469402.html

This is undoubtedly a big blow to the TOR community, Crypto Anarchists, and more generally, to Internet anonymity. All of this happening during DEFCON.

If you happen to use and account name and or password combinations that you have re used in the TOR deep web, change them NOW.

Eric Eoin Marques who was arrested runs a company called Host Ultra Limited.

http://www.solocheck.ie/Irish-Company/Host-Ultra-Limited-399806
http://www.hostultra.com/

He has an account at WebHosting Talk forums.

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=157698

A few days ago there were mass outages of Tor hidden services that predominantly effected Freedom Hosting websites.

http://postimg.org/image/ltj1j1j6v/

"Down for Maintenance
Sorry, This server is currently offline for maintenance. Please try again in a few hours."

If you saw this while browsing Tor you went to an onion hosted by Freedom Hosting. The javascript exploit was injected into your browser if you had javascript enabled. Fist tap Arnach.

Logical outcomes from this?

1. FBI/NSA just shut down the #1 biggest hosting site and #1 most wanted person on Tor

2. Silkroad is next on their list, being the #2 most wanted (#1 was Child Porn, #2 is drugs)

3. Bitcoin and all crypto currenecies set to absolutely CRASH as a result since the feds can not completely control this currency as they please.

I don't always call the Feds agenda transparent, but when i do, I say they can be trying harder.

All behavior begins as unconscious -the product of contingencies of reinforcement. We share unconscious behavior with the other animals. Behavior becomes conscious when society gives us reasons to examine ourselves...,

salon | A June 2013 Gallup poll revealed that 70% of Americans hate their jobs or have “checked out” of them. Life may or may not suck any more than it did a generation ago, but our belief in “progress” has increased expectations that life should be more satisfying, resulting in mass disappointment. For many of us, society has become increasingly alienating, isolating and insane, and earning a buck means more degrees, compliance, ass-kissing, shit-eating, and inauthenticity. So, we want to rebel. However, many of us feel hopeless about the possibility of either our own escape from societal oppression or that political activism can create societal change. So, many of us, especially young Americans, rebel by what is commonly called mental illness.

While historically some Americans have consciously faked mental illness to rebel from oppressive societal demands (e.g., a young Malcolm X acted crazy to successfully avoid military service), today, the vast majority of Americans who are diagnosed and treated for mental illness are in no way proud malingerers in the fashion of Malcolm X. Many of us, sadly, are ashamed of our inefficiency and nonproductivity and desperately try to fit in. However, try as we might to pay attention, adapt, adjust, and comply with our alienating jobs, boring schools, and sterile society, our humanity gets in the way, and we become anxious, depressed and dysfunctional.

the establishment is destroying american prospects both home and abroad...,

globalresearch | Congress seems unaware of its schizophrenia. On the one hand Congress is outraged about the National Stasi Agency’s illegal and unconstitutional spying--especially on Congress--and is attempting to defund the Stasi Agency’s surveillance program. The amendment to the military spending bill by Justin Amash, a Republican from Michigan, almost passed. The amendment was barely defeated by votes purchased by the spy industry.

On the other hand, despite its outrage over being spied upon, Congress wants the scalp of the brave hero, Edward Snowden, who informed them that they were being spied upon. Here we have a demonstration of the historical stupidity of government--shoot the messenger.

Only a few right-wing crazies believe that universal surveillance of every American is necessary to US security. The National Stasi Agency will fight hard and blackmail every member of the House and Senate, but the blackmail itself will lead to the National Stasi Agency’s wings being clipped, or so we can hope. If it is not done soon, the Stasi Agency will have time to organize a false flag event that will terrify the sheeple and bring an end to the attempts to rein in the rogue agency.

The United States is on the verge of economic collapse. The alleged “superpower,” a bankrupt entity, was unable after 8 years of efforts to occupy Iraq and had to give up. After 11 years the “superpower” has been defeated in Afghanistan by a few thousand lightly armed Taliban, and is now running for cover with its tail between its legs.

Washington compensates for its military impotency by committing war crimes against civilians. The US military is a great killer of women, children, village elders, and aid workers. All the mighty “superpower” can do is to lob missiles shot from pilotless drones into farm houses, mud huts, schools, and medical centers.

The schizophrenic denizens of Washington have made Americans a hated people. Those with the foresight to know to escape from the growing tyranny also know that wherever they might seek refuge, they will be seen as vermin from the most hated nation and subjected to being scapegoated as spies and evil influences, and at risk of being decimated in reprisals against Washington’s latest atrocity.

Washington has destroyed the prospects of Americans both at home and abroad.

everybody wants an admin account on unspeakable's global logging and monitoring system...,

NYTimes | The National Security Agency’s dominant role as the nation’s spy warehouse has spurred frequent tensions and turf fights with other federal intelligence agencies that want to use its surveillance tools for their own investigations, officials say. 

Agencies working to curb drug trafficking, cyberattacks, money laundering, counterfeiting and even copyright infringement complain that their attempts to exploit the security agency’s vast resources have often been turned down because their own investigations are not considered a high enough priority, current and former government officials say. 

Intelligence officials say they have been careful to limit the use of the security agency’s troves of data and eavesdropping spyware for fear they could be misused in ways that violate Americans’ privacy rights. 

The recent disclosures of agency activities by its former contractor Edward J. Snowden have led to widespread criticism that its surveillance operations go too far and have prompted lawmakers in Washington to talk of reining them in. But out of public view, the intelligence community has been agitated in recent years for the opposite reason: frustrated officials outside the security agency say the spy tools are not used widely enough. 

“It’s a very common complaint about N.S.A.,” said Timothy H. Edgar, a former senior intelligence official at the White House and at the office of the director of national intelligence. “They collect all this information, but it’s difficult for the other agencies to get access to what they want.” 

“The other agencies feel they should be bigger players,” said Mr. Edgar, who heard many of the disputes before leaving government this year to become a visiting fellow at Brown University. “They view the N.S.A. — incorrectly, I think — as this big pot of data that they could go get if they were just able to pry it out of them.” 

Smaller intelligence units within the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Secret Service, the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security have sometimes been given access to the security agency’s surveillance tools for particular cases, intelligence officials say. 

But more often, their requests have been rejected because the links to terrorism or foreign intelligence, usually required by law or policy, are considered tenuous. Officials at some agencies see another motive — protecting the security agency’s turf — and have grown resentful over what they see as a second-tier status that has undermined their own investigations into security matters.

the nsa's hold on top people...,

peterbcollins | In our interview in June, NSA Whistleblower Russell Tice told Sibel Edmonds and PBC flatly that Senate Intelligence Chair Dianne Feinstein was one of many targets of NSA surveillance, using wiretapping and other methods.  Big Question:  does Feinstein know this, or has NSA kept it secret even from its highest-ranking oversight official?We kept this interview brief, and to the point:  Is Sen. Feinstein unaware that NSA targets top elected leaders, including herself?  If she is aware, does she support domestic surveillance programs because she is compromised by blackmail or other leverage?  And even if she is not compromised, does she see the potential for abuse by a rogue NSA?

We open with a quick summary of Tice’s background, and then he details the wiretapping of Feinstein’s offices, homes, and family.  Tice also says NSA used other surveillance methods on Feinstein, and places the initiation of wiretaps in 2004 or 2005.  He responds to questions about evidence for his disclosures, and his motive for revealing them now.

And he recaps the story of his appearance with Feinstein and Sen. Orrin Hatch on CNN’s Larry King show, where the senators defended the programs that Tice knew were also monitoring them.

Please share this widely:  if Feinstein will answer these questions honestly, we might see a break in the hold NSA appears to have over top elected officials.

everything snowden said was true, and then some...,

slate | If you have ever searched the Internet for something the NSA has deemed “suspicious,” you may have found yourself flagged up on the screen of a government spy. At least, that’s what a series of newly published secret documents suggest—raising fresh privacy concerns about the pervasive reach of the NSA’s global surveillance programs.

On Wednesday, the Guardian disclosed a range of new details about an NSA program called “XKEYSCORE,” which is an international system used by the NSA to secretly siphon data directly off of Internet networks. A small amount of information was first revealed about this system earlier this month by Brazilian newspaper O Globo, which published secret documents that appeared to show how the NSA was able to use XKEYSCORE to spy on Google maps searches.

The new release compounds the earlier disclosures, revealing how the NSA can use XKEYSCORE to collect and monitor huge troves of data on unencrypted Internet browsing sessions in countries across the world. In one 30-day period in 2012, at least 41 billion total records were collected and stored in XKEYSCORE, according to the Guardian. The NSA claims to have more than 700 XKEYSCORE servers located around the world at approximately 150 sites. At some of these locations the NSA claims it gobbles up more than 20 terabytes of data every day—the equivalent of about 20,000 copies of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Metadata collected by the system is typically retained, according to the slides, for 30 days at a time. It also appears to be able to sift through the content of unencrypted communications sent over the Internet.

Particularly notable is a series of secret NSA slides on the program, dated from 2008. The slides are marked “release to” United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada, suggesting XKEYSCORE is accessible to spy agencies in each of these countries. (It is also reportedly used by German authorities.) They show how the NSA collects data on emails, browsing sessions, and what people are searching for online—“nearly everything a typical user does on the internet,” as one slide puts it. The system enables analysts to trawl through this information in order to find what is described in the slides as “anomalous events.” Anyone sending encrypted emails or documents, searching for things deemed “suspicious stuff,” or using a language that is “out of place” for the region they are in may get flagged up as a potential target for further surveillance.

However, the increasing adoption of encryption in recent years may have to some degree thwarted the scope of XKEYSCORE’s capabilities. Back in 2008, the NSA could certainly use the XKEYSCORE program to mine vast quantities of data directly from networks about Google searches, email correspondence, and Facebook chats.

with nothing obvious to struggle against, who you obliged to struggle for?

theroot | We've been here before: Both Lemon and Cosby approach the growing crisis of racial injustice and economic inequality in America from the view of "racial uplift." In the 19th century, "racial uplift" meant that respectable black women and men projected an air of education and erudition that, in many instances, aped that of their white counterparts. The crucial difference was the way in which the "Talented Tenth" openly struggled against Jim Crow, racism and white supremacy. But even the most passionate black social reformers, including W.E.B. Du Bois, at times felt unease about the way in which poor blacks (and their behavior, penchant for crime, proliferating children) cast a long, negative shadow on the entire race.

Some went even further. Unable or unwilling to confront racism's brutal institutional, political and cultural manifestations, they settled on demonizing poor blacks. Arguing that pathological behavior resulted in social marginalization and economic misery, the most conservative "race" men and women of the era distanced themselves from the black poor even as they fought mightily to gain access to predominantly white institutions.

By the 1960s, with the release of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's report on the black family, myths of black pathology became enshrined in our national discourse. The erroneous idea that African Americans were stuck in a generational culture of poverty because of their own deviant behavior (reflected primarily although not exclusively in the high rates of out-of-wedlock births) informed debates over race and poverty in the post-civil rights era. What became known as America's urban "underclass" was rooted in a long-standing racial, cultural and political stereotyping of the black poor.

This stereotype is deceptively simple. If young black men could just pull their pants up, stop using the n-word and go to school and get a job, their lives would be transformed. Similarly, if young black women abandoned teen-age promiscuity and delved instead into academic studies, black poverty rates would be dramatically reduced. What this story ignores is the links between institutions and behavior, the binds that tie public policy to positive and negative outcomes large enough to affect whole neighborhoods, towns, cities, states and nations.

community consciousness: individual vs collective empowerment in the fin d'siecle

theroot | Although inelegantly expressed, Jay Z's position that his presence, along with that of President Obama, provides resources for the black community deserves closer examination. Insofar as Obama's watershed presence in American culture promoted a renaissance of interest in race and African-American history in politics, cable news, publishing and universities throughout the nation, Jay Z's point is well-made. Similarly, Shawn Carter's own burgeoning iconography has helped make hip-hop into a global phenomenon and inspired countless black entrepreneurs and artists to follow his example. In many respects, Michael Jordan innovated the model of the apolitical black superstar that subsequent generations in sports and entertainment have adopted. Belafonte has every right, of course, to criticize such a perspective, especially since it flies in the face of the ethos of collective and group empowerment upon which the civil rights and Black Power eras were built.

Jay Z's acknowledgement that he spent two sleepless nights in the aftermath of the George Zimmerman verdict included an admission that America still has residues of past racial discrimination. Beyond this fleeting recognition, however, racism appears as ghosts from the nation's dark past, shadowy apparitions that are not easily recognizable and almost impossible to fight.

This narrative views racism as more of an antiquated series of individual prejudices, pernicious stereotypes and ancient wrongs committed lifetimes ago than a systematic and institutional phenomenon that persists in every facet of American life. When Jay Z points to hip-hop's multicultural audience as providing not just a balm for past racial discrimination but, in fact, a cure, he means it. The shared experiences of a multicultural hip-hop generation represent the culmination of the civil rights movement's search for transcendent racial justice. Although this ignores the most important aspect of contemporary racism -- unequal outcomes -- it's a comforting myth that has been propagated by our "postracial" moment.

Jay Z sees his own wealth and status, along with the election of Barack Obama, as examples of racism's decline. In other words, he mistakes individual achievement for collective advancement. While Jay Z's individual entrepreneurial spirit, musical genius and discipline facilitated his escape from Brooklyn, N.Y.'s Marcy Projects, he doesn't see the value in committing his time, resources and talent in political causes that might help those left behind in America's countless urban and rural ghettoes.

Belafonte's generation grew up believing that the ascendance of black faces in higher places carried less weight and meaning if the entire community could not be uplifted as well.

lawsy, what's goin'on by the woodpile out behind the big house?!?!?!?

people |  U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona and his wife Cindy shared in a happy occasion Saturday night – the wedding of their son Jack McCain to Renee Swift, the senator's rep confirms.

The younger McCain, 27, serves as a lieutenant in the Navy, stationed in Guam where he is a helicopter pilot. Swift, 29, a Bay area native, is a captain in the USAF reserve. The couple met in Guam.

The wedding ceremony was held at San Francisco's Grace Cathedral, with a reception following at the California Academy of Sciences, said the rep.

The festivities were attended by all of the McCain children, reports The Washington Post. Also attending the couple's rehearsal dinner Friday night at the Tonga Room of the Fairmont Hotel, said the newspaper: former presidential candidate and Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

The groom's sister, Meghan McCain, 28, shared the joyous occasion through live Tweets throughout the weekend.

The couple planned to honeymoon in Africa, after which Jack McCain is slated for another deployment.

you know of course that the first black speaker of the house's orange daughter married a rasta?

dontgetherhairwet | The Root and other media outlets are reporting that Lindsay Boehner, daughter of Speaker of the House John Boehner recently married Dominic Lakhan,  ”a Jamaican-born construction worker” , who in the words of Root author Keli Goff  ”happens to be black.”  She goes on to say ” he also happens to have been previously arrested for marijuana possession.”

Umm ok. . . weird wording and perhaps unnecessary information, but nevertheless, good for everybody involved.  As opposed to some websites that see this as a gleeful excuse to write headlines like “NO JOKE: John Boehner’s Daughter to Marry Jamaican Pothead Construction Worker With Criminal Record”  I see this as an awesome thing. Who cares! They are happy, they want to be together. Let’s all love one another! . . . Republicans. . . I tell you, just when I start to paint you all with the same sweeping stereotyping, generalizing brush, you go ahead and surprise me.

Here are two extremely fuzzy aerial shots of the wedding obtained by the Daily Mail UK. I think the second pic is supposed to be of John Boehner, enjoying himself at the wedding. Or at the very least attending the wedding.

"my presence is charity...,"

counterpunch | Veteran civil rights activist and world-renowned entertainer Harry Belafonte hit a raw nerve last year when he suggested Black artists be more outspoken about their besieged communities.

“I think one of the great abuses of this modern time,” he observed, “is that we have such high-profile artists and powerful celebrities, but they have turned their back on social responsibility. That goes for Jay Z and Beyoncé, for example.”

Even though Belafonte continuously emphasizes his remarks were not intended to be personal and that he earnestly desires a private, fraternal conversation not a public dispute, Jay Z clearly took it all very personal, criticizing Belafonte in the media and on the title track of his new album, “Magna Carta…Holy Grail.”

Jay Z also responded by elaborating his own alternative version of “social responsibility.”

He told the press that “I’m offended…and this is going to sound arrogant, but my presence is charity. Just who I am. Just like Obama. Obama provides hope. Whether he does anything, the hope that he provides for a nation and outside of America is enough.”

On this point, I beg to differ. Preaching hope is not enough to solve our problems, not by a long shot. Neither do charitable donations even comes close to fulfilling basic social needs.

Leaving aside self-serving tax benefits, mostly accruing to the wealthiest donors who itemize a myriad of exemptions, individual handouts, no matter how well-intentioned and admirable, cannot solve deeply rooted problems of our day.

Plus, with a July 28, 2013 AP wire service report indicating four out of five U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, there is absolutely no justification for government to abandon its social contract with the people.

It would be yet another bad example of outsourcing state duties to the profit sector. Fist tap DD.