Matrix Security

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Jesus Family Tomb Believed Found
posted by majestic
on Feb 26, 2007 - 01:55 PM

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New scientific evidence, including DNA analysis conducted at one of the world’s foremost molecular genetics laboratories, as well as studies by leading scholars, suggests a 2,000-year-old Jerusalem tomb could have once held the remains of Jesus of Nazareth and his family.

The findings also suggest that Jesus and Mary Magdalene might have produced a son named Judah.

The DNA findings, alongside statistical conclusions made about the artifacts — originally excavated in 1980 — open a potentially significant chapter in Biblical archaeological history. (Discovery Channel plug for its new documentary from James Cameron)

where I got the story

Florida’s prosecutors are floating a proposal to the Legislature to give them the power to secretly falsify public court records — with a judge’s approval — for undercover law enforcement purposes.

Spurred by Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle, the draft bill would limit the authority to manufacture and plant fake documents in court files to 180 days. But it also provides for an unlimited number of 30-day extensions.

‘’Judges would be very involved in the monitoring. It all has to go through a judge,'’ said Arthur I. ‘’Buddy'’ Jacobs, general counsel for the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association, which supports the bill.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida opposes the idea.

‘’The fundamental problem is that it so goes against our notion of the way our justice system ought to work,'’ said ACLU legislative director Randall Marshall. “How would we ever be able to trust anything in the judicial record knowing that something could be intentionally falsified with a judicial seal of approval?'’

Tallahassee Public Defender Nancy Daniels said the proposal undermines constitutional protections for those charged with crimes.

‘’Even if this is temporary, what if someone testifies during that time and we never get to know they had a criminal conviction? We can’t properly cross-examine to develop their motives for giving testimony,'’ Daniels said.

The bill has been prefiled with the Florida Senate for the legislative session that begins March 6.

A second, longer version of the bill has been prefiled with the House. It would convey authority to falsify any public record to prosecutors, judges, mayors, sheriffs, coroners and other public officers unless they were acting corruptly.

The Miami Herald reported late last year how judges and prosecutors in Miami-Dade had official court records altered and kept secret dockets to disguise what was happening in some court cases.

Two cases were uncovered in which court dockets were altered to cover up the felony convictions of informants, but more are known to exist. Chief Assistant State Attorney Jose Arrojo said authorities have altered the public records of informants for two decades.

It is a crime for anyone in Florida, including judges and prosecutors, to alter or falsify court records or proceedings. Violators can be sent to prison for a year.

STATE INQUIRY

The prosecutors’ push to change Florida criminal statute 839.13 comes amid a statewide inquiry by Supreme Court Chief Justice R. Fred Lewis into the improper hiding of court records. The probe began last summer after The Miami Herald reported that hundreds of civil and criminal cases, mostly in Broward County, were kept hidden on secret dockets.

More recently, Lewis asked the Florida Bar to examine the propriety of falsifying court records and to recommend rule changes by March 1. The high court is scheduled to hear oral arguments on secret and false dockets March 5.

Rundle sent a letter to the chief justice in December defending the practice of altering public court records as occasionally necessary to protect informants and investigations. She also announced that Miami-Dade judges and prosecutors would no longer ‘’affirmatively'’ falsify dockets.

In response, the Florida Public Defenders Association has asked that the practice be banned.

Ed Griffith, a spokesman for the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, said the bill is a priority for the prosecutors’ association, but declined to comment further.

The Senate sponsor is Dave Aronberg, D-Greenacres, vice chairman of the criminal justice committee. The House sponsor is Rep. Julio Robaina, R-South Miami.

‘’Ultimately, this protects the public against the evil of corruption,'’ Aronberg said. “It’s just another tool. How else can you get at a corrupt judge unless you create false pleadings?'’

TWO SCENARIOS

In an e-mail to Aronberg’s office, Ted Mannelli, executive director to the state attorney, wrote that prosecutors have used the technique in “two scenarios.'’

‘’In a very, very, very limited number of cases, perhaps less than five over the last two and one half decades in our circuit, bogus court records have been generated in corruption investigations targeting judges,'’ Mannelli wrote.

The other scenario Mannelli described involves any case in which defendants plead guilty and sentencing is deferred to let informants work undercover.

Mannelli did not say how many times that has happened.

He wrote in the e-mail and confirmed in a phone interview that prosecutors believe Florida’s prohibition on altering court records doesn’t apply to them because they have acted “without corrupt intent.'’

The law, however, makes no such distinction. The Florida Supreme Court also has ruled that a lack of corrupt intent does not excuse the faking of court records.

1997 CASE

Broward County Judge Laran Johnson backdated records in an apparent attempt to keep her caseload low. In 1997, the court removed her from office because “her knowing and repeated acts of falsifying public records strike at the very heart of judicial integrity.'’

Today, prosecutors want the law changed to make sure ‘’these procedures are clearly legal and allow for their continuation,'’ Mannelli said in the email.

WHERE I GOT THE STORY

Image from the movie “Iraq for Sale”Military contractor DynCorp has retained Qorvis Communications for “messaging and image work,” reports O’Dwyer’s. Qorvis is best known as being the PR firm for the Saudi Arabian government. The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, Stuart Bowen, is investigating DynCorp for “accounting problems and unauthorized spending.” At issue is a $43.8 million State Department contract “for a camp that was never used by police trainers,” including $4.2 million that DynCorp billed for “unauthorized work.” Another $36.4 million expenditure, intended “for weapons and equipment, including armored vehicles, body armor and communications equipment … cannot be accounted for,” reports the Dallas Morning News. DynCorp also holds contracts for police training in Afghanistan — and a new $95.6 million U.S. Army contract, “to support and maintain various aircraft fleet,” reports Associated Press.

Where I got the story

Some public-health officials say [drug] industry-funded doctors are ignoring … studies that suggest cold turkey is just as effective or even superior to nicotine patches and other pharmaceuticals over the long run, not to mention cheaper,” reports Kevin Helliker. One example: Dr. Michael Fiore, who headed the panel that developed federal guidelines on smoking cessation, “runs an academic research center funded in part by drug companies that make quit-smoking aids” and has personally “received tens of thousands of dollars in speaking and consulting fees from those companies.” At least eight other members on the federal panel also “had ties to the makers of stop-smoking products,” such as GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer. The panel now revising the guidelines includes seven members with industry ties, including Fiore, who continues to head it. Health researcher Lois Biener pointed out that most smokers “who do quit successfully do so without” drugs. But the bias for patches and drugs is strong. “In November 2006, during the week of the Great American Smokeout, doctors around the country participated in a campaign called ‘Don’t Go Cold Turkey.’ the creator of the campaign was GlaxoSmithKline.”

Where I got the story

Updating Bush’s spin on climate change
The White House is choosing the president’s past words carefully in its portrayal of him as a longtime ally in the fight against global warming.
By Maura Reynolds and James Gerstenzang, Times Staff Writers
February 11, 2007

WASHINGTON — President Bush is widely considered one of the world’s most prominent skeptics of global warming. But to hear White House officials tell it, the world’s view of him is wrong.

In recent days, White House officials have made a special effort to argue that Bush has always been concerned about climate change. Moreover, they say, he has long acknowledged that human activity may be a significant factor.

“Perhaps folks have not taken notice of the fact that this is an administration that’s been keenly committed both to environmentalism and conservationism from the start,” White House spokesman Tony Snow said last week.

Indeed, the climate around global warming in Washington is getting hotter. Members of both parties are scrambling to get ahead of each other — and ahead of public demands — to take measures against the threat.

Apparently concerned that Bush was not perceived as being on the global warming bandwagon, White House officials released an unusual open letter Wednesday contending that “climate change has been a top priority since the president’s first year in office.”

“Beginning in June 2001, President Bush has consistently acknowledged climate change is occurring and humans are contributing to the problem,” said the letter, signed by John Marburger, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

But the record isn’t quite so clear.

The letter cites a June 2001 speech by Bush, quoting him as saying that “we know the surface temperature of the Earth is warming…. There is a natural greenhouse effect that contributes to warming…. And the National Academy of Sciences indicates that the increase is due in large part to human activity.”

But the parts of the speech excised or ignored by the letter give a somewhat different impression. For instance, the citation deletes a sentence that asserts that “concentration of greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have increased substantially since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution” — a time frame suggesting that the contemporary world may have played only a small role.

Moreover, Bush’s mention of the National Academy of Sciences was quickly followed by a sentence that cast doubt on the notion of human contribution to climate change. “Yet the academy’s report tells us that we do not know how much effect natural fluctuations in climate may have had on warming,” Bush said at the time.

“We do not know how fast change will occur or even how some of our actions could impact it,” he added.

Critics see such discrepancies as evidence that the White House is trying to take positions on both sides of the debate. “The president is all over the map,” said Daniel Becker, a global warming expert with the Sierra Club, an environmental group.

The critics argue that Bush soft-pedaled the issue early in his presidency because of pressure from corporate interests, such as oil companies and operators of coal-fired power plants, that oppose regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. They note his frequent statements that technology is the answer to the problem.

“America is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on oil,” Bush said last month in his State of the Union address. “And these technologies will help us be better stewards of the environment, and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change.”

Last week’s release of a United Nations commission report proclaiming that global warming is incontrovertible has put additional pressure on Bush to appear responsive.

However, despite his pledge to devote new funds to research and to support efforts to curb the use of gasoline, critics remain unconvinced that Bush truly intends to confront longtime business allies.

Bush’s latest pronouncements suggest that he is no longer ignoring the problem, Becker said, but also that he is still not committed to acting.

Critics say that Bush has repeatedly pledged to take action on climate change, only to backtrack.

The pattern began, they say, in Saginaw, Mich., on Sept. 29, 2000, during Bush’s first presidential campaign. While calling for greater production of oil and natural gas, and more coal mining to reduce the reliance on foreign oil, he also said that “with the help of Congress, environmental groups and industry, we will require all power plants to meet clean-air standards in order to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and carbon dioxide within a reasonable period of time.”

Six months later, as president, Bush stepped away from that pledge, saying he had decided not to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants out of concern that doing so could increase already high energy prices.

But perhaps the defining moment came in June 2001, when he declared the Kyoto Protocol — the United Nations’ consensus document on climate change — “fatally flawed in fundamental ways” and announced that the United States was withdrawing from the pact. That is the speech his aides are now citing as evidence of his commitment to tackling the problem of global warming.

Kyoto “would have been economically ruinous and would have thrown a lot of people out of work,” Snow said last week. “The president instead has aggressively pursued ways of trying to clean the environment that don’t have to make people lose their jobs, and … at the same time, proceed on all the major areas where pollution is concerned.”

The Kyoto agreement, completed in 1997, proposed carbon dioxide emission caps for the 35 richest countries. President Clinton signed it but never submitted it to the Senate, where it would have faced certain defeat from lawmakers concerned about the protocol’s impact on the U.S. economy and irked that it did little to curb emissions from such large developing nations as China and India.

Bush in effect erased Clinton’s signature, removing the United States from any obligation to meet the pact’s emissions-reduction goals even without Senate ratification.

At the same time, Bush sought to blame global warming on “a natural greenhouse effect,” suggesting it wasn’t primarily caused by human activity. And, though acknowledging that limiting emissions was one way to stabilize concentrations of greenhouse gases, he immediately raised issues with such an approach, saying, “A growing population requires more energy to heat and cool our homes, more gas to drive our cars.”

Whether White House officials succeed in their campaign to paint the president as a leader in battling global warming may, at this point, make little difference. The energy on the issue has moved to Congress, where the Democrats — now the majority in both chambers — and prominent Republicans are pressing ahead with an agenda that may depend little on Bush.

“For years we have been frustrated by the lack of recognition, much less cooperation, on the part of the administration in addressing this issue,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a potential presidential candidate in 2008. “Hopefully, we have now turned the corner, in that there is finally recognition that the debate is over.”

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maura.reynolds@latimes.com

james.gerstenzang@ latimes.com

Times researcher Robin Cochran contributed to this report

Where I got the Story

Philip Morris (PM) is a sophisticated company that runs at least ten years ahead of public health authorities in devising strategies to shape its destiny and preserve its future markets. PM knew that sooner or later push would come to shove and public pressure would make the U.S. government try to regulate its products and corporate behavior, especially after the U.S. Department of Justice found PM guilty of 50 years of conspiracy to defraud the public about the dangers of its products. True to form, in 1999 PM started an internal project called the Regulatory Strategy Project to enact Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations on the company’s own terms. During the project, in 2000, PM generated a “Privileged and Confidential” document listing what the company would require in what it sees as “sensible” FDA regulations.

The document is heavily edited by John Holleran of Philip Morris Management’s Legal Department, and states, “We [PM] support strong but sensible FDA regulation of cigarettes based on five core principles.”

The first principal is that FDA “not infringe on the right of adult Americans to choose to take the risks of smoking” and that FDA be prohibited from banning cigarettes and having the power to alter cigarettes to make smoking unpalatable to smokers. This principal would both preserve a market for cigarettes and assure that cigarettes remain available.

The second requirement is that FDA regulate cigarette design and manufacturing processes “to assure that no additives increase the inherent risks of smoking” and that cigarette ingredients be “fully disclosed to FDA in a framework that protects trade secrets.” The simultaneous requirements of full disclosure and maintaining trade secrets seem contradictory, since “full disclosure” means the absence of secrets.

The third principle says that “The long-range goal of FDA regulation should be to reduce the risks of smoking by encouraging industry innovations,” and that “FDA should set standards that allow products to be certified as ‘reduced risk’ and marketed as ‘reduced risk.’ ” This measure would appear to have a goal of transferring liability for tobacco products onto the FDA.

The 4th principle PM requires that FDA “assure continuous, updated disclosures to smokers as science evolves so that people continue to be fully informed of the risks of smoking.” As it is written, this measure presumes that smokers are already fully informed about the risks of smoking, and places the burden of public health education about tobacco products onto FDA and takes it off the manufacturers.

Two alternatives are listed for the fifth requirement, which nominally claims to address youth smoking:

“5. (Alternative 1) In the area of youth smoking prevention, FDA should set policies that acknowledge the significant changes created by the MSA (Master Settlement Agreement) and, like the MSA, recognize the legitimacy of marketing communications to adult smokers…”

The first alternative further says that, “Marketing to adults…should not be regulated by the FDA.” Instead of addressing youth smoking as the introduction suggests, this principle appears to be aimed at protecting marketing to adults.

The second version of principle #5 says, “FDA should NOT be given a specific regulatory responsibility regarding how cigarettes are marketed and sold. Through the [Master Settlement Agreement], states have a strong legal framework for preventing tobacco marketing to youth. The FDA’s mission is and should be scientific in nature — focusing on the products and its risks.” The document threatens to embark on a Constitutional legal challenge if FDA makes any effort to regulate tobacco marketing. The second version of principle #5 also says, somewhat haughtily, “There is no need for the FDA to use its scarce resources on youth smoking prevention. That is best left to others.”

This paper represents the starting point for laying out the elements of what PM wants in its preferred FDA regulation. Taken as a whole, the document indicates that PM’s goals in pressing for FDA regulation are:

1) To assure a future market for cigarettes,

2) To preserve the company’s ability to make cigarettes that appeal to their market,

3) To safeguard the ability to market cigarettes without restrictions,

4) To keep FDA from engaging in smoking prevention efforts, particularly among youth,

6) To prevent FDA from obtaining any authority to restrict the marketing and promotion of cigarettes,

7) To give FDA the responsibility of fully informing the public about the dangers of tobacco use, rather than the manufacturers,

8) To transfer legal liability for the safety of tobacco products onto the FDA, while allowing cigarette companies to continue to design and market cigarettes as they see fit.

Of course, all the principles PM laid out in this document serve to protect the cigarette business rather than public health. While the major health groups and Philip Morris currently are the only groups that are privy to the text of the recently-introduced Kennedy/Waxman bill to regulate tobacco, it would be prudent when the bill becomes available to see how many of PM’s Core Principles are in it. If they are, the bill will benefit Philip Morris, and be detrimental to effective future regulation of tobacco

Where I got the Story

NewsTarget / Opinion) This is an important health freedom update from Mike Adams. If you believe in your health freedom, and you believe that forced vaccinations of children have gone too far, then you need to know the real story about what’s happening in Texas right now.
Here’s a thumbnail of the CounterThink cartoon we posted on this issue today. Click the thumbnail on the left to see the full cartoon.

The real story on what’s happening now
On Friday, Feb. 2, Texas governor Rick Perry issued an executive order that bypassed the will of the people and the entire Texas legislature, mandating the vaccination of young girls with the HPV vaccine sold by Merck — the same drug company that reportedly gave thousands to Perry’s campaign efforts. The vaccine is absolutely worthless as a medical treatment according to top docs in the alternative health field, and in my opinion, the so-called “science” supporting the vaccine as the only prevention for cervical cancer is an outright fraud.

But the story gets even more interesting when you start connecting the dots. A key Merck lobbyist, a man named Mike Toomey, actually served as the governor’s chief of staff. In other words, a former top power person for the governor now works for Merck, the drug company that gave money to the campaign of the governor who essentially used dictatorial power to mandate, without any public debate whatsoever, the mass vaccination of young girls with a drug that will earn tens of millions of dollars in profits for Merck. Sound suspicious? It should.

The “dirty money connection” seems obvious to many readers who have been following this story, including one who posted, “Only a man, Rick Perry especially, would sign an executive order, bypassing legislation, to inject girls with chemicals made by one of his contributors even though most parents have never seen sufficient information about this vaccine. Perry should be impeached as a threat to the safety of our children.”

The humanitarian cover story
Drug companies are experts at framing their profit pursuits as public health initiatives. “We have to protect the little girls!” they insist, but what’s really going on behind closed doors is a far less altruistic push — the push for profits. Requiring millions of young girls to get these new vaccines just happens to generate enormous profits for Merck. But Merck officials, and even the governor of Texas, would have you believe that has nothing to do with this. Apparently, the fact that Merck will earn obscene profits from this initiative never entered their minds.

Nonsense. If Merck really wants to help these teenage girls, why don’t they pledge to give away all their vaccines free of charge? In fact, if they’re such a humanitarian organization, why don’t they give away all their drugs, and release third world countries from patent protection at the same time? The answer, of course, is because this is all about money, not public health. If Merck was really about “patients first,” they should convert to a 501(c)3 non-profit, stop paying their CEOs $10+ million salaries, and give all their drugs away for free as a gift to humankind, shouldn’t they?

That will never happen, of course, because it really is about the money. The sick care industry is a for-profit industry, and the more people drug companies can target as being sick today — or even possibly someday being sick at some future date that “justifies” treatment right now — the more money they can sock away in the bank. When it comes to money, it seems drug companies will stop at nothing to get more of it, including influencing state officials to mandate vaccine consumption policies that have nothing whatsoever to do with evidence-based medicine or genuine compassion for the health and lives of human beings.

What’s happening in Texas right now is a form of medical tyranny, and it’s only the beginning of what may prove to be a monumental battle between personal freedoms vs. the corporate-controlled State.

We must stop the medical tyranny
If we let Texas get away with this medical tyranny, forcing all young girls to undergo these HPV vaccinations even against their parents’ wishes, more states will follow suit. Merck is right now lobbying hard to pass similar measures in over twenty other states, and if we don’t put a stop to the Texas situation, Merck will feel emboldened and likely urge other governors to make the same declarations in their states, calling it a “public health” measure but actually pocketing the profits from massive sales of these vaccines.

What can you do?

I say we fight the tyranny by exposing it. Today, NewsTarget.com published a CounterThink cartoon that hits this issue hard, exposing the financial connection between Merck and Gov. Perry while illustrating the utter insanity of having young girls line up to get vaccine shots for a disease that can be prevented a hundred other ways. Click here to view the cartoon.

You can take action to spread the word on this issue. POST this cartoon to your website and LINK to our articles on this topic. We give you full permission to reprint this cartoon and forward it to your friends. Expose this medical madness before we all end up prisoners under a system of medical tyranny that turns the bodies of teenage girls into profit centers for Big Pharma! And unlike Merck, we don’t care about the intellectual property royalties on this comic. Make as many copies as you want. Print up T-shirts. Add it to your book. Use it as you wish, and you don’t owe me a dime. Why? Because I actually do care about my fellow human beings and I’m here to help stop the medical madness sweeping America today.

Speak up now or surrender your health freedoms forever
You see, if we don’t stand up to this kind of medical tyranny, it will only get worse. This debate is not merely about one vaccine, it’s about surrendering your health freedom to a medical system that is owned and controlled by Big Pharma. Drug companies practically run the FDA, the EPA and even control the FTC (when was the last time the FTC investigated and prosecuted drug company monopolies?). Drug companies influence the DEA to keep their own drugs legal while the exact same “street” drugs are illegal. They own our elected officials, almost all of which accepted at least some money from drug companies in their last election campaign. Drug companies also own the mainstream media by propping up television networks, cable networks, newspapers, magazines and websites with literally billions of dollars in advertising. On top of that, drug companies heavily influence the medical journals and medical schools, and have effectively limited the entire conventional medical industry to a “drugs and surgery” approach to health, practically censoring nutritional knowledge out of existence.

Given this environment, is anyone supposed to believe we will see anything resembling honest debate or genuine science about this HPV vaccine? The entire industry, including drug companies, doctors, medical journals and the mainstream media, is twisting the facts to create the illusion that these vaccines are both safe and effective when, in reality, they are probably neither. Nor are they necessary. Cervical cancer is prevented in a hundred other ways, including adequate sunlight exposure and vitamin D consumption, supplementation with probiotics, adequate intake of selenium and zinc, increased consumption of trace minerals and iodine, regular physical exercise and many other safe, natural, non-patented strategies.

America is being hoodwinked over the HPV vaccine. To call this anything resembling genuine public health policy is an absolute joke. It’s really just a grand moneymaking scheme that exploits the bodies of young girls, marketed to look like compassionate health care. Supporters of this policy are shameless, ignorant and devious in framing their nonsensical arguments using carefully-chosen words and phrases that make them seem like they’re delivering a cancer cure from God. But in reality, mandatory HPV vaccines are a deal with the devil.

Consider this: With all the drugs being prescribed, all the toxic chemicals being consumed, and all the diseases now ravaging America — a country with the highest rates of degenerative disease in the world — does anybody really thing that injecting one more drug is the answer? You’d have to be crazy to think so.

where I got the story

THE US wants the world’s scientists to develop technology to block sunlight as a last-ditch way to halt global warming.

It says research into techniques such as giant mirrors in space or reflective dust pumped into the atmosphere would be “important insurance” against rising emissions, and has lobbied for such a strategy to be recommended by a UN report on climate change, the first part of which is due out on Friday).

The US has also attempted to steer the UN report, prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), away from conclusions that would support a new worldwide climate treaty based on binding targets to reduce emissions. It has demanded a draft of the report be changed to emphasise the benefits of voluntary agreements and to include criticisms of the Kyoto Protocol, which the US opposes.

The final report, written by experts from across the world, will underpin international negotiations to devise an emissions treaty to succeed Kyoto, the first phase of which expires in 2012. World governments were given a draft of the report last year and invited to comment.

The US response says the idea of interfering with sunlight should be included in the summary for policymakers, the prominent chapter at the front of each panel report. It says: “Modifying solar radiance may be an important strategy if mitigation of emissions fails. Doing the R&D to estimate the consequences of applying such a strategy is important insurance that should be taken out. This is a very important possibility that should be considered.”

Scientists have previously estimated that reflecting less than 1 per cent of sunlight back into space could compensate for the warming generated by all greenhouse gases emitted since the industrial revolution. Possible techniques include putting a giant screen into orbit, thousands of tiny, shiny balloons, or microscopic sulfate droplets pumped into the high atmosphere to mimic the cooling effects of a volcanic eruption. The IPCC draft said such ideas were “speculative, uncosted and with potential unknown side-effects”.

The US submission complains the draft report is “Kyoto-centric” and it wants to include the work of economists who have reported “the degree to which the Kyoto framework is found wanting”.

It also complains that overall “the report tends to overstate or focus on the negative effects of climate change”. It also wants more emphasis on responsibilities of the developing world.

THE US wants the world’s scientists to develop technology to block sunlight as a last-ditch way to halt global warming.

It says research into techniques such as giant mirrors in space or reflective dust pumped into the atmosphere would be “important insurance” against rising emissions, and has lobbied for such a strategy to be recommended by a UN report on climate change, the first part of which is due out on Friday).

The US has also attempted to steer the UN report, prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), away from conclusions that would support a new worldwide climate treaty based on binding targets to reduce emissions. It has demanded a draft of the report be changed to emphasise the benefits of voluntary agreements and to include criticisms of the Kyoto Protocol, which the US opposes.

The final report, written by experts from across the world, will underpin international negotiations to devise an emissions treaty to succeed Kyoto, the first phase of which expires in 2012. World governments were given a draft of the report last year and invited to comment.

The US response says the idea of interfering with sunlight should be included in the summary for policymakers, the prominent chapter at the front of each panel report. It says: “Modifying solar radiance may be an important strategy if mitigation of emissions fails. Doing the R&D to estimate the consequences of applying such a strategy is important insurance that should be taken out. This is a very important possibility that should be considered.”

Scientists have previously estimated that reflecting less than 1 per cent of sunlight back into space could compensate for the warming generated by all greenhouse gases emitted since the industrial revolution. Possible techniques include putting a giant screen into orbit, thousands of tiny, shiny balloons, or microscopic sulfate droplets pumped into the high atmosphere to mimic the cooling effects of a volcanic eruption. The IPCC draft said such ideas were “speculative, uncosted and with potential unknown side-effects”.

The US submission complains the draft report is “Kyoto-centric” and it wants to include the work of economists who have reported “the degree to which the Kyoto framework is found wanting”.

It also complains that overall “the report tends to overstate or focus on the negative effects of climate change”. It also wants more emphasis on responsibilities of the developing world.

THE US wants the world’s scientists to develop technology to block sunlight as a last-ditch way to halt global warming.

It says research into techniques such as giant mirrors in space or reflective dust pumped into the atmosphere would be “important insurance” against rising emissions, and has lobbied for such a strategy to be recommended by a UN report on climate change, the first part of which is due out on Friday).

The US has also attempted to steer the UN report, prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), away from conclusions that would support a new worldwide climate treaty based on binding targets to reduce emissions. It has demanded a draft of the report be changed to emphasise the benefits of voluntary agreements and to include criticisms of the Kyoto Protocol, which the US opposes.

The final report, written by experts from across the world, will underpin international negotiations to devise an emissions treaty to succeed Kyoto, the first phase of which expires in 2012. World governments were given a draft of the report last year and invited to comment.

The US response says the idea of interfering with sunlight should be included in the summary for policymakers, the prominent chapter at the front of each panel report. It says: “Modifying solar radiance may be an important strategy if mitigation of emissions fails. Doing the R&D to estimate the consequences of applying such a strategy is important insurance that should be taken out. This is a very important possibility that should be considered.”

Scientists have previously estimated that reflecting less than 1 per cent of sunlight back into space could compensate for the warming generated by all greenhouse gases emitted since the industrial revolution. Possible techniques include putting a giant screen into orbit, thousands of tiny, shiny balloons, or microscopic sulfate droplets pumped into the high atmosphere to mimic the cooling effects of a volcanic eruption. The IPCC draft said such ideas were “speculative, uncosted and with potential unknown side-effects”.

The US submission complains the draft report is “Kyoto-centric” and it wants to include the work of economists who have reported “the degree to which the Kyoto framework is found wanting”.

It also complains that overall “the report tends to overstate or focus on the negative effects of climate change”. It also wants more emphasis on responsibilities of the developing world.

But Professor Stephen Schneider, a climate consultant to the US government for more than 30 years and a key figure in the panel process for more than a decade, says the world is “playing Russian roulette” with its future by responding too slowly to climate change.

The panel’s draft report shows projections for average global temperature rise from 1990 to 2100 will expand slightly, with a new range of one to 6.3 degrees. The 2001 report’s range was 1.4 to 5.8 degrees.

Professor Schneider said he was concerned the increase was more likely to be three degrees or higher, with a 10 per cent chance of a six-degree rise by the end of the century.

“Hell, we buy fire insurance based on a 1 per cent chance,” he said. “If we’re going to be risk averse … we cannot dismiss the possibility of potentially catastrophic outliers and that includes Greenland and West Antarctica [ice sheets breaking up], massive species extinctions, intensified hurricanes and all those things. “There’s at least a 10 per cent chance of that. And that to me for a society is too high a risk … My value judgement when you’re talking about planetary life support systems is that 10 per cent, my God, that’s Russian roulette with a Luger.”

WHERE I GOT THE STORY

The FBI appears to have adopted an invasive Internet surveillance technique that collects far more data on innocent Americans than previously has been disclosed.

Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing, agents conducting investigations appear to be assembling the activities of thousands of Internet users at a time into massive databases, according to current and former officials. That database can subsequently be queried for names, e-mail addresses or keywords.

Such a technique is broader and potentially more intrusive than the FBI’s Carnivore surveillance system, later renamed DCS1000. It raises concerns similar to those stirred by widespread Internet monitoring that the National Security Agency is said to have done, according to documents that have surfaced in one federal lawsuit, and may stretch the bounds of what’s legally permissible.

Call it the vacuum-cleaner approach. It’s employed when police have obtained a court order and an Internet service provider can’t “isolate the particular person or IP address” because of technical constraints, says Paul Ohm, a former trial attorney at the Justice Department’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section. (An Internet Protocol address is a series of digits that can identify an individual computer.)

That kind of full-pipe surveillance can record all Internet traffic, including Web browsing–or, optionally, only certain subsets such as all e-mail messages flowing through the network. Interception typically takes place inside an Internet provider’s network at the junction point of a router or network switch.

The technique came to light at the Search & Seizure in the Digital Age symposium held at Stanford University’s law school on Friday. Ohm, who is now a law professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Richard Downing, a CCIPS assistant deputy chief, discussed it during the symposium.

In a telephone conversation afterward, Ohm said that full-pipe recording has become federal agents’ default method for Internet surveillance. “You collect wherever you can on the (network) segment,” he said. “If it happens to be the segment that has a lot of IP addresses, you don’t throw away the other IP addresses. You do that after the fact.”

“You intercept first and you use whatever filtering, data mining to get at the information about the person you’re trying to monitor,” he added.

On Monday, a Justice Department representative would not immediately answer questions about this kind of surveillance technique. (Late Tuesday, the Justice Department responded with a statement taking issue with this description of the FBI’s surveillance practices.)

“What they’re doing is even worse than Carnivore,” said Kevin Bankston, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who attended the Stanford event. “What they’re doing is intercepting everyone and then choosing their targets.”

When the FBI announced two years ago it had abandoned Carnivore, news reports said that the bureau would increasingly rely on Internet providers to conduct the surveillance and reimburse them for costs. While Carnivore was the subject of congressional scrutiny and outside audits, the FBI’s current Internet eavesdropping techniques have received little attention.

Carnivore apparently did not perform full-pipe recording. A technical report (PDF: “Independent Technical Review of the Carnivore System”) from December 2000 prepared for the Justice Department said that Carnivore “accumulates no data other than that which passes its filters” and that it saves packets “for later analysis only after they are positively linked by the filter settings to a target.”

Complying with the law

One reason why the full-pipe technique raises novel legal questions is that under federal law, the FBI must perform what’s called “minimization.”

Federal law says that agents must “minimize the interception of communications not otherwise subject to interception” and keep the supervising judge informed of what’s happening. Minimization is designed to provide at least a modicum of privacy by limiting police eavesdropping on innocuous conversations.

Prosecutors routinely hold presurveillance “minimization meetings” with investigators to discuss ground rules. Common investigatory rules permit agents to listen in on a phone call for two minutes at a time, with at least one minute elapsing between the spot-monitoring sessions.

That section of federal law mentions only real-time interception–and does not explicitly authorize the creation of a database with information on thousands of innocent targets.

But a nearby sentence adds: “In the event the intercepted communication is in a code or foreign language, and an expert in that foreign language or code is not reasonably available during the interception period, minimization may be accomplished as soon as practicable after such interception.”

Downing, the assistant deputy chief at the Justice Department’s computer crime section, pointed to that language on Friday. Because digital communications amount to a foreign language or code, he said, federal agents are legally permitted to record everything and sort through it later. (Downing stressed that he was not speaking on behalf of the Justice Department.)

“Take a look at the legislative history from the mid ’90s,” Downing said. “It’s pretty clear from that that Congress very much intended it to apply to electronic types of wiretapping.”

EFF’s Bankston disagrees. He said that the FBI is “collecting and apparently storing indefinitely the communications of thousands–if not hundreds of thousands–of innocent Americans in violation of the Wiretap Act and the 4th Amendment to the Constitution.”

Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C., said a reasonable approach would be to require that federal agents only receive information that’s explicitly permitted by the court order. “The obligation should be on both the (Internet provider) and the government to make sure that only the information responsive to the warrant is disclosed to the government,” he said.

Courts have been wrestling with minimization requirements for over a generation. In a 1978 Supreme Court decision, Scott v. United States, the justices upheld police wiretaps of people suspected of selling illegal drugs.

But in his majority opinion, Justice William Rehnquist said that broad monitoring to nab one suspect might go too far. “If the agents are permitted to tap a public telephone because one individual is thought to be placing bets over the phone, substantial doubts as to minimization may arise if the agents listen to every call which goes out over that phone regardless of who places the call,” he wrote.

Another unanswered question is whether a database of recorded Internet communications can legally be mined for information about unrelated criminal offenses such as drug use, copyright infringement or tax crimes. One 1978 case, U.S. v. Pine, said that investigators could continue to listen in on a telephone line when other illegal activities–not specified in the original wiretap order–were being discussed. Those discussions could then be used against a defendant in a criminal prosecution.

Ohm, the former Justice Department attorney who presented a paper on the Fourth Amendment, said he has doubts about the constitutionality of full-pipe recording. “The question that’s interesting, although I don’t know whether it’s so clear, is whether this is illegal, whether it’s constitutional,” he said. “Is Congress even aware they’re doing this? I don’t know the answers.”

Where I got the story

Wednesday, January 31, 2007
On this day: CASSIOPEDIA History Channel Daily Bleed IMDB NY Times How To
Bloggers Beware!

It should not be much of a surprise for those who are doing their very best to oppose the Psychopath Powers That Be that they would be seeking ways to limit or totally eliminate the informations that bloggers and Alt. website people are getting out to the public. This is practically the only avenue left for disseminating the truth about what is really going on in the world and who is actually responsible for it.

Following is an article found at Signs of the Times regarding the continuing attempt by government and military to better “control” these information sources and/or disseminate their propaganda with little or no interference or contradictions by any of us.

US plans to ‘fight the net’ revealed - Bloggers and Netizens beware

By Adam Brookes
BBC
Tue, 30 Jan 2007 15:10 EST

A newly declassified document gives a fascinating glimpse into the US military’s plans for “information operations” - from psychological operations, to attacks on hostile computer networks.

Bloggers beware.

As the world turns networked, the Pentagon is calculating the military opportunities that computer networks, wireless technologies and the modern media offer.

From influencing public opinion through new media to designing “computer network attack” weapons, the US military is learning to fight an electronic war.

The declassified document is called “Information Operations Roadmap”. It was obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University using the Freedom of Information Act.

Officials in the Pentagon wrote it in 2003. The Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, signed it.

The “roadmap” calls for a far-reaching overhaul of the military’s ability to conduct information operations and electronic warfare. And, in some detail, it makes recommendations for how the US armed forces should think about this new, virtual warfare.

The document says that information is “critical to military success”. Computer and telecommunications networks are of vital operational importance.

Propaganda

The operations described in the document include a surprising range of military activities: public affairs officers who brief journalists, psychological operations troops who try to manipulate the thoughts and beliefs of an enemy, computer network attack specialists who seek to destroy enemy networks.

All these are engaged in information operations.

Perhaps the most startling aspect of the roadmap is its acknowledgement that information put out as part of the military’s psychological operations, or Psyops, is finding its way onto the computer and television screens of ordinary Americans.

“Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and Psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic audience,” it reads.

“Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public,” it goes on.

The document’s authors acknowledge that American news media should not unwittingly broadcast military propaganda. “Specific boundaries should be established,” they write. But they don’t seem to explain how.

“In this day and age it is impossible to prevent stories that are fed abroad as part of psychological operations propaganda from blowing back into the United States - even though they were directed abroad,” says Kristin Adair of the National Security Archive.

Credibility problem

Public awareness of the US military’s information operations is low, but it’s growing - thanks to some operational clumsiness.

Late last year, it emerged that the Pentagon had paid a private company, the Lincoln Group, to plant hundreds of stories in Iraqi newspapers. The stories - all supportive of US policy - were written by military personnel and then placed in Iraqi publications.

And websites that appeared to be information sites on the politics of Africa and the Balkans were found to be run by the Pentagon.

But the true extent of the Pentagon’s information operations, how they work, who they’re aimed at, and at what point they turn from informing the public to influencing populations, is far from clear.

The roadmap, however, gives a flavour of what the US military is up to - and the grand scale on which it’s thinking.

It reveals that Psyops personnel “support” the American government’s international broadcasting. It singles out TV Marti - a station which broadcasts to Cuba - as receiving such support.

It recommends that a global website be established that supports America’s strategic objectives. But no American diplomats here, thank you. The website would use content from “third parties with greater credibility to foreign audiences than US officials”.

It also recommends that Psyops personnel should consider a range of technologies to disseminate propaganda in enemy territory: unmanned aerial vehicles, “miniaturized, scatterable public address systems”, wireless devices, cellular phones and the internet.

‘Fight the net’

When it describes plans for electronic warfare, or EW, the document takes on an extraordinary tone.

It seems to see the internet as being equivalent to an enemy weapons system.

“Strategy should be based on the premise that the Department [of Defense] will ‘fight the net’ as it would an enemy weapons system,” it reads.

The slogan “fight the net” appears several times throughout the roadmap.

The authors warn that US networks are very vulnerable to attack by hackers, enemies seeking to disable them, or spies looking for intelligence.

“Networks are growing faster than we can defend them… Attack sophistication is increasing… Number of events is increasing.”

US digital ambition

And, in a grand finale, the document recommends that the United States should seek the ability to “provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum”.

US forces should be able to “disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of globally emerging communications systems, sensors, and weapons systems dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum”.

Consider that for a moment.

The US military seeks the capability to knock out every telephone, every networked computer, every radar system on the planet.

Are these plans the pipe dreams of self-aggrandising bureaucrats? Or are they real?

The fact that the “Information Operations Roadmap” is approved by the Secretary of Defense suggests that these plans are taken very seriously indeed in the Pentagon.

And that the scale and grandeur of the digital revolution is matched only by the US military’s ambitions for it.

Where I got the story

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) - Proponents of same-sex marriage have introduced an initiative that would put a whole new twist on traditional unions between men and women: It would require heterosexual couples to have kids within three years or else have their marriages annulled.

Initiative 957 was filed by the Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance, which was formed last summer after the state Supreme Court upheld Washington’s ban on same-sex marriage. In that 5-4 ruling, the court found that state lawmakers were justified in passing the 1998 Defense of Marriage Act, which restricts marriage to unions between a man and woman.

Under I-957, marriage would be limited to men and women who are able to have children. Couples would be required to prove they can have children to get a marriage license, and if they did not have children within three years, their marriages would be subject to annulment.

All other marriages would be defined as “unrecognized” and people in them would be ineligible to receive any marriage benefits.

“Absurd? Very,” the group says on its Web site, which adds it is planning two more initiatives involving marriage and procreation. “But there is a rational basis for this absurdity. By floating the initiatives, we hope to prompt discussion about the many misguided assumptions” underlying the Supreme Court’s ruling.

Gregory Gadow, who filed I-957 last month, said the three-year timeframe was arbitrary.

“We did toy with the idea of (requiring) procreation before marriage,” he said. “We didn’t want to piss off the fundamentalists too much.”

Gadow said that if the group’s initiatives were passed, the Supreme Court would be forced to strike them down as unconstitutional, which he believes would weaken the original ruling upholding the Defense of Marriage Act.

But he said he highly doubts any of the initiatives will pass, and that they are being done “in the spirit of political street theater.”

“Our intention is not to actually put this into law,” he said. “All we want is to get this on the ballot and cause people to talk about it.”

The group’s Web site gives another reason: “And at the very least, it should be good fun to see the social conservatives who have long screamed that marriage exists for the sole purpose of procreation be forced to choke on their own rhetoric.”

Cheryl Haskins, executive director of Allies for Marriage & Children, agreed with Gadow’s group on at least one point about the initiative: “It’s absurd,” she said.

Haskins said opponents of same-sex marriage “have never said that the sole purpose of marriage is procreation.”

“When we talk about defending the institution of marriage, we’re talking about the union of a man and a woman,” she said. “Some of those unions produce children and some of them don’t.”

With I-957, “you’re dictating people’s choices in a way that is utterly ridiculous,” she said.

However, Gadow noted that the Supreme Court’s majority decision specifically mentioned procreation throughout.

The opinion written by Justice Barbara Madsen concluded that “limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples furthers the state’s interests in procreation and encouraging families with a mother and father and children biologically related to both.”

Gadow said the argument is unfair when you’re dealing with same-sex couples who are unable to have children together.

“What we are trying to do is display the discrimination that is at the heart of last year’s ruling,” he said.

Even the Legislature’s most prominent proponent of same-sex marriage, Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, said he thought the initiative was misguided. While the “absurdity” of the Supreme Court decision should be discussed, that discussion needs to take place in the Legislature, he said.

“I don’t think the initiative process should be used to determine the rights and protections of marriage,” he said.

Murray, one of five openly gay lawmakers in the Legislature, is sponsoring a measure that would create domestic partnerships for same-sex couples and another to allow same-sex marriage. The domestic partnership measure has passed out of committee and a vote on the Senate floor could come within weeks.

The sponsor of the same-sex marriage measure in the House, Rep. Jamie Pedersen, said he supported the effort “to draw attention to the hypocrisy of some of those who oppose marriage equality” but opposed the initiative.

“For the same reason I don’t think same-sex couples should be excluded from marriage, I don’t think heterosexual married couples should be forced to procreate,” said Pedersen, D-Seattle.

Supporters of I-957 must gather at least 224,800 valid signatures by July 6 to put it on the November ballot.

The measure’s backers said the two additional initiatives they plan would prohibit divorce or separation when a married couple has children, and would make having a child together the equivalent of marriage.

Gadow said his goal is to raise $300,000 to spend on advertising on the first initiative.

WHERE I GOT THE STORY

In this state we would think of our goverment spending as from norm as we expect. But, what really happened on Boston is far from normal.

The code name for the massive road project that costed tax payers 14.6 billion was named the big dig.
It was started in 1991, was the most expensive highway project in U.S. history. It buried Interstate 93 beneath downtown and extended the Massachusetts Turnpike to the airport. It also gained nationwide notoriety for its soaring costs, years of traffic snarls, the criminal investigation into the concrete suppliers and problems with leaks that sprouted in another of the Big Dig tunnels. Was the most expenise project that all tax payers from all 50 states had to endure. Because on Wednesday investigators looked into the fatal collapse of concrete ceiling slabs and found 60 more questionable areas inside the same tunnel that was near the entrance to the Ted Williams Tunnel, which runs under Boston Harbor to Logan International Airport. The Twelve tons of concrete ceiling panels in the tunnel crashed down late Monday night, crushing a car and killing a 38-year-old woman inside. Her husband barely escaped by crawling through a window.

U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan, whose office has been conducting a yearlong investigation into problems with the massive highway project, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that his investigators are turning their attention to whether contractors involved in that part of the system delivered the goods and services they promised.
“We obviously want to identify any public safety risks … but also to ensure that what the government paid for — through tax dollars — is in fact what was delivered,” Sullivan said.

The woman’s death could also lead to charges of negligent homicide, said Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly, who is treating the section of eastbound Interstate 90, near the entrance of a connector tunnel to Logan Airport, as a crime scene.

Massachusetts Turnpike Authority Chairman Matthew Amorello said a steel “tieback” that held a 40-foot section of ceiling panels gave way, letting the concrete slabs loose as the car drove beneath it.

He and Michael Lewis, project director for the Big Dig, told reporters Wednesday that inspectors had also discovered some bolts were starting to come from that tunnel’s concrete ceiling, and that in other locations there were gaps between the ceiling and a metal plate holding the 3-ton panels in place.
•
Massachusetts Treats Big Dig Tunnel Where Woman Was Killed as Crime Scene•Romney Vows to Take Action After Woman Is Killed by Big Dig Ceiling Panels•Prosecutor: Big Dig Indictment ‘Just Scratched the Surface’•Six Arrested in Probe of Boston’s Big Dig Highway Project•Last Major Part of ‘Big Dig’ Roadway Opens•House Panel Probes ‘Big Dig’ Tunnel Leaks•Federal Report: Big Dig Tunnels Are Safe•Big Dig Wrecks Political Ambitions•Engineer: Big Dig a Big Danger
The head of the agency overseeing Boston’s Big Dig highway project ordered a review of the entire metro highway system Wednesday after investigators looking into the fatal collapse of concrete ceiling slabs found 60 more questionable areas inside the same tunnel.

Initial inspections revealed dozens of signs of bolts loosening and other potential failures in the eastbound connector tunnel, part of the main route to Boston’s Logan Airport, Turnpike Authority officials and the Big Dig project manager said.

There were also trouble spots in the tunnel’s westbound lanes, they said.

“We’re evaluating each of these individual sites,” Massachusetts Turnpike Authority Chairman Matthew Amorello said. He added, however, “The tunnel system is safe.”

There had been plans to reopen the connector tunnel Wednesday, but Amorello said it would remain closed indefinitely to ensure motorists’ safety.

Twelve tons of concrete ceiling panels in the tunnel crashed down late Monday night, crushing a car and killing a 38-year-old woman inside. Her husband barely escaped by crawling through a window.

U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan, whose office has been conducting a yearlong investigation into problems with the massive highway project, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that his investigators are turning their attention to whether contractors involved in that part of the system delivered the goods and services they promised.

“We obviously want to identify any public safety risks … but also to ensure that what the government paid for — through tax dollars — is in fact what was delivered,” Sullivan said.

The woman’s death could also lead to charges of negligent homicide, said Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly, who is treating the section of eastbound Interstate 90, near the entrance of a connector tunnel to Logan Airport, as a crime scene.

Amorello has said a steel “tieback” that held a 40-foot section of ceiling panels gave way, letting the concrete slabs loose as the car drove beneath it.

He and Michael Lewis, project director for the Big Dig, told reporters Wednesday that inspectors had also discovered some bolts were starting to come from that tunnel’s concrete ceiling, and that in other locations there were gaps between the ceiling and a metal plate holding the 3-ton panels in place.

The systemwide evaluation ordered Wednesday covers the entire metro Boston highway system — roadways, bridges, tunnels and even areas that weren’t part of the $14.6 billion Big Dig project.

The Big Dig, started in 1991, was the most expensive highway project in U.S. history. It buried Interstate 93 beneath downtown and extended the Massachusetts Turnpike to the airport. It also gained nationwide notoriety for its soaring costs, years of traffic snarls, the criminal investigation into the concrete suppliers and problems with leaks that sprouted in another of the Big Dig tunnels.

Sullivan’s office brought the first criminal charges related to the Big Dig project in May, accusing six men who worked for its largest concrete supplier of falsifying records to hide the inferior quality concrete.

The section of tunnel ceiling that collapsed was near the entrance to the Ted Williams Tunnel, which runs under Boston Harbor to the airport. That segment of the tunnel was completed in 1995-96, but the ceiling panels were installed in 1999.

Modern Continental, the contractor of that portion of the project, issued a statement saying its work “fully complied with the plans and specifications provided by the Central Artery Tunnel Project. In addition, the work was inspected and approved by the Central Artery Tunnel Project.”

Andrew Paven, a spokesman for project manager Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, said the company was working with the Turnpike Authority to pinpoint the cause and to prevent future accidents.

Angel Del Valle, 46, and his wife Milena were driving to the airport Monday night to pick up relatives when four of the slabs dropped on their car just after 11 p.m.

“It was like a bomb,” Angel Del Valle, who was able to climb out a window to safety, told the Boston Herald. “Everything was falling. It was too fast. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t do anything.”

Milena was on the passenger side, which bore the brunt of the damage. There was no way to pry open the passenger side door, he said. This wa so bad that debris Still littered the stretch of Interstate 90, which authorities hoped to reopen Wednesday. They removed about 30 ceiling slabs from the accident site and were checking at least 17 other areas with similar “tiebacks,” which officials believe failed to hold the ceiling panels in place in the tunnel Monday night.

My opinion on all this is that when you put people in charge of doing such a big project and take from 1970 to 1990’s to start you should look at what is going to happen and what is go to become of this ie the golf cost region of our fare country. people told mass. that this is not a good idea and should not have ben done in the first place when will people in goverment quit paying the kick backs and worring about jobs and worry more about plubic safty in the instenance of highway contrstuction. Is that all goverment is about money and how to make more of it and how to spend less in protection for the people?

Where I got the story

where Fox News Got their idea for the story

Be afraid, be very afraid!

Rootkits are a new generation of powerful system-monitoring programs.

Security researchers are warning about a new generation of powerful system-monitoring programs, or “rootkits,” that are almost impossible to detect using current security products and could pose a serious risk to corporations and individuals.

The word “rootkit” came to public awareness in the 2005 Sony CD copy protection controversy, in which Sony BMG music CDs placed a rootkit on Microsoft Windows PCs.

What is a rootkit?
A rootkit is a piece of software that can be installed and hidden on your computer without your knowledge. It may be included in a software package to take advantage of a vulnerability on your computer.

Why are they considered threats?
Rootkits are hidden, so you won’t know that they are there. Also root kits are intended to hide other code such as spyware or bots, or conceal processes running in Windows systems, conceal files or system data, and help an intruder maintain access to a system without the user’s knowledge. Rootkits are known to exist for a variety of operating systems such as Linux, Solaris and versions of Microsoft Windows. A computer with a rootkit on it is called a rooted computer. Not all rootkits are malicious, but most hide malicious activities. Attackers may be able to access information, monitor your actions, modify programs, or perform other functions on your computer without being detected.

There are a lot of companies now using root kits to do damage to computers. Sony was just the first to get caught.

One easy way to find out if your system has root kits is to follow the suggestions of TechTV and TwitTV’s Leo Laporte “the tech guy”. Leo said on this week in tech that a good tool to use to see if you have rootkits on your computer is to use SysInternals.com’s rootkit revealer.

What do I do if I find rootkits installed on my computer?

Good question.

Microsoft Says Recovery from Malware Becoming Impossible
By Ryan Naraine of baselinemag.com

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla.—In a rare discussion on the severity of the Windows malware scourge, a Microsoft security official said businesses should consider investing in an automated process to wipe hard drives and reinstall operating systems as a practical way to recover from malware infestation.

“When you are dealing with rootkits and some advanced spyware programs, the only solution is to rebuild from scratch. In some cases, there really is no way to recover without nuking the systems from orbit,” Mike Danseglio, program manager in the Security Solutions group at Microsoft, said in a presentation at the InfoSec World conference here.

Copyrited By Http://www.reciprocity-Failuer.com/Yahoosucks.html
ARTICLE

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Times staff writers Don Lee in Shanghai and Chris Gaither in San Francisco contributed to this report.