Ryan Gallagher - Governments Turn to Hacking Techniques for Surveillance of Citizens

Published on Tuesday, November 1, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/nov/01/governments-hacking-techniques-surveillance

Surveillance firms that recently attended a US conference are being accused of offering their services to repressive regimes

by Ryan Gallagher

In a luxury Washington, DC, hotel last month, governments from around the world gathered to discuss surveillance technology they would rather you did not know about. The annual Intelligence Support Systems (ISS) World Americas conference is a mecca for representatives from intelligence agencies and law enforcement. But to the media or members of the public, it is strictly off limits.

Italy's Hacking Team offers 'an offensive solution for cyber investigations' Gone are the days when mere telephone wiretaps satisfied authorities' intelligence needs. Behind the cloak of secrecy at the ISS World conference, tips are shared about the latest advanced "lawful interception" methods used to spy on citizens – computer hacking, covert bugging and GPS tracking. Smartphones, email, instant message services and free chat services such as Skype have revolutionised communication. This has been matched by the development of increasingly sophisticated surveillance technology.

Among the pioneers is Hampshire-based Gamma International, a core ISS World sponsor. In April, Gamma made headlines when Egyptian activists raided state security offices in Cairo and found documents revealing Gamma had in 2010 offered Hosni Mubarak's regime spy technology named FinFisher. The "IT intrusion" solutions offered by Gamma would have enabled authorities to infect targeted computers with a spyware virus so they could covertly monitor Skype conversations and other communications.

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Greg Palast - GOLDMAN SUX? Giant Squid Strikes Again at Occupy Wall Street's Credit Union

http://www.opednews.com/articles/GOLDMAN-SUX-Giant-Squid-S-by-Greg-Palast-111031-449.html

October 31, 2011 By Greg Palast What have I done?  There's one angry squid out there. Last week, Democracy Now! and The Guardian ran our story about Goldman Sachs yanking financial support from a community credit union for honoring one of its largest customers.  The customer:  Occupy Wall Street. Our report so enraged Goldman that, within days, it doubled down on its attack on the little community bank. Goldman had already demanded the return of its $5,000 payment to the Lower East Side Peoples Federal Credit Union.  Now, sources say, the trillion-dollar Wall Street mega-bank sent the following message to the not-for-profit community bank:  "You will never get a dime from any bank ever again." About those "dimes" Goldman is taking away:  They come from you and me, the taxpayers who put up billions into the Troubled Asset Recovery Plan (TARP), usually known as the Bank Bail-Out Fund. For Goldman to suck its $10 billion from the TARP trough, Goldman had to change from investment bank to commercial bank. This change makes Goldman subject to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and requires it by law to pay back a notable portion in funds for low-income communities, abandoned by the big banks.

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Greg Palast - Goldman Attacks Occupy Wall Street's Non-Profit Bank

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Sachs-Fiend--Goldman-Atta-by-Greg-Palast-111027-307.html

October 27, 2011 By Greg Palast Sachs Fiend: Goldman Attacks Occupy Wall Street's Non-Profit Bank When Goldman got huffy at a credit union honouring OWS and pulled its anniversary dinner funding, much more was at stake   Exclusive for The Guardian by Greg Palast , the author of Vultures' Picnic : In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates, and High-Finance Carnivores. Out November 14.  With Arun Gupta, founding editor of The Occupied Wall Street Journal.  [Zuccotti Park, Wall Street, New York.]  Mega-bank Goldman Sachs (assets $933 billion), has declared war on one of the smallest banks in New York (assets $30 million), the customer-owned community bank that happens to also be the banker for Friends of Liberty Plaza, Inc, also known as Occupy Wall Street. And you thought Goldman didn't care.

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Ari Berman - How the Austerity Class Rules Washington

By Ari Berman, The Nation

Posted on October 31, 2011, Printed on November 1, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152918/how_the_austerity_class_rules_washington

In September the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a bipartisan deficit-hawk group based at the New America Foundation, held a high-profile symposium urging the Congressional “supercommittee” to “go big” and approve a $4 trillion deficit reduction plan over the next decade, which is well beyond its $1.2 trillion mandate. The hearing began with an alarming video of top policy-makers describing the national debt as “the most serious threat that this country has ever had” (Alan Simpson) and “a threat to the whole idea of self-government” (Mitch Daniels). If the debt continues to rise, predicted former New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici, there would be “strikes, riots, who knows what?” A looming fiscal crisis was portrayed as being just around the corner.

The event spotlighted a central paradox in American politics over the past two years: how, in the midst of a massive unemployment crisis—when it’s painfully obvious that not enough jobs are being created and the public overwhelmingly wants policy-makers to focus on creating them—did the deficit emerge as the most pressing issue in the country? And why, when the global evidence clearly indicates that austerity measures will raise unemployment and hinder, not accelerate, growth, do advocates of austerity retain such distinction today?

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Charles Onians - Palestinians Admitted as Full Member to UNESCO; US Cuts Funding in Response

By Charles Onians, Agence France Presse

Posted on October 31, 2011, Printed on November 1, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152922/palestinians_admitted_as_full_member_to_unesco%3B_us_cuts_funding_in_response

 Palestinians won entry to UNESCO on Monday, scoring a symbolic victory in their battle for full UN membership, prompting the US to cut its funding to the body and warn with ally Israel that the move harmed hopes for peace.

"The general conference decides to admit Palestine as a member of UNESCO," said the resolution that was adopted to loud applause by 107 countries, with 14 voting against and 52 abstaining.

"Accepting Palestine into UNESCO is a victory for (our) rights, for justice and for freedom," Mahmud Abbas' spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina quoted the Palestinian president as saying.

Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Malki, who was at the UN cultural body's Paris headquarters for the vote, hailed "a historic moment that gives Palestine back some of its rights," while Israel said it distanced peace.

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Fred Pearce - Hardening Our Coal Addiction

Published on Monday, October 31, 2011 by Yale Environment 360

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/the_triumph_of_king_coal_hardening_our_coal_addiction/2458/

Despite all the talk about curbing greenhouse gas emissions, the world is burning more and more coal. The inconvenient truth is that coal remains a cheap and dirty fuel — and the idea of “clean” coal remains a distant dream.

by Fred Pearce

This year’s UN climate negotiations are in Durban, South Africa. Many delegates will already be looking forward to the chance of going on safari after their labors, visiting Kruger National Park or one of the country’s other magnificent game reserves. But I have another suggestion. Visit the enemy. Just two hours’ drive up the Indian Ocean coast from Durban is Richards Bay, a huge deep-water harbor that is home to the world’s largest coal export terminal.

When the current round of climate talks began half a decade ago, 25 percent of the world’s primary energy came from coal. The figure is now 29.6 percent. Between 2009 and 2010, global coal consumption grew by almost 8 percent. Anyone seduced by the conference exhibition halls in Durban, filled with the latest renewable energy technology, will get a rude awakening at Richards Bay. For it may tell the real story of our energy futures — and it is scary.

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Terra Daily - Governments must plan for migration in response to climate change

TERRA DAILY
Gainesville, FL (SPX) Oct 31, 2011

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Governments_must_plan_for_migration_in_response_to_climate_change_999.html

Governments around the world must be prepared for mass migrations caused by rising global temperatures or face the possibility of calamitous results, say University of Florida scientists on a research team reporting in the Oct. 28 edition of Science.

If global temperatures increase by only a few of degrees by 2100, as predicted by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, people around the world will be forced to migrate. But transplanting populations from one location to another is a complicated proposition that has left millions of people impoverished in recent years.

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Robert Parry - Unmasking October Surprise ‘Debunker’

Special Report: The fake “debunking” of the 1980 October Surprise case in the early 1990s was driven by a few “journalists,” including Steven Emerson, who has been identified in a recent report as a “misinformation expert” spreading anti-Muslim propaganda, reports Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

Global Research, October 30, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27370

In another blow to the crumbling cover-up surrounding Ronald Reagan’s secret dealings with Iran during the 1980 presidential campaign, a key “journalist” who “debunked” the October Surprise allegations in the early 1990s has now been identified by a recent study as a member of a right-wing “misinformation” network.

Entitled “Fear, Inc.,”the 129-page report  by the Center for American Progress lists Steven Emerson as one of five “scholars” who act as “misinformation experts” to “generate the false facts and materials” that are then exploited by politicians and pundits to frighten Americans about the supposed threat posed by Muslims.

The report offers a rare glimpse into the right-wing propaganda network that has exploited America’s post-9/11 hysteria and transformed those fears into a powerful political movement to get millions of Christians and Jews to support legislation and policies that target Muslims and their communities.

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Eleanor Bader - EPA Not Adequately Managing Risks of Chemicals in Consumer Products

Published on Monday, October 31, 2011 by RH Reality Check

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2011/10/05/stoking-fire-adaquately-managing-risks-chemicals-consumer-products

by Eleanor J. Bader

Early in 2009, Lisa Jackson, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, conceded that “EPA is not doing an adequate job of assessing and managing the risks of chemicals in consumer products, the workplace, and the environment.”

You can say that again. Indeed, since the Toxic Substances Control Act [TSCA] took effect in January 1977, only three chemicals have been banned—lead, mercury, and polychlorinated biphenyls—and only 200 of the more than 84,000 chemicals on the EPA’s radar have been tested to determine whether they pose a danger to human health.In general, plastics marked with recycle codes 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 are very unlikely to contain BPA.

Meanwhile, US residents report skyrocketing rates of infertility, impacting both men and women, as well as an enormous spike in Autism Spectral Disorders, learning disabilities, and childhood cancers in the offspring we sire.

If this isn’t a right to life issue I don’t know what is.

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GM Freeze - Gates Foundation "Swimming Against a Tide of Informed Opinion"

GM Freeze, 31 Oct 2011
http://www.gmfreeze.org/news-releases/170/

Gates plan spends 40% of R&D funding on risky "silver bullet" GM projects with DFID help

As the world population reaches 7 billion GM Freeze says in a new report published today [1] that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s policy on agricultural development to tackle hunger is "swimming against a tide of informed opinion".

The report reveals the Gates Foundation has allocated over 40% of its committed research expenditure from 2005 to 2011 on projects involving risky “silver bullet” GM technology.

The collaboration between the Gates Foundation and DFID, announced in February 2011, includes a commitment to carry out GM research into altering the photosynthesis of rice to make it more tolerant of drought. [2] This theoretical switching of rice metabolism has been described as "high risk" by many, including the Royal Society, because of the complex changes required to make it work and the high chance of failure. [3]

In contrast GM Freeze reveals that the Gates Foundation has only allocated some US$20 million (4% of the total budget of US$521 million) to all soil research despite acknowledging the poor state of some African soils. However the Gates Foundation has pledged nearly US$214 million to research involving GM techniques from 2005 to the present – ten times the budget for soil research.

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