"If we succeed, it will send a powerful message that the use of OIL has no place in the 21st century." Let's not go to war for it.....in fact let's declare war on it. I'm thinking that future generations will be wishing real bad that Obama had said that instead.

DAnneMarc: Thanks for that link...what gruesome photos! Yes, I agree...Israel and the US are two of the worst human right violators! Very disturbing!

Thom ~ Just listening to your show and the story about George Takei. FYI That's a Vulcan mind meld not a Jedi mind meld. LOL Fellow SF geeks, unite!

I'm sure George would have just said, "Oh, my!"

This is sad that Sen. Cruz has health care paid by all of us would stop the uninsured from getting help. What a shame on him he does not have the backing of the GOP in the Senate

Quote hartmann:He[Obama] said that the United States “will not tolerate the development or use of weapons of mass destruction” by Iran, and that our nation “is prepared to use all elements of our power, including military force, to secure our core interests in the region.” And, President Obama vowed that the U.S. “will ensure the free flow of energy from that region to the world.”

So when will the US give up it's weapons of mass destruction? Not only do we have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world many times over...but we also still have bunkers full of chemical weapons..some of which are leaking.

And using "military force, to secure our interests"...what if someone used armed force to secure his interests in what his neighbor, or a bank, had? That would be considered "armed" robbery! And actually killing his neighbor and family, or bank employees, would be called murder! The damn US acts like it owns the whole world...that those natural resources belong to the US!

Palindromedary ~ Interesting article on the vPro processor. Lesson learned--don't buy a computer with a vPro CPU. If you've already purchased one only use it for video games. Plug it into an outlet strip with a switch and turn off the power when not in use.

Add it to the list of things not to buy, right next to the new iPhone.

(Don't buy anything whose name begins with a lowercase letter.)

Thanks for the heads up!

Of course if you want to live with your head in the sand you will help the NSA more than anything you could possibly say or do on the internet. I suggest always behaving like the NSA is listening. Then they have no power over you. If you are concerned about your accounts, check them frequently and keep paper records of them as well. Don't allow high tech chicanery to stuff you into a box of isolation. Learn to work with it and around it. Nevertheless, it is better to be aware of the problem then not.

You know back in the day it was possible to use simple secret written and verbal codes with privately held keys to broadcast secret messages over the radio and through the mail. They were very popular in WWII and in the 50's with school kids. The same could be used on the internet and even if intercepted would take months to crack. Encrypted or not if intercepted somehow the message still needs to be decoded to be understood. There are more than one way to skin a goat and breaking our internet rights to privacy isn't going to do any damn thing to hinder the privacy of the truly creative.

ie. Nan na nan na boo boo stick your head in .........///**

(Now decode that!)

How a Crypto ‘Backdoor’ Pitted the Tech World Against the NSA

Quote article by Kim Zetter for Wired:But one advantage to having the algorithm supported in products like Vista — and which may be the reason the NSA pushed it into the standard — is that even if it’s not the default algorithm for encryption on a system, as long as it’s an option on the system, an intruder, like the NSA, can get into the system and change the registry to make it the default algorithm used for encryption, thereby theoretically making it easy for the NSA to undermine the encryption and spy on users of the machine.

Schneier says this is a much more efficient and stealth way of undermining the encryption than simply installing a keystroke logger or other Trojan malware that could be detected.

“A Trojan is really, really big. You can’t say that was a mistake. It’s a massive piece of code collecting keystrokes,” he said. “But changing a bit-one to a bit-two [in the registry to change the default random number generator on the machine] is probably going to be undetected. It is a low conspiracy, highly deniable way of getting a backdoor. So there’s a benefit to getting it into the library and into the product.”

To date, the only confirmation that the algorithm has a backdoor comes in the Times story, based on NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden, which the Times and two other media outlets saw.

“[I]nternal memos leaked by a former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden, suggest that the NSA generated one of the random number generators used in a 2006 NIST standard — called the Dual EC DRBG standard — which contains a back door for the NSA,” the Times wrote.

An editorial published by the Times this weekend re-asserted the claim: “Unbeknown to the many users of the system, a different government arm, the National Security Agency, secretly inserted a ‘back door’ into the system that allowed federal spies to crack open any data that was encoded using its technology.”

“This is the worst problem that the NSA has done,” Schneier says. “They have so undermined the fundamental trust in the internet, that we don’t know what to trust. We have to suspect everything. We’re never sure. That’s the greatest damage.”

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/09/nsa-backdoor/1/

Along the lines of income inequality: Thom, I love your policy position to end billionaires. However, I think there's an opening, using our unique historical moment, to nudge us in that direction. Let's create a "donut-hole" in the cap on Social Security contributions. Today we have a cap. Let's say that anyone who earns above 500 million dollars has to re-enter the Social Security system and pay the same rate as the average working stiff. Let's create a "donut-hole" in Social Security participation. Anyone who re-enters at the top end is ensuring the stability of our entire economic system. Social Security provides the consumer base that prevents our economy from completely collapsing during recessions. Without an ongoing economy, these billionaires would not exist. Complete collapse would mean theft and destruction of their plants and equipment, it would mean the end of cash flow from consumers.

Now, what are you bad boys, the NSA and/or GCHQ up to this time?

Quote cryptome:
On the brink of catastrophe (2013-09-21) --

"This could have been larger than 9/11", says one source who closely followed the case.

A piece of malicious software has been found on the network of BICS, a daughter company of Belgacom. It is hard to grasp even for well-informed insiders. The BICS network is so wide and deep that it is promptly clear to everybody that this is not just a Belgian problem. This problem is at least of European proportions. Because whoever controls BICS, controls the communication of a large part of the world. "This could have been larger than 9/11", says one source who closely followed the case. Without a grain of irony.

Gradually it became clear that the hackers are not only interested in the communications in the Middle-East, where BICS holds a solid position via South-African minority shareholder MTN. "They have been looking around and took what they could", state sources involved in the investigation. They are clear about one thing: the attack originated from the United States. "We determine that by the signature of the malware, but especially by where the trails lead. They partially run through the UK. We think the US is the main destination. And the past weeks at the US Embassy, you notice some embarrassment when you request exchange of information." Yesterday, the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel reported that the UK intelligence service GCHQ (Government Communications Headquartes) are responsible for the attacks. It based that claim on slides disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The news that GCHQ is behind the Belgacom attack is a surprise to at least the services working on the affair.

BICS provides the hardware infrastructure that carries internet traffic, phone conversations, text messages and mobile data of telecom companies and government institutions. And the more sensitive the customer, the more likely he is the end up at BICS. The daughter company of Belgacom markets itself with the argument that they never ever look at what travels over its cables. "We provide the cables for you, and you just send whatever you want over them", is what it basically boils down to.

A glance at the list of BICS' customers makes one dizzy. The financial transport center Swift, Electrabel, bpost, Belgocontrol, they are all connected to BICS. The NATO in Evere, the European Commission and Parliament, SHAPE, the Supreme Headquerters Allied Powers Europe, in Bergen; BICS, BICS, BICS. Even the headquarters of the NATO Allied Air Command, in Ramstein, Germany, from where the 2011 air attacks on Libya where coordinated, depends on BICS.

http://cryptome.org/2013/09/belgacom-hack-en.htm

DAnneMarc: Your "prayers"...my "hopes". To each his own..right?

Quote Palindromedary:So too would it be for this lugubrious and "saintly" Pope ( a Jesus Christ personified no less) who just may save that floundering empire from extinction. I sure like his messages..but are they real? I liked Obama's messages during his campaigns too! Or is Pope Francis the Papal peddler of false hope that will keep the corrupt Catholic church infrastructure going on and on? There may be just as much deviousness playing out in the Papacy as in corrupt US politics. The true believers are always easy targets in both arenas.

Palindromedary ~ Well said! I share your apprehension. I like the Pope, the Church, unfortunately, is still the same old Church. The same is true of the puppet masters in Washington. I too would be happier than a Pig in slop if both institutions were to disappear one fine morning. Poof! Gone! All of our prayers answered.

2950-10k: Actually, the thought did cross my mind at the time not that I was specifically referring to it. And the "let them eat worms" was a reference to the alleged saying of Marie Antoinette's "let them eat cake" in response to hungry people during the famine in France.