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Per the stratfor email dump, the trapwire system contains
> functionality like facial recognition and is installed at every HVT in
> the continental US, in addition to Ottawa and Canada-- but confirmed
> in LA, NYC, NJ, DC, Las Vegas, et cetera. It's essentially a system
> setup to detect surveillance, so if you've ever taken a picture of
> basically anything 'important' you probably flagged a 'suspicious
> activity report' (SAR). It's logged to a central database and then
> cross-site reports are disseminated. If you're familiar with the 'see
> something say something' or 'iWatch' programs, that's the public
> reporting component, but in the email dumps when explaining similar
> systems they note repeatedly that trapwire has the capability to walk
> the cat back you just need a few pictures of the persons. From the
> emails, what's been enumerated specifically is NY/DC mass transit,
> unspecified sections of LA, London Stock Exchange, Scotland Yard, #10
> Downing, the White House. From googling, we can find that NJ transit,
> all army bases, the department of energy, the marines, et cetera are
> as well. No idea if they got the contract, but they were apparently
> trying to get it into the Nigerian presidential palace as well.
>
> It's not just in public sector areas, it sounds like any big
> corporation that wants in gets to link their CCTV/surveillance systems
> into it as well-- apparently salesforce.com, google, potentially Dell,
> Wal-Mart, & Coca-cola, et cetera are all linked in.
>
http://cryptome.org/2012/08/nypd-ms-domain-spy.htm
Next time you are shopping at Walmart...say "hi!" to the authorities watching you.
Yes, tragic...but...
...all of these lone gunman shootings don't even come close to people who die in traffic accidents...and no one is trying to make a case for banning the automobile. Way, way more people die every year from various relatively preventable diseases...yet not many people will take seriously banning some of the foods (what? ban fast food restaurants, hamburgers and fries?). And as per Thom's recent story on the "death inducing" ingredients that is being put into our "foods"...where is the "shock" value of the potential "megadeaths" that could occur, or are occurring, as compared to the more visceral shock propaganda of an abrupt termination of life as brought about by a lone gunman. The slow megadeaths will occur over time as various cancers set in but the "shock value" just doesn't compare to the crack of a gun.
The problem is that most of these people die by what most have been cajoled to believe are more "natural" deaths. It takes time for the illnesses to happen and they die quietly.
An abrupt death, as from a gunshot, is more dramatic and shocking. And many of the same people who may be shocked at a few people in OUR cities who die from gunshots are not very concerned at all about all of the magnitudes more innocent civilians...and including thousands of children..die every year from our failed foreign war policies. Few are as alarmed about the thousands of innocent people murdered by our military as they are by an occasional lone gunman who kills a few people in OUR cities...or our classrooms.
If you want to ban guns, you should start with the military..and the police who put 40 rounds into a lone, homeless, knife-weilding crazy man. Take away the tremendous waste in money and lives that our military is allowed to squander every year...because some snot-nosed, spoiled brat of a President wants to take retribution out on someone who threatened his daddy (Bush).
Lets not give in to the propaganda that OUR guns are the problem. The ruling elite would love nothing more than to convince us all to give up our only possible way of defending ourselves against tyranny. It worked for Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, and Stalin....but we shouldn't let it happen here. Otherwise we may see large segments of our population disappear like in these countries.
You think it would never happen here? Don't be naive! A well armed citizenry willing to defend themselves against tyranny is necessary to keep themselves from being enslaved by tyrants. And our system of government has been taken over by tyrants....represented by the fake system of democracy as represented by the Democrats and Republicans who have resigned themselves to believe that those with all the gold will rule.
One of the Strategic Defense of America is simply water. Again our electromagnetic media hate cable and hate radio just concentrate on the nature of political signaling, dashing through and hiding important issues hiding things that Thom Hartmann seems to have the innate ability to sift through meet and debate to raise really good questions that lead to answers.
As an example, though a different issue, this George Zimmerman shooting of Trayvon Martin is not presented clearly especially when one understands that Zimmerman was an insurance underwriter? An insurance company has insight into things like life policies. Or what might the homicides in this particular parameter for young girls and boys might be? The implication totally was television prosecution by the electromagnetic journalistic complicities, and imams. Fox News being driven by three to four so called Judges in my view should have their resume and tax returns public. Who knows they are likely to have off shore bankster account in the Cayman Islands right next to the one hundred or so Arab financial front companies on the same island.
The oil companies and most of all the Arabs, those of the Bin Laden family, yes the Islamic Wahhabi sort, that think all Americans are infidels should be wiped off the earth are and have been in a long, centuries long plan to do just that eliminate the infidel. According to Gerald Posners Book, “Secrets of the Kingdom”. Our business, Congress and especially the Bush and Cheney family have been in long term economic profiteering enterprises for with them for decades.
From Watergate to Waterboarding and water as a strategic national defense argument especially when waterboarding used in so called interrogation. This in my opinion is definitely torture. The doctors know what important elements are left out of the discussion in waterboarding, which is “Angina” as in physical action in rape or being strapped to a board while trying to breath having water poured into your mouth. Actually, angina is and connected to both waterboarding and rape victims. Here because of micro spasms or contractions skewed by waterboarding were associated with increased risks of mortality. Including chest pains,walls of the arteries are damaged. Or improper functioning of the tiny micro vascular blood vessels that feed your heart. All kinds of crazy stuff at the quantum level in either case that don’t appear or realized immediately in or from a rape or waterboarding. Especially neuron micro activity to bombard aberrations in reason and thought process. For me the whole thing is a calamity of a cursed corruption by big money our Congress and in its presentation by our media.
Bush just bought the largest private owned water aquifer in the country. The oil people took all the money from our economy and now are attempting to buy our water rights. Are we going to have to buy our water at the pumps someday?
Here in CA it is a war between private and municipals over water. In Santa Cruz we are trying to defeat the chemical desalination water treatment plant form being built in our backyards. I ran for city council this election as a homeless teacher. I was disqualified to run. You should have seen the face on the city clerk when asked for my profile title. I wrote down homeless teacher. She didn't like that one. She asked, "what do you hope to gain"? I replied, "what do I got to lose"?
I know it was an illegal disqualification. I kept my receipt for my voter registration just in case. They say because there was a letter that was missing that the whole application was void? Time ran out? Homeless are being denied the right to vote and participate in the political process. This was my last pebble to throw into the pond. They took that away too. bushforsccouncil 99k org
you put in the dots if your interested in the global warming desal and the "tertiary solution" to our water problems. We must as a people declare that water is a basic human right and end private owned water districts and aquifers. Water is all of ours!
I want to thank Thom for my economic education and for giving us a voice.
I live in Alberta Canada and my utilities are private. Competition keeps our prices low. We hold our city counsel accountable if they can't balance budgets. We privatised everything our DMV, Registries , highway maintance, basically everything. We are the only province/state in North America with no debt. We have the lowest taxes, and the highest standard of living in the country. We have had the same Conserative Gov in for 40 years, we tried it and it works. Maybe so should you.
I don't recall the S. American country that suffered the privatization of their water, but they had a huge uprising until the government caved in a forced the private corp out and took back the country's water supply. People could not even use rain water collected in barrels.
Should this happen in the US, like what has happened already with the corporatization of our food supplies, they will use it to control the masses. Can restrict water, or refuse it to private farms to drive them out of business.
It's people who make up govt and who make up corporations
Both govt and corporations could be Good things
Unfortunately both institutions have become havens for the greedy and psychopathic versions of the human species
However " their numbers are few and they are stupid". ( Eisenhower ?? )
So why are THEY winning ??
Kenneth Ausebul of Bioneers used the term Cognitive dissonance to describe our current reality
While on one end of the spectrum we are rapidly deteriorating into the red zone ... We are also on the other end creating significant and smart workable solutions to our important issues
Thom says that we are standing atop several thresholds of which past civilizations because they could not SEE...... Went on to extinction
Who will win ?
Increasingly we see that they are not winning
I think all roads will lead us back to the same answer. To fix this and many of the social ills and corruption that now seems to permeate our society at every level it is imperitive that we get the money out of our politics. Short of that a mass popular revoluton ie (massive boycots or other measures that attack and diminish the wealth of the ruling billionaires & our wealthy politicians) may be our only options. The problem is money. Money will likely be the cure.
While the story does not stay put true to the real-life description war horse tickets of the von Trapps, it is nonetheless attractive and timeless, and The Sound of Music will go on to inspire audiences for many years to come.
cirque du soleil dralion tickets
I found out, the other day, that many foods...even ice cream...has saw dust it it. They purposely put saw dust in the foods. That's just plain sick. We are not termites and we cannot digest wood.
Good article, MPeters...here's a couple of quotes from the article: "The World Bank has predicted that by 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population will run short of fresh drinking water. With little or no way to decrease the need for water as supplies shrink, Fortune magazine has dubbed water “the oil of the 21st century.” The private water industry, dominated by a handful of multinationals and their subsidiaries, stands to benefit handsomely as the global water crisis deepens. These corporations and other proponents of water privatization argue that the private sector can deliver basic goods and services more efficiently and at lower costs than the public sector. In reality, there is little evidence to support the argument that privatization actually benefits consumers — particularly the poor — by improving access and lowering costs. Quite often, water prices increase and quality problems follow on the heels of privatization." "Water tariffs, in fact, did indeed increase, by 200-300 percent in many cases, just weeks after Aguas del Tunari took over." http://www.citizen.org/documents/Bolivia_%28PDF%29.PDF
So, in just 13 years 2/3 of the world's population will run short of fresh drinking water. Looks pretty ominous doesn't it? And I'd say that in much less time than that, if the water supply is privatized, we will all have our last dollars squeezed out of us by these rapacious and opportunistic criminals. Maybe we will be able to float one of those Greenland ice-shelves that have been breaking off down our way..if they don't melt first....but then some worm would try to claim ownership and charge us a lot for the water.
I know my water bill is pretty high...although I do have a garden that I have to water. And I do have to take a shower at least once a month....just kidding...but I do "marine shower" every day.
T Boone Pickens bought up water rights to hundreds of thousands of acres in the texas panhandle years ago. In some states you cannot even capture the water that falls on your own land. There have been people fined for digging ponds or catching rainwater in barrels.
The money grabbers are now trying to monopolize the water here in the U.S. Lets see if we have enough back bone to fight them off like the people did in Bolivia.
It seems the global financiers are so greedy they are willing to collapse the very system that gave them tremendous wealth. It should be no secret that capitalism is designed to accumulate wealth. It should also be no secret that money is created by issuing debt. Both systems require economic growth to sustain itself. Unfortunately our planet can no longer tolerate unlimited growth. We cannot grow out of this problem. Capitalism should to be reformed to share wealth rather than accumulate it. The concept of money should change so that governments spend it into existence rather than private banks loaning it into existence. This is the time for fundamental change. We need a new vision of success.
Years ago in the Civil Engineering literature I began to note discussions of: "Why just build the large infra-structure projects? Partner with financial investors to finance, build, own and then manage projects that local (and State, etc) governments couldn't afford; as long-term private investments."
These new (and old?) business models worked many places, especially internationally where local governments were short on management and capital-resources. Some of the biggest "design and construct" firms simply added "own (or lease) and manage" to their tech-services brochures.
Now we call it "privatization" as the Venture- and Vulture-Capitalists, look longingly at the huge financial resources available to governments -- through governmental powers of taxation.
Suddenly over the last half-century the vultures are circling-round the soon to be US-carcass.
We citizens MUST recognize the truths underlying todays reality -- as interpreted by both Left and Right extremists, and bastardized by the humongus global money-forces above (or below?). The looting of our nation is well under way, as we become a colony to the supra-national corporate interests. We gotta find our common concerns and wake-up to what's happening.
Our water should be protected and it absolutely will not be if it is privatized!!!
You don't have it straight.... so let me help..... fact... many city managers face revenue shortfalls due to slumping property values and high unemployment rates. The budget problems are not caused by their mismanagement, they were caused in large part by Wall Street Banksters.....sidewinders who purposefully mismanaged in order to loot the hard working middle class of much of their wealth and in the end crashed the economy. Romney and Ryan are hungry for more of this economic mayhem, most Democrats are not. Bad city managers don't keep their jobs very long.....criminals on Wall Street do!
In answer to the blog question. It's pretty clear to me that Democratic Socialism would end most of this economic nonsense.
No, this is not the brightest generation that America has ever seen, and the middle class has spent years supporting policies that have been wiping out the middle class. Just tell them that greedy poor people are drinking up all of America's water, and they'll gladly agree to raising their taxes to keep the greedy poor away from middle class water.Today's middle class votes for those who redistribute tax dollars upward (several trillion dollars since Reagan) to the richest corporations, always "for job creation." Corps continue to use this money to build factories in foreign countries, exporting our jobs. In response, the middle class supports taking the last crumbs of humanitarian aid still allowed to our poor. After 30+ years of this, they still don't "get it." While over 50% of the budget today (far exceeding what any country on Earth spends) goes into the military, the next budget calls for slashing basic food aid for the elderly, poor and disabled, and we're all cool with that. Not that it'll have any impact on the budget or deficit -- it won't. No matter. We can handle the 50%+ of the budget that goes to the military. By comparison, AFDC, which used 6% of the fed. budget at its highest (1970s) caused post-Reagan Americans to howl in agony, insisting this was "bringing taxpayers to their knees." In short, America progressed from the Greatest Generation to the Gullible Generation. All they know is what they're told.
The private sector has their fangs stuck deeply into the necks of most politicians who realize that they have to march lock-step and give their hearty seig heil salute to the corporate Nazi vampires that are the real cause of the disintegration of a valid democracy. Politicians...only the wealthy own them...the rest of us only get a hollow shell of a democracy built of lies and deceit.
Government officials can never make as much money as CEOs and other top executives who will do anything to maximize their short term profits and the short term profits of their shareholders.
If Government officials act in a manner to misappropriate or misspend public funds it is usually because they are either pressured to do so by the rapacious private sector, or they see how ridiculously wealthy the corrupt private sector counterparts have gotten and seem to be getting away with it, or they are really closet private sector wannabes who are trying to cause the public sector to look bad so that the rapacious libertarians can have ammunition to privatize everything. The revolving door, fostered by the private sector, corrupts absolutely. If it wasn't for the corrupting influence of the private sector our government would work just fine.
In Shawnee, KS, we saw our water mains to each individual house privatized earlier this year right when these lines are in deferred maintenance mode. Homeowners are required to get insurance or pay out of pocket for any repairs that may need to be done. With the drought deepening, hundreds of large bore mains and gas lines are rupturing due to ground shift. I don't like being forced to buy insurance but what other options do I really have? I can't afford to build up or keep an emergency slush fund of $10,000 or more for anything.
I guess "Kend" never heard of the situation in Cochabamba, Bolivia, where they made it illegal to catch rainwater, and what they charged for water took, on average, 25% of the people's earnings. And maybe if something like that came to his town he'd think differently.
http://www.citizen.org/documents/Bolivia_%28PDF%29.PDF
Water is necessary for the survival of all living things and should be a public utility period. You don't hand something like that over to be owned and managed by sociopaths.
Thanks for opening the door all the way to let in the flood Bill.
While we're trying to stem the tide, you're basking in the lime light........prick.
So let me get this straight. City managers mismanage there budgets and spend way more than they should and get in trouble. A company comes in and bales out the incompatint public service employees and they are crue and greedy. With out those companies those cities would have no services. When are Americans going to learn you can't spend more than you have. Do you know every american is in debt $51,000.00 and some state debt is over $10,000.00. So a family of four owes $244,000.00. How are you going to pay this off?
Spouse worked for a small water district for ten years. Do I believe in privitization? Absolutely not. Customers will face severe price hikes from business big whigs, who will be certain they and their close friends have all the water they need, then damn the rest of us who need to pay to get water for ourselves.
So are almost all Republicans and Democrats psychopaths or do they have a new religion which justifies and rewards cruelty and greed? If so, be careful, they'll shed blood if necessary..