Mynmar and Thailand are in U.S. radar for 2014 threats.  It means that U.S. has some interest in both countries.   see detail below.  VL

The 33 Biggest geopolitical Risks In 2014

 

AMANDA MACIAS 

   

 
FEB. 25, 2014

Council on Foreign Relations

Click map to see interactive version.

Several of the 2014 geopolitical risks that could affect the U.S. that the Council on Foreign Relations warned about in December are already happening.

Political unrest in Ukraine, rated moderate likelihood, moderate impact, has erupted into "civil violence and protracted political instability." A political crisis in Venezuela, rated low likelihood, low impact, is starting to look a lot more likely, with protesters warning they have reached the point of no return.

The CFR report and accompanying map (click for interactive version) is based on the assessment of approximately 1,200 government officials, foreign policy experts, and academics. Risk events are rated for likelihood and impact, with high impact events directly threatening the U.S. homeland, likely to trigger U.S. military involvement, or threatening the supply of critical U.S. strategic resources.

Below are the top ten threats threats, starting with the worst, with links to CFR's analysis for more information:

Strengthening of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
High likelihood; moderate impact.
The Arabian Peninsula is considered the "most dangerous al-Qaeda affiliate" to U.S. national security with more than two dozen U.S. diplomatic facilities in the area have shut down because of terrorist threats. In response, the United States will continue to escalate its drone counterterrorism campaign.

Political Instability in Jordan
High likelihood; moderate impact.
Jordan’s political stability and economy is severely threatened by the influx of Syrian and Palestinian refugees. The United Nations has estimated that Jordan will need $5.3 billion by the end of 2014 for its refugee crisis. 

Sectarian Violence in Iraq
High likelihood; moderate impact.
According to the CFR, if sectarian violence continues, Iraq may plunge into a "deeper state of chaos" and potentially into civil war. 

Rising Security Threats in Pakistan 
High likelihood; moderate impact.
The withdrawal of U.S. and allied forces from Afghanistan after 2014 could increase instability by allowing anti-state militants from Pakistan to establish a terrorist safe haven in Afghanistan. 

Increased Violence and Instability in Afghanistan 
High likelihood; moderate impact.
Failure to sign a security pact could undermine U.S. and allied forces efforts to improve the security environment of Afghanistan. The reestablishment of al-Qaeda groups throughout Afghanistan is one possibility if agreements are not met.

Terrorist Attack on the U.S. HomelandModerate likelihood; high impact.
Another attack on the scale of 9/11 is "plausible," according to CFR, with the White House warning that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula "poses the greatest potential threat."

Iranian Nuclear CrisisModerate likelihood; high impact.
The prospects for a breakthrough in the nuclear standoff with Iran have recently improved. A lasting settlement of the dispute is still uncertain and even "the possibility of military strikes cannot be discounted," according to the CFR.

North Korean Crisis
Moderate likelihood; high impact.
The risk of conflict on the Korean peninsula remains high since there are  continuous efforts by North Korea to develop nuclear weapons and long range missiles against UN Security Council resolutions. The execution of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s uncle following charges of treason has increased the potential for political instability and unrest in the country.

Civil War in Syria 
Moderate likelihood; high impact.
According to the CFR, ongoing civil strife threatens the stability of U.S. allies, particularly Turkey and Jordan. Increased regional instability could create another safe haven for extremist groups active in Syria, like al-Qaeda affiliates, Islamic State of Iraq, and Hezbollah.

Cyberattack on U.S. Infrastructure 
Moderate likelihood; high impact.
Due to the increasingly sophisticated nature of cyberattacks, such an attack on critical infrastructure could be significantly disruptive or potentially devastating. Energy is the most vulnerable industry, and therefore a large-scale attack could temporarily halt the supply of water, electricity, gas, transportation, communication, and financial institutions.

And 23 more threats:

Violence in the Central African Republic 
High likelihood; low impact.

Internal Violence in South Sudan 
High likelihood; low impact.

Escalation of Drug-Related Violence in Mexico 
Moderate likelihood; moderate impact.

Political Instability in Libya 
Moderate likelihood; moderate impact.

Increased Violence in Egypt 
Moderate likelihood; moderate impact.

Indo-Pakistani Military Confrontation 
Moderate likelihood; moderate impact.

Continuing Conflict in Somalia with Al-Shabab 
Moderate likelihood; moderate impact.

Sectarian Violence in Lebanon 
Moderate likelihood; moderate impact.

Political Unrest in Ukraine 
Moderate likelihood; moderate impact. 

South China Sea Armed Confrontation 
Low likelihood; high impact.

Increasing Sectarian Violence in Nigeria 
Low likelihood; high impact.

East China Sea Armed Confrontation 
Low likelihood; high impact. 

Political Crisis in Venezuela 
Low likelihood; low impact. 

Violence in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo 
Moderate likelihood; low impact. 

Sectarian Violence in Myanmar 
Moderate likelihood; low impact. 

Internal Instability in Sudan 
Moderate likelihood; low impact. 

Sino-Indian Clash 
Low likelihood; moderate impact.

Sudan-South Sudan Military Conflict 
Moderate likelihood; low impact. 

Conflict Between Armenia and Azerbaijan 
Low likelihood; low impact.

Violence in Bangladesh 
Moderate likelihood; low impact. 

Growing Instability in Thailand 
Moderate likelihood; low impact. 

Conflict in Kurdish-Dominated Regions 
Moderate likelihood; low impact. 

Destabilization of Mali 
Low likelihood; moderate impact.

February 28, 2014

When Will America End Cash-for-Visas Racket?

Michelle Malkin

2/28/2014 12:01:00 AM - Michelle Malkin

This may be the first and last time I ever write these words: America, follow Canada. Our neighbors to the north finally have wised up to the international cash-for-visas scam. Last week, the country ended its foreign investor program that put residency up for sale to the highest bidder. We should have done the same a long time ago.
Canada's Immigrant Investor Program granted permanent residency to wealthy foreigners who forked over 800,000 Canadian dollars for a five-year, zero-interest loan to one of the country's provinces. The scheme turned out to be a magnet for tens of thousands of millionaires from Hong Kong and China. But as the Canadian Ministry of Finance concluded in its annual budget report this year, the program "undervalued Canadian permanent residence" and showed "little evidence that immigrant investors as a class are maintaining ties to Canada or making a positive economic contribution to the country."
In several provinces, the foreign investor racket was riddled from top to bottom with fraud. Whistleblowers in the Prince Edward Island immigration office exposed rampant bribery among bureaucrats and consultants, who helped their clients jump the queue. The government failed to monitor immigrant investors or verify the promised economic benefits of the "investments." The program didn't just fast-track supposed business people with dubious business backgrounds, but also their entire extended families, who walled themselves in segregated neighborhoods.
Ads in Dubai bragged that investors didn't even need to live in the country to take advantage of the citizenship-for-sale deal -- and that their dependents could avail themselves of full health care and education benefits.
Fifteen years ago, an independent auditor hired by the Canadian government warned that he had "found that in many cases there was no investment at all or that the amount of that investment was grossly inflated." The auditor nailed the expedient commodification of citizenship: "Canadians gave up something of real value -- a visa or passport -- and received very little in return." He concluded: "A lot of people made a lot of money, mostly lawyers and immigration consultants who set up these bogus investments. It's a massive sham. The middlemen made hundreds of millions of dollars."
I've been issuing the very same warnings about America's EB-5 immigrant investor visa program, created under an obscure section of the 1990 Immigration Act, for more than a decade. The details of the U.S. program vary, but the facade is the same: trading residency on the cheap for the shady promise of economic development. Just as in Canada, the U.S. racket's alleged economic benefits are largely hype.
Who has profited? As I've reported previously, the real winners are former federal immigration officials who formed lucrative limited partnerships to cash in on their access and politically connected cronies. An internal U.S. Justice Department investigative report revealed years ago that "aliens were paying $125K" instead of the required $500,000 to $1 million minimum, and "almost all of the monies went to the general partners and the companies who set up the limited partners."
Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., has been pressing EB-5 middlemen who operate a network of regional centers to cough up data on how many jobs these immigrant investor schemes are creating, lists of current and former corporate officers at the centers, and details of consulting services and other contracts into which the centers have entered. Where's the rest of Capitol Hill?
Just as in Canada, American whistleblowers also have been raising red flags for years. Most recently, immigration officials in Laguna Niguel, Calif., last fall spilled the beans on how they "often rushed or skipped altogether economic reviews of applicants to the EB-5 visa program." They did so under orders from senior managers pandering to wealthy and politically connected foreign applicants. The Department of Homeland Security Inspector General is investigating government retaliation against employees who reported the misconduct. "In essence," Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, noted in a public letter, "high-level officials in the (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services bureau) are accused of creating an environment hostile to those who insist on following the law."
That fish rots right down from the head of USCIS, Alejandro Mayorkas, who was confirmed for the job in December -- despite remaining under investigation by the DHS Inspector General for his alleged role in intervening on behalf of GreenTech, a crony company with ties to Democratic Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Hillary Clinton's other brother, Anthony. The alleged scam involved special treatment to the company, which wanted special treatment and EB-5 visas for, you guessed it, deep-pocketed Chinese investors.
Recklessly peddling foreign investor visas for the precious privilege of entry into our country is bad for our sovereignty, bad for workers and good for corruptocrats. Moreover, history shows that government is always bad at picking economic winners and losers. If Canada can come to its senses on this, why not America?

February 28, 2014

21st-Century Politics: A Minus-Sum Game Where Everybody Loses

Scott Rasmussen

2/28/2014 12:01:00 AM - Scott Rasmussen

"A simple recipe for violence: promise a lot, deliver a little. Lead people to believe they will be much better off, but let there be no dramatic improvement." The brilliant political scientist Aaron Wildavsky wrote these words in 1968 while America was engulfed in race riots and anti-war protests. Sadly, his words from long ago eerily describe the politics of 21st-century America.
President Barack Obama and his recent predecessors have been good about promising a lot but delivering little.
The current crusade to raise the minimum wage is a perfect example. Regardless of whether or not it makes sense, the impact doesn't measure up to the problems it is supposed to solve.
Will it help reduce poverty? Perhaps a bit. The Congressional Budget Office estimates it will lift 900,000 people out of poverty over the course of a few years. But the government says nearly 50 million people are officially living in poverty. So, raising the minimum wage might help about 2 percent of the poor move from just below the poverty line to just above it. And the people it helps are not the ones who need it most. The poorest of the poor lack jobs of any kind.
Back in 1968, Wildavsky said such symbolic political gestures create "minus-sum games in which every player leaves the contest worse off than when he entered." In the case of the minimum wage, Obama could fail to accomplish his goal and disappoint his base. However, when symbolic issues pass, it can be even worse because "it soon becomes clear that nothing has changed."
Minus-sum games are the norm in American politics today. Issues are raised, and symbolic solutions are proposed. If the proposed solution doesn't get passed, the losing team gets angry. If it does get passed, nothing changes.
The problem of promising a lot and delivering little is especially true of the president's health care law. Symbolically, it was supposed to insure the uninsured, reduce costs for everyone else, and improve service. There were no downsides in the symbolic version of the plan. If you liked your insurance or your doctor, you were told you could keep it.
Now that the law has passed, the reality doesn't measure up. Even those who have experienced little disruption are disappointed solely because the promises were much loftier. The president led people to believe they would be better off, and they're not. Not surprisingly, national frustration with the law is growing daily.
Obama, of course, is not alone in this approach. Republicans do it, too. They continually rail against government spending but fail to propose anything more than symbolic gestures to slow down the growth.
The core problem is that both political parties in Washington promise that the federal government can fix every problem. But the truth is it can't. To solve the challenges before our nation, we need an all-hands approach that unleashes the creativity and resources of individual Americans, community groups, churches, small businesses, state and local governments, and more.
This will certainly mean a smaller role for the federal government, but it will put the problem-solving responsibility where it belongs -- with the American people.

Getting Tough in the South China Sea

February 27, 2014 | Opinion

By Robert Haddick
The National Interest
The Obama administration may have finally lost its patience with China’s salami-slicing in the East and South China Seas. Remarks over the past few weeks from administration officials show a tougher line and may foreshadow “red lines” to ward off further Chinese encroachments. These developments may show a White House increasingly ready to abandon a previous policy of forbearance toward China. It could also mean an impending tilt away from explicit U.S. neutrality toward the many territorial disputes in both seas. Given China’s stepped-up assertiveness, the drawing of red lines seems inevitable. The next question though is whether the U.S. will be able to back up these red lines with convincing military power. China’s military modernization program has long anticipated this move, leaving the answer anything but clear.
Heretofore, the U.S. has pursued a policy of forbearance with China, with the hope that by going out its way to show respect for China’s emerging great power status, Washington would avoid a ruinous security competition. In remarks at a Washington, D.C. think-tank in January 2014, Kurt Campbell, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs during President Obama’s first term, explained the administration’s theory. According to Campbell, previous historical examples of rising powers clashing with established powers were typically the result of insufficient respect being paid to the rising power (see 55:00 in). In the case of China, Campbell explained that the Obama administration would not repeat that mistake. In her first speech on Asia as President Obama’s new National Security Advisor, Susan Rice mimicked China’s call for “a new model of major power relations” between the U.S. and China and then recited a long list of issues on which she hoped the two countries would cooperate. Rice made no mention of China’s 2012 takeover of Scarborough Reef from the Philippines or China’s establishment that same year of a government headquarters and military garrison on Woody Island in the Paracel island group, which China seized from Vietnam in 1974. Three days after Rice’s speech, China declared an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) over the East China Sea.
In alignment with the China forbearance policy is the U.S. declaration of neutrality regarding the long list of territorial disputes over islands, rocks, and reefs in the East and South China Seas. In a speech on June 1, 2013 to the Shangri-la Dialogue conference of regional defense ministers in Singapore, U.S. defense secretary Chuck Hagel repeated America’s long-standing position that, “we do not take a position on the question of sovereignty in these cases,” only that the U.S. opposes the use of coercion to alter the status quo. This U.S. position has served two purposes. It has allowed the U.S. to avoid writing a blank check to a hypothetically reckless ally, one that could theoretically entrap the U.S. in an unwanted conflict. Second, it supported the forbearance policy by providing U.S. policymakers with a convenient talking point whenever territorial squabbles in the region flared up.
The policies of forbearance and neutrality could not survive if China continued its salami-slicing march across the region. China’s declaration of the East China Sea ADIZ, its continued siege of a tiny Filipino marine garrison on Ayungin Island in the Spratly chain (emotionally described in a long New York Times Magazine essay), and China’s January 2014 edict requiring fishermen in the South China Sea (including in waters far beyond China’s exclusive economic zone) to obtain fishing permits from China may have finally convinced Obama administration officials that the forbearance policy was a failure. Perhaps most worrying for Washington is the nationalistic reaction to these developments in Japan, which is a sign of declining confidence in the U.S. security guarantee and which threatens a loss of U.S. control over events in the region.
A rapid series of recent pronouncements by Obama administration officials may indicate that a new U.S. policy is now emerging. The stiffer tone first appeared on January 31, 2014, when Evan Medeiros, the senior director for Asian affairs on the U.S. National Security Council (NSC), rejected the legitimacy of China’s East China Sea ADIZ and warned that if China declared an ADIZ over the South China Sea, “that would result in changes in [U.S.] presence and military posture in the region.” In congressional testimony on February 5th, Daniel Russel, Kurt Campbell’s replacement as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs, specifically and publicly rejected China’s use of its “nine-dash line” as a legitimate basis for China’s territorial claim in the South China Sea, the first time a senior U.S. official has explicitly done so. Also a first for a senior U.S. official was Russel’s cataloging of China’s serial encroachments against Philippine and Vietnamese interests and territorial claims in recent years. On February 13, Admiral Jonathan Greenert, the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, told an audience at the Philippine National Defense College that the United States would come to the aid of the Philippines in the case of a hypothetical conflict with China over disputed claims in the South China Sea. Finally, on a February 17th visit to Indonesia, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry similarly listed China’s recent provocations and called for the resolution of territorial claims based on existing international law, another rebuke to China’s nine-dash line claim in the South China Sea.
A tougher line against China may signal the end of restrained U.S. forbearance. Under the previous policy, the administration hoped that a welcoming and nonthreatening approach would induce China to accept the international system that has benefited China so greatly over the past three decades. Instead, China’s behavior since 2008 seems to have interpreted U.S. restraint as weakness, an impression further catalyzed in China by the 2008 financial crisis, the subsequent struggles of the U.S. economy, and the budget wars in Washington that have shrunk projected U.S. defense spending. Having not received the response from Beijing that they had hoped for, the White House seems to have concluded that it will need a tougher approach.
But if the U.S. draws red lines in the South China Sea, will it be able to back them up?
The “Asia Rebalance” strategy, announced more than two years ago, and a U.S. pledge to station sixty percent of its naval and air power in the Asia-Pacific theater, has not deterred China’s continued salami-slicing. As the Obama administration was reminded in Syria, policymakers should not draw red lines unless they can convince the adversary that he has no chance to successfully challenge them.
NSC official Evan Medeiros’s pledge to further bolster U.S. military forces in the region should China impose an ADIZ over the South China Sea could be an empty threat—the U.S. has little, if any, reserve military power to permanently commit to the region. For example, the demand for the U.S. Navy’s aircraft carrier strike groups already exceeds their availability, with standard deployment times expected to rise from six months to eight or more to cope with current requests by U.S. regional commanders. Demand for attack submarines similarly exceeds availability, a condition that is expected to worsen in the future as the U.S. submarine fleet shrinks.
Washington could increase the military’s allocation to the Pacific beyond sixty percent by stripping resources from the Middle East and elsewhere. But China’s access-denial military strategy, which employs China’s rapidly expanding force of land-based missiles, aircraft, and submarines against U.S. bases and surface ships in the Western Pacific, makes this a risky idea and one that could perversely increase the region’s military instability. The U.S. military’s air and naval power is excessively concentrated in relatively short-range aircraft and missiles. Positioning even more of these forces at forward bases that are already vulnerable to China’s missiles will increase the risk to U.S. forces and may do little to deter Chinese behavior. That would be a stunning outcome to U.S. policymakers who have long counted on possessing escalation dominance during crises.
It was inevitable that China’s continued salami-slicing in the East and South China Seas would meet resistance. China’s declaration of an ADIZ over the East China Sea last November along with subsequent actions has apparently brought the Obama administration’s policy of restrained forbearance toward China to an end. American red lines in the South China Sea may come next. However, China’s two-decade military modernization program, with its emphasis on missiles and submarines, has anticipated such steps. With a shortage of long-range striking power and other tools to offset China’s access-denial strategy, the United States will have to take some unfamiliar risks to back up the coming red lines. That the U.S. military will soon face such risks is an indictment of the Pentagon’s strategy and procurement policies over the past decade and more. Until those are fixed, U.S. policymakers will have to hope that American naval and air power still retains its awesome reputation, and that looming U.S. red lines will thus go unchallenged. But how long that reputation will hold up in East Asia remains to be seen.
Robert Haddick is an independent contractor at U.S. Special Operations Command. He writes here in a personal capacity. In September 2014, U.S. Naval Institute Press will publish “Fire on the Water: China, America, and the Future of the Pacific,” Haddick’s book on the rise of China’s military power and U.S. strategy in East Asia.
http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/getting-tough-the-south-china-sea-9946

 

http://www.infowars.com/central-banker-appointed-as-prime-minister-of-ukraine/

Central Banker Appointed as Prime Minister of Ukraine

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
February 27, 2014

A reshuffled Ukrainian Parliament installed following a coup last week has voted to appoint Arseniy Yatsenyuk as the new prime minister of the country. Yats, as Victoria Nuland, the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs at the U.S. State Department, called him, is a natural choice. He is a millionaire former banker who served as economy minister, foreign minister and parliamentary speaker before Yanukovych took office in 2010. He is a member of Yulie Tymoshenko’s Fatherland Party. Prior to the revolution cooked up by the U. S.State Department and executed by ultra-nationalist street thugs, Tymoshenko was incarcerated for embezzlement and other crimes against the people of Ukraine. Now she will be part of the installed government, same as she was after the last orchestrated coup, the Orange Revolution. http://youtu.be/m0xMtXOilWY

 

Yats will deliver Ukraine to the [Rothschild] international bankers. “Ukraine is on the brink of bankruptcy and needs to be saved from collapse — Yatsenyuk has a strong economic background,” Ariel Cohen, senior fellow at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, told Bloomberg on Wednesday. “Ukraine faces difficult reforms but without them there won’t be a successful [Rothschild moneychanger debt-slavery] future.”

Discussion with the IMF is crucial, US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew [LOL!!!] said earlier this week. In order to cinch the deal, the U.S. government will sweeten the pot. Lew talked with the IMF boss, Christine Lagarde, about Ukraine as he headed back from a globalist confab, the G-20 meeting in Sydney, Australia.

“Secretary Lew informed Managing Director Lagarde that he had spoken earlier in the day with Ukrainian leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk and advised him of the broad support for an international assistance [SIC] package centered on the IMF [“Austerity package” that gives the Ukrainian people debt-slavery and the politician-whores humongous bank accounts in the Cayman Islands!], as soon as the transitional Ukrainian [Rothschild-puppet] government is fully established by the Parliament,” MNI News reported on Monday. “Secretary Lew [Rothschild agent] also noted that he had communicated to Mr. Yatsenyuk the need to quickly begin implementing economic reforms and enter discussions with the IMF following the establishment of the transitional government.”

Ukraine’s story is right out of the IMF playbook. The nation’s corrupt leaders past and present – most notably Tymoshenko, who went to prison for corruption and wholesale thievery – have enriched themselves at the expense of ordinary Ukrainians.

“Ukraine at the dawn of independence was among the ten most developed countries, and now it drags out a miserable existence,” Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko said last year. The nation’s leaders “signed a memorandum with the International Monetary Fund to meet the requirements of the oligarchs [Same cult kicked out of Russia by Vladimir Putin that saved the Russian Republic.], but on the other hand — to timely pay the interest on the IMF loans and to raise the prices for gas and electricity,” Symonenko said.

The Orange Revolution – initiated by NED, IRI, Soros and the CIA – installed a rogue’s gallery of self-seeking sociopaths who further bankrupted a country already seriously debilitated by corruption.

For the IMF and the financial elite [City of London], Ukraine is nothing less than a tantalizing bounty. “Its fertile black soil generated more than one-fourth of Soviet agricultural output, and its farms provided substantial quantities of meat, milk, grain, and vegetables to other republics,” notes ABO, a website covering energy resources. “Likewise, its diversified heavy industry supplied the unique equipment (for example, large diameter pipes) and raw materials to industrial and mining sites (vertical drilling apparatus) in other regions of the former USSR.”

After breaking away from the Soviet Union and declaring independence, it was thought the country would “liberalize” its industry and resources, in other words open them up for privatization by transnational corporations and [Rothschild] international banks, but this did not happen quickly enough for the financiers and the corporatists.

http://youtu.be/ChV-sCFr7qA

Ukraine to undertake “extremely unpopular steps” as IMF [Rothschild] takes over economy.

“The drop in steel prices and Ukraine’s exposure to the global financial crisis due to aggressive foreign borrowing lowered growth in 2008 and the economy contracted more than 15 percent in 2009, among the worst economic performances in the world,” ABO explains. “In August 2010, Ukraine, under the Yanukovych Administration, reached a new agreement with the IMF for a $15.1 billion Stand-By Agreement. Economic growth resumed in 2010 and 2011, buoyed by exports. After initial disbursements, the IMF program stalled in early 2011 due to the Ukrainian Government’s lack of progress in implementing key gas sector reforms, namely gas tariff increases. Economic growth slowed in the second half of 2012 with Ukraine finishing the year in technical recession following two consecutive quarters of negative growth.” [Sound familiar?]

Now that Yanukovych is out of the picture, the bankster minion Yats is lording over the Parliament, and thuggish fascists control the streets and guard against a counter revolution that might threaten Wall Street’s coup, the coast is clear for the IMF to pick up where it left off. Ukraine, now one of the poorest countries in Europe thanks to a kleptocracy supported by Washington and Wall Street, is wide open for further looting. [Putin will decide this matter with the distinct possibility of another Rothschild Moneychanger-demanded war breaking out!]

This article was posted: Thursday, February 27, 2014 at 10:30 am –END

Chilling! "The Paragraph Began to Self-Delete"

Democracy Now! / By Amy Goodman

'The Paragraph Began to Self-Delete': Did NSA Hack Snowden Biographer's Computer?
Guardian journalist Luke Harding says paragraphs of his writing mysteriously disappeared while working on his latest book 'The Snowden Files.'

    

February 24, 2014  | 

Is the National Security Agency breaking into computers and tampering with unpublished manuscripts?
Award-winning Guardian journalist Luke Harding says paragraphs of his writing mysteriously disappeared when he was working on his latest book, "The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man."
"I wrote that Snowden’s revelations had damaged U.S. tech companies and their bottom line. Something odd happened," wrote Harding in The Guardian. "The paragraph I had just written began to self-delete. The cursor moved rapidly from the left, gobbling text. I watched my words vanish."
Harding joins us to talk about the computer monitoring and other times he believes he was being tracked.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

Amy Goodman: We turn now to the latest on the growing surveillance state.

Edward Snowden: [Recently, we learned that our governments], “working in concert, have created a system of worldwide mass surveillance, watching everything we do. Great Britain’s George Orwell warned us of the danger of this kind of information. The types of collection in the book — microphones and video cameras, TVs that watch us — are nothing compared to what we have available today. We have sensors in our pockets that track us everywhere we go. Think about what this means for the privacy of the average person. A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. They’ll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves, an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought. And that’s a problem, because privacy matters.”

AG: Those are the words of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, speaking in December.
We turn now to the remarkable story of British journalist Luke Harding, who says he became the target of surveillance himself while reporting on Edward Snowden.
Harding recently published "The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man." On Friday, he revealed that while he was writing the book on his computer, paragraphs of the book would begin to self-delete.
He repeatedly saw the cursor move rapidly from the left, gobbling text. And that wasn’t the only time he felt he was being monitored. Luke Harding joins us now via Democracy Now! video stream from The Guardian newsroom in London.
Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Luke. Tell us what happened.
Luke Harding: Well, before I do that, I think you have to understand the context, which is that the first few months of last year after Snowden’s leaks, both the U.S. and the British governments were scrambling to find out what he’d taken, how much he’d taken, why he’d taken it, and were really kind of clueless. And so, I think in that context it’s hardly surprising that the small number of journalists who were working on this material, including me, would have been targeted.
What happened was that I was writing my book. I was about halfway through. I had been to see Glenn Greenwald in Rio, in Brazil, to interview him, which was a kind of curious experience because Glenn is clearly very heavily surveilled by, I think, all sorts of people. Back at my home in the English countryside, I was writing kind of rather disparagingly, rather critically, about the NSA and its — the damage these revelations had done to Silicon Valley. And I was sitting back, working offline, I have to say, and, as you say, the text began rapidly deleting. And I thought, "Oh, my goodness! What is going on here?" This happened four or five times over a period of a month, to the point where I was actually, almost kind of jokingly, leaving little notes every morning to this kind of mysterious reader. And then, at one point, one of my colleagues mentioned this in a newspaper interview in Germany, and it suddenly stopped. So, I wrote this piece not because this was an especially sinister experience, but merely to kind of lay out the facts in what was another curious episode in an already quite surreal tale.
AG: Luke, you describe in your most recent piece about an American who approached you when you were in Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil.
LH: Well, that’s right. I mean, again, I said this — you know, I mean, it was quite funny, in a way. Essentially, what happened was that I met Glenn at a hotel by the seafront, and we had to shift locations several times because it was clear that there were various people who were trying to eavesdrop on our conversation, and we ended up in the business suite where we could actually physically lock the door behind ourselves. Subsequently, at my hotel, the Marriott, the next day, I was kind of accosted in the lobby by someone who looked as if they were straight out of CIA central casting, with a kind of military haircut and neatly ironed khaki shorts. And basically, he wanted to become my friend. He wanted to take me sightseeing. And it was a curious incident. I mean, you know, I say in my piece that he may have been a tourist, because of course there’s an innocent explanation for all of these things. But having talked to Glenn, one of the things he taught me was that the CIA in Rio especially was very aggressive. Glenn’s own computer had been stolen from the home where he shared with David Miranda just a few weeks previously. And it’s clear that there was a lot of U.S. intelligence activity going on there.
AG: Remind us, Luke Harding, about the day the GCHQ came to call on The Guardian.
LH: Yeah, it was really, I think, one of the bizarrest episodes in the history of journalism. Essentially, the British government was extremely unhappy about our ongoing publication, from June the 5th onwards, of Snowden’s files, of the prison revelations, of Verizon and so on. And we came under increasing pressure, private pressure, backdoor pressure, from David Cameron, the British prime minister, who sent his most senior official, a guy called Sir Jeremy Heywood, to come and see us and basically say, "We can do this nicely, or we can go to law." In other words, he wanted this material back, and if we didn’t give it back, we were going to be injuncted. In other words, police would seize our computers and kind of shut down our reporting operation. And we explained that this was pointless, because Glenn had this stuff in Brazil; Laura Poitras, the filmmaker, had Snowden material in Berlin; The Washington Post similarly.
But the British government wasn’t listening, and this culminated in a hot Saturday morning last summer with three of my colleagues being forced to smash up our computers in the underground car park, four floors down from where I’m talking to you, watched by two spies from the British spy agency, GCHQ, who took photos on their iPhones to record the event, brought along a special machine called a degausser, which looks like a microwave oven. So we had to post the pieces of our bashed-up MacBooks into this degausser, which demagnetized them. And then these spies, who are based in the English countryside in a small provincial town called Cheltenham, they don’t get to London very often, the big city, and they left carrying bags of shopping, presents for their families. It really was a bizarre thing and, I think, for anyone who cares about press freedom, a pretty chilling thing, too.
AG: While you were doing the work, while The Guardian was, and Glenn Greenwald was working for The Guardian, putting out the original pieces based on what Edward Snowden released from the National Security Agency, you write about how you were a part of this small team holed up in a room at The Guardian. Describe the security you had, and even your computers not being linked to the Internet.
LH: Yeah, it’s actually one floor up from here, so the computer smashing happened three floors down. The secret bunker is upstairs. And we knew that this was a serious — you know, the material that Snowden had entrusted to us, that this was a very serious undertaking. And we had a clear mission from him, which was to not publish anything which would damage legitimate intelligence operations, but to reveal mass surveillance, which we now all know about. And so, there were seven or eight of us, never any more than that, working in the room. We had security guards, around the clock, 24 hours, making sure that nobody who shouldn’t have been there was there. We left all electronics out. And we had four laptops and a PC, which had never been connected to the Internet, which were brand new, air-gapped at all times. We papered over the windows so nobody could see in from outside. And we — actually, to be honest, we were also kind of working against the clock. There was a sense that we needed to get as many stories out as we could, and in a responsible way, because we didn’t know when the British government would fall on us. And one other quite nice detail, cleaners were banned. Nobody was inside that room. So, very quickly, you know, I write in my book, it sort of resembled a kind of student dormitory with pizza wrappers, dirty coffee cups. So it was a pretty insalubrious working environment.
AG: Has the GCHQ, the Government Communications Headquarters, the equivalent of the NSA, and the NSA changed their practices in any way in this eight months since all of this information has begun to come out?
LH: Well, you would think the answer to that question, Amy, would be yes, but in reality the answer is no. And I find it very depressing. I mean, it’s been fascinating. You know, I’ve been to the U.S. several times researching the book, and there’s clearly a very lively debate, a polarized debate, going on. But what’s happening politically is very interesting. In Britain, for certainly the first four or five months, the entire political establishment was asleep, and it’s only really woken up, I’d say, in the last few months. And the message from David Cameron, the prime minister, has been, really, "Move along, nothing to see here." But I think, inevitably, one of the things you know when you look at these documents is that GCHQ and the NSA work so closely together. This becomes very clear. They’re practically one entity. So I think the reforms or "reforms" that Obama announced in January, on January 17th, will inevitably affect the work of GCHQ, as well.
AG: And what do you think of President Obama’s so-called "reforms"?
LH: Well, I mean, I think reform is rather a grand word. It seems to me they’re more face-saving tweaks, actually. I mean, the big takeaway is that the NSA will no longer listen to Angela Merkel’s cellphone or that of other "friendly" leaders. But I’ve just been in Europe doing various literary events there, and people are scratching their heads wondering whether their prime ministers, you know, are sufficiently friendly to — whether that means they will be bugged or not. They simply don’t know. And on the big thing, which is of course the collection of American metadata, telephony data, you know, tell me if I’m wrong, but that’s carrying on. OK, it may be administered by some new entity, but those programs, which Ed Snowden very bravely exposed, are still continuing.
AG: And we just have 30 seconds. Google, Microsoft, have they changed their ways of operating at all as a result of all that has come out, and the other big companies?
LH: Well, I mean, I haven’t — I haven’t noticed major changes. I have noticed absolute panic and a really massive kind of PR campaign to try and assure everybody, from us — senior Google executives recently visited The Guardian — to the whole world, that they are not kind of complicit in this spying, and have been coerced into collaborating. But I still think there are some kind of big questions about how deep their involvement in all of this is.
AG: Luke Harding, I want to thank you for being with us, award-winning foreign correspondent with The Guardian. His new book, just out, "The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man." He also recently wrote a piece in The Guardian called "Writing The Snowden Files: 'The Paragraph Began to Self-Delete.'"

Amy Goodman is the host of Democracy Now!, a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,000 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “The Silenced Majority,” a New York Times best-seller

‘To Protect Its People’ Indonesia Says No To Free Market

22 Economics EIR February 21, 2014
‘To Protect Its People’
Indonesia Says No
To Free Market
by Ron Castonguay
Feb. 13—An important law just passed by the Indonesian
Parliament curtails the rights of the market to control
the destiny of the Indonesian people, apparently
anticipating a need for emergency economic measures.
Article 54 of the new trade law allows the government
to restrict exports of commodities to anticipate “quite
drastic” price increases in global markets or to ensure
domestic supply. It also allows for import restrictions to
develop or protect certain industries and to safeguard
the country’s balance of payments.
The law, approved at a plenary session of parliament
on Feb. 11, may limit exports or imports of staple
commodities to ensure local demand is met. The new
law highlights Indonesia’s push to limit commodity exports
and food imports to develop local production and
boost manufacturing capabilities in the country, as the
government seeks to reduce the economy’s dependence
on overseas shipments for growth.
Indonesia is not shy about its rights to violate the
dogma of “free trade” to protect higher, and more valid,
values. “This law underlines Indonesia’s stance of not
adopting a free market,” Deputy Trade Minister Bayu
Krisnamurthi said after the bill was passed. “The government
has been given the right to intervene to protect
its people.”
Aiming for Food Self-Sufficiency
The goal of the new provisions is not just short term.
Indonesia, with its heritage of Portuguese, English, and
Dutch colonialism, is determined to reject that status,
develop itself, and fully exist as a sovereign nation.
“We can’t rely on coal and palm oil anymore,” said
Juniman, a Jakarta-based economist at PT Bank Internasional
Indonesia. “If all our raw materials are exported,
manufacturers won’t be able to grow and it’ll be
difficult for us to avoid getting stuck in the middle-income
trap.”
Indonesia has 237 million people on its 17,000
islands. Its demands and its actions to establish its
sovereignty are more important than may at first be
apparent. It is not just other minor undeveloped country.
Only China, India, and the United States have a
greater population than Indonesia, and there is no country
with a larger Muslin population. While the poison of
Saudi-backed fundamentalism has touched Indonesia,
Islam is by-and-large moderate there, and the government,
based on a expressly secular model, is relatively
stable. Its actions are watched and noted throughout the
world.
Ever since the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, which
deeply affected the country’s economy, Indonesia has
been attempting to reform its agricultural sector. It has
put in place a large number of reforms with the objectives
of achieving food security through increased production
of rice, sugar, soybeans, maize, and beef; ensuring
that prices are affordable for consumers;
diversifying production away from carbohydrates to
animal-based products; raising the level of competitiveness
for agricultural products; and improving the
lot of farmers.
A new Food Law, signed by President Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono in November 2012, was intended to
institutionalize self-sufficiency in food production, and
“food sovereignty” as overarching food security policies,
according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s
Foreign Agricultural Service. Among its provisions,
Article 14 states that “Sources of food supply are from
domestic production and national food reserves. In the
case of shortage of food supply from those two sources,
food can be fulfilled by importation, as needed.” In
other words, Indonesia should depend on itself for its
food, only relying on the international market in case of
need.
Another provision, Article 24, limits the export of
food, saying exports “can be carried out by taking into
account the needs of domestic food consumption and
national interest. The export of staple food can only be
carried out after the fulfillment of domestic consumption
and national food reserves.”
Not all the goals of the Food Law have been realized.
While there was opposition to the law from the
international food cartels, Indonesia has been self-sufficient
enough in food to be shielded from cartel retribution.
The exception is Indonesia’s production and
export of edible palm oil in the international arena—
which has been under continued Greenie attack, most
February 21, 2014 EIR Economics 23
especially European, on a variety of so-called health
and environmental grounds.
However, the implementation of the law has encountered
numerous problems, including an Australian
embargo on live cow exports because of Indonesian
“cruelty” in slaughtering, profiteering in certain commodities,
and widespread corruption problems that lead
to a black market in foodstuff import certificates.
Fight with the Mineral Cartels
Indonesia’s fight to escape being merely a raw materials
exporter is also proceeding in the area of minerals.
Indonesia is the world’s biggest exporter of thermal
coal, tin, and nickel ore, and a major supplier of copper,
aluminum, and gold ores. Minerals and related products
have in the past accounted for up to 20% of its exports.
Copper brought in $7.2 billion in annual receipts
in 2011, followed by nickel ($3.1 billion), tin ($2.4 billion),
and bauxite ($1.1 billion).
But, by and large, Indonesian mining is a collection
of holes in the ground and short-haul railroads. Little to
none of the processing of ores, or refining, smelting,
and fabricating the finished metal into semi-finished
goods, or final product is done in Indonesia, leaving the
country dependent on the mineral cartels.
When, in 2009, Indonesia
announced a law to
change that, by requiring
mining companies to at
least do the initial processing
of ores in the country,
beginning in 2014, the international
cartels let out a
howl and produced a
ruckus that still continues.
Rather than investing in Indonesia
by building smelters
and other associated
processing facilities, the
international cartels began
a campaign of press vilification,
legal actions, and
stubborn refusal to accept
the will of the Indonesian
government and people.
With few exceptions, the
mining companies declared
they would not prepare to
carry out the law, but would just cease production in
Indonesia.
On the eve of the law’s implementation in January,
the government let the mining law go into effect, with
the provision that unrefined ores would be subject to an
export tax. Indonesia’s exports of mineral ore are now
at a standstill, with unprocessed bauxite and nickel the
target of an outright ban (for technical reasons involved
the refining process), and mining companies either refusing
or unable to pay the heavy new export duty on
copper and the other concentrates that were given an
11th-hour three-year extension, according to a report in
Asia Sentinel.
So far, there have been no requests for export licenses,
as an effective boycott appears to have been imposed
by London. And, so with out-of-country stockpiles
and the overall weakened state of the world’s
economies, the mining cartels may be able to continue
their anti-Indonesia stance for some time.
But the very success of the mining cartels’ boycott
of Indonesian minerals ultimately reduces the viability
of those cartels. After all, the ultimate industrial consumer
of Indonesia’s minerals is China, which wants
long-term supply under stable conditions. If the cartels
cannot or will not supply that, why not just eliminate
the middle-man?
Creative Commons/Alexis Gravel
Indonesia has put in place a large number of reforms to achieve food security through increased
production of rice, sugar, soybeans, maize, and beef. Here, terraced agriculture in Indonesia.

12 Signs That Russia Is Ready To Fight A War Over Crimea

By Michael Snyder, on February 27th, 2014

 

     

Russia will never, ever give up Crimea without a fight.  Anyone that thinks otherwise is just being delusional.  The Russian Black Sea fleet's main base at Sevastopol is far too strategically important.  In addition, ethnic Russians make up approximately 60 percent of the population of Crimea, and most of the population is rabidly pro-Russian.  In fact, many prominent Crimean politicians are already calling for reunification with Russia.  So if you have been thinking that Russia is just going to fold up shop and go home now that pro-European protesters have violently seized power in Kiev, you can quit holding your breath.  The truth is that Russia is more than willing to fight a war over Crimea.  And considering the fact that vitally important pipelines that pump natural gas from Russia to the rest of Europe go right through Ukraine, it is not likely that Russia will just willingly hand the rest of Ukraine over to the U.S. and the EU either.  If the U.S. and the EU push too hard in Ukraine, a major regional war may erupt which could ultimately lead to something much larger.

Russia and Ukraine have very deep historical ties.  Most Americans may not think that Ukraine is very important, but the Russians consider Ukraine to be of the utmost strategic importance.
As an American, how would you feel if another nation funded and organized the violent overthrow of the democratically-elected Canadian government and replaced it with a government that was virulently anti-American?
By doing this to Ukraine, the United States and the EU are essentially sticking a pin in Russia's eye.  Needless to say, Russia is extremely angry at this point and they are gearing up for war.
The following are 12 signs that Russia is ready to fight a war over Crimea...
#1 More Russian military vehicles continue to pour into Crimea.  Just check out this video.
#2 Russian military vehicles have been photographed in the main square of Sevastopol.
#3 Russian military jets near the border with Ukraine have been put on combat alert.
#4 Russia has ordered "surprise military exercises" along the Ukrainian border.
#5 In connection with those "exercises", it is being reported that Russia has deployed 150,000 troops along the border with Ukraine.
#6 Russia already has approximately 26,000 troops stationed at their naval base in Sevastopol.
#7 Russian ships carrying additional soldiers have been spotted off the coast of Crimea...

Russia’s large landing ship Nikolai Filchenkov has arrived near the Russia Black Sea Fleet’s base at Sevastopol, which Russia has leased from Ukraine since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The ship is reported to be carrying as many as 200 soldiers and has joined four additional ships carrying an unknown amount of Special Forces troops. Flot.com also reported over the weekend that personnel from the 45th Airborne Special Forces unit and additional divisions had been airlifted into Anapa, a city on Russia’s Black Sea coastline.

#8 Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made the following statement to reporters on Wednesday...

"Measures are taken to guarantee the security of our facilities."

#9 An unidentified Russian official has told the Financial Times that Russia is willing to use military force to protect Crimea...

Moscow earlier revealed that it would be ready to go for war over the Crimea region in order to protect the large population and army installations.
“If Ukraine breaks apart, it will trigger a war. They will lose Crimea first [because] we will go in and protect [it], just as we did in Georgia,” an unidentified Russian official told the Financial Times.

#10 Officials in Sevastopol have "installed" a Russian citizen as mayor of the city.
#11 Approximately 120 pro-Russian gunmen have seized the Crimean parliament building and have raised the Russian flag.
#12 There are rumors that Russian authorities have offered protection to ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych...

Viktor F. Yanukovych, the ousted president of Ukraine, declared on Thursday that he remained the lawful president of the country and appealed to Russia to “secure my personal safety from the actions of extremists.” Russian news agencies reported that he had already arrived in Russia, but officials did not immediately confirm that.

No matter what the "new government" in Kiev says, and no matter how hard the U.S. and the EU push, Russia will never give up Crimea.  The following is what a recent Debka article had to say about the matter...

There is no way that President Vladimir Putin will relinquish Russian control of the Crimean peninsula and its military bases there - or more particularly the big Black Sea naval base at Sevastopol. This military stronghold is the key to Russia’s Middle East policy. If it is imperiled, so too are Russia’s military posture in Syria and its strategic understandings with Iran.

And you know what?
The people of Crimea do not want Russia to leave either.  In fact, they overwhelmingly want Russia to help defend them against the "new government" in Kiev.
As you read this, militia groups are being formed in Crimea to fight back against the "nationalist invasion" that they are anticipating.  Just check out the following excerpt from a recent Time Magazine article...

Many of the people at the rally in Sevastopol were not just ready to believe. They were convinced of the imminent nationalist invasion. What scared them most were the right-wing political parties and militant groups that have played a role in Ukraine’s revolution. “What do you think they’re going to do with all those weapons they seized from police in Kiev? They’re going to come here and make war,” said Sergei Bochenko, who identified himself as the commander of a local militia group in Sevastopol called the Southern Russian Cossack Battalion.
In preparation, he said, his group of several hundred men had armed themselves with assault rifles and begun to train for battle. “There’s not a chance in hell we’re going to accept the rule of that fascist scum running around in Kiev with swastikas,” he said. That may be overstating the case. Nowhere in Ukraine has the uprising involved neo-Nazi groups, and no swastikas have appeared on the revolution’s insignia. But every one of the dozen or so people TIME spoke to in Sevastopol was certain that the revolt was run by fascists, most likely on the payroll of the U.S. State Department.

And just remember what happened back in 2008 in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.  The Russians have already shown that they are not afraid to militarily intervene in order to protect Russian citizens.
So what would the U.S. and the EU do if a war erupts between Russia and Ukraine?
Would they risk a direct military confrontation with Russia in order to help Ukraine?
I am very concerned about where all of this could be heading.
What about you?
What do you think?

Food - The Fuel of Revolution

Food - The Fuel of Revolution

February 28, 2014 | Maryann Gearhart
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The earth is literally shaking as earthquakes are dramatically increasing across the globe.

But it’s not just the earth that is rumbling; nations are increasingly experiencing the writhing discomfort of political upheaval and the common denominator is—food.

The complex system of the global food supply is the key that opens the exits as well as the entrance doors for political regimes around the world.

Food shortages spark the fires of protest such the one that resulted in the ouster of Tunisia’s President, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and eventually spread like wildfire to Egypt, Libya and Yemen in 2011, and now seem to be engulfing a new list of nations that were predicted by complex systems theorist, Yaneer Bar-Yam of New England Complex Systems Institute, as vulnerable to revolution due to rising food prices.

Brian Merchant reported that  Bar-Yam charted the rise in the FAO food price index—a measure the UN uses to map the cost of food over time and found that whenever it rose above 210, riots broke out worldwide.  It happened in 2008 after the economic collapse and again in 2011, when a Tunisian street vendor who could no longer feed his family set himself on fire in protest.”

Bar-Yam’s list of nations deemed destined to riots and unrest due to food shortages were

South Africa; Haiti; Argentina; Egypt; Tunisia; Brazil; Turkey; Colombia; Libya; Sweden; India; China; Bulgaria; Chile; Syria; Thailand; Bangladesh; Bahrain; Ukraine; Venezuela; Bosnia.

We have already seen the Arab Spring countries experience riot and overthrow, but now we see mounting turmoil in the other nations on the list.

“There are certainly many other factors fueling mass protests, but hunger---or the desperation caused by its looming specter—is often the tipping point.  …Venezuela—where students have taken to the streets and protests have left citizens dead—food prices at a staggering 18-year high,” says Merchant.

But it’s not just food shortages that promote unrest.

Factors which affect food at its source serve as a volatile contender in the ring of political jousting.

In Thailand, amid anti-government protests, the lamenting voice of the farmer can be heard.  According to Orthai Sriring and Amy Sawitta Lefevre, “…the Election Commission approved a 712 million Baht ($21.87 million) fund to be drawn from the central budget for rice farmers, many of whom have been waiting for payment and some of whom have committed suicide in desperation.”

“But the sum is a small fraction of the estimated 130 billion baht her [Prime Minister Yingluch Shinawatra] government needs to pay to nearly a million farmers.”

“If we don’t get our money this week, we’ll return to remind the prime minister about it,” said one of the farmers’ leaders after they protested outside an air force base where Yingluck was holding a cabinet meeting.

Americans are used to hearing about food shortages abroad, but what about here, at home?

The following excerpt from a recent Prophecy News Watch article gives a glimpsing view of upcoming trouble.

“The state of California, which produces the most vegetables in the U.S, is going through its worst drought ever, with 91.6% of the state experiencing severe to exceptional drought. 2013 was its worst year ever and there has been no improvement so far in 2014. According to CNBC, it is being projected that California farmers are going to let half a million acres of farmland sit idle this year because of the crippling drought. Much of the western U.S. has been exceedingly dry for an extended period of time, and this is hurting huge numbers of farmers and ranchers all the way from Texas to the west coast.”  Read more here

Food production woes coupled with the American farmers’ tremendous dependence on farm subsidies paid at “around $20 billion per year,” according to Wikipedia, from a budget of which is projected to be deficient of $514 billion in fiscal year 2014, the curious question has to be asked, “How long can Americans expect the fuel to remain protected from the spark?”

Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2014/February28/281.html#riecPfwXBfElK8E7.99

The Lights Are Watching

The Lights Are Watching

February 28, 2014 | Tom Olago
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Are the lights that illumine your room or current location, doing more than just providing light? Could it be that the lights are also watching you? It would seem that LED light fixtures are now emerging as the latest tools in spying and investigation.

Judy Molland, in a recent article for care2.com describes the light-emitting diode (LED) as ‘one of today’s most energy-efficient and rapidly-developing lighting technologies. Quality LED light bulbs last longer, are more durable, and offer comparable or better light quality than other types of lighting.

LED is a highly energy efficient lighting technology and has the potential to fundamentally change the future of lighting in the United States. Residential LEDs, especially ENERGY STAR rated products, use at least 75 percent less energy and last 25 times longer than incandescent lighting.’

Judy also makes reference to a New York Times report that states that ‘the clean, bright light of newly installed LED fixtures illuminating Terminal B at Newark Liberty International Airport, in New Jersey, are part of a new wireless network that’s watching visitors.

The 171 LED fixtures are apparently the backbone of a system that feeds data into software that can spot long lines, read license plates, identify suspicious activity and alert the appropriate staff…Now, these amazing lights are also being used to track passengers at Newark Liberty International Airport.

The New York Times reports that the new light fixtures are part of a new wireless network that collects and feeds data into software that can spot long lines, recognize license plates and even identify suspicious activity, sending alerts to the appropriate staff.

The project is still in its early stages, but executives with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport, are already talking about expanding it to other terminals and buildings.’

The sensors in the lights were reportedly designed by Sensity Systems.

Not surprisingly, the fine battle lines between security requirements and privacy needs are again being redrawn between security enforcement agents and privacy/data security advocates.

Judy cites prior privacy invasion examples such as reports of rubbish bins in London being set to snoop on innocent citizens, and police officers in California wanting to tap into property owners’ private security cameras. Future plans include a street lighting system in Las Vegas that could also be used to issue security alerts at a pedestrian mall.

Judy expounds: “Privacy advocates point out that the installation of these security systems raises the specter of technology racing ahead of the ability to harness it, running risks of invading privacy and mismanaging information, (while) others argue that we should have no expectation of privacy when we go to an airport, other than the restroom. They add that if you don’t want to be observed, you shouldn’t go to an airport; after all, it wasn’t so long ago that planes were used as weapons.”

And these lights are by no means limited to surveillance – apparently they are also now being used to provide useful business marketing information. Writing for popsci.com, Francis Diep explains: “Electronics company Philips is piloting a system in which LED store lamps track shoppers... Shoppers have to download the store's app, first.

Once they do, every lamp in the store is able to communicate with the shoppers' phones using pulses of light the human eye can't detect. Thus, the lamps know whether someone is in the produce section or the peanut butter aisle… and in response, the app can call up killer deals on bananas or jelly, depending.

Philips is testing the system in Europe, but hasn't confirmed which stores will have it, Wired UK reports. This lamp-based customer-tracking scheme is part of an overall drive among companies to come up with ways to track people's shopping habits in stores…Data on where people walk and pause in stores are valuable to the stores, of course. In return, stores offer shoppers targeted coupons.

The Philips app even suggests recipes and a walking route through the store, based on which ingredients users want to buy... In addition, lights are everywhere, as Philips business development manager Gerben van der Lugt explained in a statement about Philips' supermarket tracking.

 "The beauty of the system is that retailers do not have to invest in additional infrastructure to house, power and support location beacons for indoor positioning," he said. "The light fixtures themselves can communicate this information by virtue of their presence everywhere in the store."”

It would seem that using supermarket lights to acquire marketing intelligence and to provide a better customer experience may not generate as much controversy as the usage for security surveillance would.

However the question remains: “Are these surveillance equipments excessive and crossing into invasions of privacy? Or are they necessary to keep us all as safe as possible? Are they being used in ways that intrude on privacy unnecessarily?

How safe are these records and do we have any comfort that the information collected will not be used to harm or compromise the privacy of innocent people? Should we be staring nervously at the lights in airport bathrooms or hotel rooms, not knowing how far the snooping can go and where it will stop, all in the name of crime detection and prevention?

Even in the aftermath of the Snowden/NSA revelations it would seem that there still isn’t much by way of assurances to the general public from the authorities, that would inspire high levels of confidence or trust.

Lisa Vaas, writing for nakedsecurity.sophos.com exemplifies in her recent comment the primary privacy and data security concerns: “Sensity, to its credit, has acknowledged the concerns of privacy advocates who say that the tendency is to suck up as much big data as possible first and then worry about securing it later.

The company has gone so far as to create a board to help figure out the technology's implications. The data, in the meantime, is encrypted (though we have no more detail than that) and "supersecure", chief executive Hugh Martin told the NYT. But it's perhaps best to be skeptical of claims that data is secure, let alone "supersecure".

We just marked the end of an epic year for data breaches, with over 800 million records lost. It would be wonderful to believe in the claims that data being rolled up by places like this airport are going to be secure and that nobody's going to get at it without a subpoena or written request.

But there's hope, and then there's reality. Eight hundred million lost records. Goodness gracious, that's a lot of not-so-super security.”

Meanwhile, the lights keep watching.

Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2014/February28/285.html#SBlVtoaepEbP5IyL.99

The Lights Are Watching

February 28, 2014 | Tom Olago

Share this article

---

Are the lights that illumine your room or current location, doing more than just providing light? Could it be that the lights are also watching you? It would seem that LED light fixtures are now emerging as the latest tools in spying and investigation.

Judy Molland, in a recent article for care2.com describes the light-emitting diode (LED) as ‘one of today’s most energy-efficient and rapidly-developing lighting technologies. Quality LED light bulbs last longer, are more durable, and offer comparable or better light quality than other types of lighting. 
LED is a highly energy efficient lighting technology and has the potential to fundamentally change the future of lighting in the United States. Residential LEDs, especially ENERGY STAR rated products, use at least 75 percent less energy and last 25 times longer than incandescent lighting.’

Judy also makes reference to a New York Times report that states that ‘the clean, bright light of newly installed LED fixtures illuminating Terminal B at Newark Liberty International Airport, in New Jersey, are part of a new wireless network that’s watching visitors. 
The 171 LED fixtures are apparently the backbone of a system that feeds data into software that can spot long lines, read license plates, identify suspicious activity and alert the appropriate staff…Now, these amazing lights are also being used to track passengers at Newark Liberty International Airport. 
The New York Times reports that the new light fixtures are part of a new wireless network that collects and feeds data into software that can spot long lines, recognize license plates and even identify suspicious activity, sending alerts to the appropriate staff.
The project is still in its early stages, but executives with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport, are already talking about expanding it to other terminals and buildings.’

The sensors in the lights were reportedly designed by Sensity Systems.

Not surprisingly, the fine battle lines between security requirements and privacy needs are again being redrawn between security enforcement agents and privacy/data security advocates. 
Judy cites prior privacy invasion examples such as reports of rubbish bins in London being set to snoop on innocent citizens, and police officers in California wanting to tap into property owners’ private security cameras. Future plans include a street lighting system in Las Vegas that could also be used to issue security alerts at a pedestrian mall.

Judy expounds: “Privacy advocates point out that the installation of these security systems raises the specter of technology racing ahead of the ability to harness it, running risks of invading privacy and mismanaging information, (while) others argue that we should have no expectation of privacy when we go to an airport, other than the restroom. They add that if you don’t want to be observed, you shouldn’t go to an airport; after all, it wasn’t so long ago that planes were used as weapons.”

And these lights are by no means limited to surveillance – apparently they are also now being used to provide useful business marketing information. Writing for popsci.com, Francis Diep explains: “Electronics company Philips is piloting a system in which LED store lamps track shoppers... Shoppers have to download the store's app, first. 
Once they do, every lamp in the store is able to communicate with the shoppers' phones using pulses of light the human eye can't detect. Thus, the lamps know whether someone is in the produce section or the peanut butter aisle… and in response, the app can call up killer deals on bananas or jelly, depending. 
Philips is testing the system in Europe, but hasn't confirmed which stores will have it, Wired UK reports. This lamp-based customer-tracking scheme is part of an overall drive among companies to come up with ways to track people's shopping habits in stores…Data on where people walk and pause in stores are valuable to the stores, of course. In return, stores offer shoppers targeted coupons. 
The Philips app even suggests recipes and a walking route through the store, based on which ingredients users want to buy... In addition, lights are everywhere, as Philips business development manager Gerben van der Lugt explained in a statement about Philips' supermarket tracking.
 "The beauty of the system is that retailers do not have to invest in additional infrastructure to house, power and support location beacons for indoor positioning," he said. "The light fixtures themselves can communicate this information by virtue of their presence everywhere in the store."”

It would seem that using supermarket lights to acquire marketing intelligence and to provide a better customer experience may not generate as much controversy as the usage for security surveillance would.
However the question remains: “Are these surveillance equipments excessive and crossing into invasions of privacy? Or are they necessary to keep us all as safe as possible? Are they being used in ways that intrude on privacy unnecessarily? 
How safe are these records and do we have any comfort that the information collected will not be used to harm or compromise the privacy of innocent people? Should we be staring nervously at the lights in airport bathrooms or hotel rooms, not knowing how far the snooping can go and where it will stop, all in the name of crime detection and prevention?

Even in the aftermath of the Snowden/NSA revelations it would seem that there still isn’t much by way of assurances to the general public from the authorities, that would inspire high levels of confidence or trust.

Lisa Vaas, writing for nakedsecurity.sophos.com exemplifies in her recent comment the primary privacy and data security concerns: “Sensity, to its credit, has acknowledged the concerns of privacy advocates who say that the tendency is to suck up as much big data as possible first and then worry about securing it later. 
The company has gone so far as to create a board to help figure out the technology's implications. The data, in the meantime, is encrypted (though we have no more detail than that) and "supersecure", chief executive Hugh Martin told the NYT. But it's perhaps best to be skeptical of claims that data is secure, let alone "supersecure". 
We just marked the end of an epic year for data breaches, with over 800 million records lost. It would be wonderful to believe in the claims that data being rolled up by places like this airport are going to be secure and that nobody's going to get at it without a subpoena or written request. 
But there's hope, and then there's reality. Eight hundred million lost records. Goodness gracious, that's a lot of not-so-super security.”

Meanwhile, the lights keep watching.

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Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2014/February28/285.html#SBlVtoaepEbP5IyL.99