Saturday, August 31, 2013

Movie Piracy Hurts Health Research and Patient Care, UCSF Claims

The University of California (UCSF) has launched a new anti-piracy campaign to warn students and staff about the negative effects of online piracy. In what can be characterized as a most absurd and dramatic spin on the topic of copyright infringement, posters across campus claim that illegal downloading is a crime that “directly affects the funding for research, education and patient care.” In addition, the university falsely claims that using BitTorrent is considered a crime.
ucsfIn recent years US colleges and universities have undertaken drastic measures to reduce piracy, but none comes close to the “copyright awareness” campaign one of the top medical schools is currently running.
The University of California (UCSF) is alerting students and staff to the risks of online file-sharing and has lost all touch with reality in the process.
“Downloading content without paying for it is stealing. It’s no different than walking into a store, grabbing a movie and leaving without paying for it. The practice is stealing,” the campaign website reads, pointing people to an informational video and a newly launched poster campaign.
The posters, prominently featured in the UCSF shuttle buses and elsewhere at the university complex, stand out by making a quite unusual claim. Showing a $50,000 box office ticket, it warns that piracy “directly affects the funding for research, education and patient care.”
In other words, when you’re sharing copyrighted material without permission patient care deteriorates, while research and education funding dwindles.

ucsf-campaign1
UCSF provides no evidence or rationale for the absurd claim. To the best of our knowledge there is no direct link between piracy and any of the examples given.
The other educational campaign materials do, however, point out that the university is liable for the piracy habits of students and staff. While this isn’t directly true, since UCSF has safe harbor protections, this may be what the campaign is hinting at.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) agrees that the messaging used is inaccurate and misleading, to say the least.
“It’s disappointing to see one of the most respected medical schools in the country is distributing misleading, inaccurate propaganda from the entertainment industry,” EFF staff attorney Mitch Stoltz tells TorrentFreak.
“Saying that copyright infringement ‘directly affects the funding for research,education and patient care’ is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence – evidence that UCSF’s IT department does not have,” he adds.
Unfortunately, the misinformation and threats don’t stop there. In an anti-piracy campaign video on the effects of unauthorized file-sharing, several UCSF employees spread more FUD.
Bill Chartier, a UCSF desktop support technician, highlights some disastrous legal consequences and notes that he will completely wipe the computers of pirates who get caught.
“You can get fined, you can get sued by huge record companies, they have a lot of lawyers. You can get put in jail, and the university is also liable for whatever you do on your university computer.”
“If you’re a UC employee using a UC computer to do that I come and take your computer and wipe it completely, and get all the copywritten (sic) stuff off it,” Chartier adds.
Chartier’s threats are accompanied by a comment from the campaign manager, who suggests that using BitTorrent is considered a crime, ignoring the many legal uses.
“If you [...] use BitTorrent and you’re downloading music, you’re downloading movies, you’re downloading software for your personal use and you’re not paying for it, that’s considered pirating and that’s also considered a crime,” Hooman Moayyed, UCSF’s Security Awareness Program Manager says.
The EFF is baffled by this comment and suggests that the people behind the anti-piracy campaign are the ones who need to be educated.
“I guess no one told researchers at the National Institutes of Health, who use BitTorrent to share large biomedical data sets. I suspect students and faculty at UCSF could teach their IT department a few lessons about academic honesty.”
It’s unclear why the university is using these extremely misleading and inaccurate messages in their awareness campaign. While universities in the U.S. are required by law to deter piracy, they also have a moral obligation to do this truthfully.
We did notice that former Paramount Pictures CEO Sherry Lansing is on the UCSF board of regents. But that must be just a coincidence.
TorrentFreak contacted UCSF for a comment but we received no response.


PirateBrowser Hits 500,000 Downloads, Tor Traffic Surges


The Pirate Bay’s PirateBrowser is expanding its user base rapidly, far beyond the expectations of the site’s operators. The Tor-based browser, which allows people to bypass ISP filtering and access blocked websites, has already been downloaded more than 500,000 times since its launch earlier this month. The increase in downloads coincides with a mysterious increase in Tor users, but contrary to speculation it’s unlikely that the two events are related.
pirate browserOn the occasion of its 10th anniversary last Saturday, The Pirate Bay shared a gift with its users – the PirateBrowser.
Faced with ISP blockades all over the world, The Pirate Bay is arguably the most censored website on the Internet. The PirateBrowser software allows people to bypass these restrictions, using the Tor network to obfuscate people’s locations.
Unlike the Tor browser, PirateBrowser does not provide full anonymity. It’s only meant to unblock The Pirate Bay in regions where it’s censored, which is good enough for most users of the site. Downloads of the tool are going through the roof.
The Pirate Bay team informs TorrentFreak that the PirateBrowser notched up its 500,000th download earlier this week. At the time of publication it has surpassed 550,000 with no signs of a decline in interest.
Aside from the impressive download figures, the browser was also repeatedly linked to another news event this week.
Around the same time the PirateBrowser was launched, the number of users on the Tor network started to grow rapidly. Tor project leader Roger Dingledine mentioned the spike on the Tor email list, hinting that PirateBrowser may have something to do with it.
As can be seen in the graph below, in little over a week the number of Tor users jumped from a stable average of 550,000 to well over 1,400,000.
Daily Tor users worldwide
tor-world
While it is a coincidence that PirateBrowser was launched around the same time the growth started, it seems unlikely that the two events are related.
First of all, the number of daily Tor users increased by more than 800,000, which is far more than the total number of downloads of PirateBrowser thus far. In addition, looking more closely at the increase in Tor users we see that the spike started August 19, more than a week after PirateBrowser launched.
Finally, the country specific Tor usage shows that the increase is most pronounced in South America. In Argentina and Brazil for example, where The Pirate Bay isn’t censored, Tor usage increased by more than 1000%. In the UK and the Netherlands, where blocks are in place, we only see a “modest” doubling in Tor users.
Daily Tor users Brazil
tor-brazil
From the above it is safe to conclude that given that there was no significant Tor related news on the 19th, the most likely explanation is that the growth is unnatural. Perhaps a Botnet might explain it?
While PirateBrowser may not be responsible for the increase in Tor users, the half million download milestone is no less impressive. The Pirate Bay team informs TorrentFreak that they will continue developing the browser and Mac and Linux versions will be out later this year.
At the same time The Pirate Bay continues development on another anti-censorship tool, one that is destined to have an even bigger impact. They are working on a special BitTorrent-powered application, which lets users store and distribute The Pirate Bay and other websites on their own computers, making it impossible for third parties to block them.
This new tool should be able to keep The Pirate Bay operational, even if the site itself is pulled offline.

Feds plow $10 billion into “groundbreaking” crypto-cracking program

Consolidated Cryptologic Program has 35,000 employees working to defeat enemy crypto.



The federal government is pouring almost $11 billion per year into a 35,000-employee program dedicated to "groundbreaking" methods to decode encrypted messages such as e-mails, according to an intelligence black budget published by The Washington Post.
The 17-page document, leaked to the paper by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden, gives an unprecedented breakdown of the massive amount of tax-payer dollars—which reached $52 billion in fiscal 2013—that the government pours into surveillance and other intelligence-gathering programs. It also details the changing priorities of the government's most elite spy agencies. Not surprisingly, in a world that's increasingly driven by networks and electronics, they are spending less on the collection of some hard-copy media and satellite operations while increasing resources for sophisticated signals intelligence, a field of electronic spying feds frequently refer to as "SIGINT."
"We are bolstering our support for clandestine SIGINT capabilities to collect against high priority targets, including foreign leadership targets," James Clapper, director of national intelligence, wrote in a summary published by the WaPo. "Also, we are investing in groundbreaking cryptanalytic capabilities to defeat adversarial cryptography and exploit Internet traffic."
The document goes on to reveal that something called the Consolidated Cryptologic Program has received more than $10 billion annually for the past four years, and it employs about 35,000 people. It also shows that 23 percent of this year's program funding supported collection and operations, 15 percent went to processing and exploitation, and 14 percent funded analysis and production.
The document and the WaPo reporting don't detail the methods or specific capabilities of the program. As Ars reported earlier this month, some cryptographers are growing increasingly concerned that breakthroughs in discrete mathematics could soon spawn a so-called cryptopocalypse that could undermine the security of core encryption algorithms. Security expert Bruce Schneier and other cryptographers have publicly doubted the likelihood of such a scenario happening anytime soon, but since there's no mathematical proof that the theory isn't possible, there's no way to dismiss the possibility. And if anyone were to find a way to break the RSA encryption algorithm and other widely used technologies, it would most likely be an army of 35,000 mathematicians and cryptographers with more than $10 billion per year at their disposal.
The document also shows that that CIA received about $14.7 billion in 2013, more than the $10.8 billion earmarked for the NSA. In all, there are more than 107,000 employees in various US intelligence programs, according to the WaPo. The paper also reported that the NSA employs 64 percent of all military personnel in the program, at 14,950.           http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/08/feds-plow-10-billion-into-groundbreaking-crypto-cracking-program/

America Totally Discredited: If Americans keep believing the Government’s lies, they have no Future

Region:

usempire
A foolish President Obama and moronic Secretary of State Kerry have handed the United States government its worst diplomatic defeat in history and destroyed the credibility of the Office of the President, the Department of State, and the entire executive branch.  
Intoxicated with hubris from past successful lies and deceptions used to destroy Iraq and Libya, Obama thought the US “superpower,” the “exceptional” and “indispensable” country, could pull it off again, this time in Syria.
But the rest of the world has learned to avoid Washington’s rush to war when there is no evidence.  A foolish Obama was pushed far out on the limb by an incompetent and untrustworthy National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, and the pack of neoconservatives that support her, and the British Parliament cut the limb off.
What kind of fool would put himself in that vulnerable position?
Now Obama stands alone, isolated, trying to back away from his threat to attack without authorization from anyone–not from the UN, not from NATO, not from Congress, who he ignored–a sovereign country. Under the Nuremberg Standard military aggression is a war crime. Washington has until now got away with its war crimes by cloaking them in UN or NATO approval.  Despite these “approvals,” they remain war crimes.
But his National Security Advisor and the neocon warmongers are telling him that he must prove that he is a Real Man who can stand alone and commit war crimes all by himself without orchestrated cover from the UN or NATO or a cowardly US Congress.  It is up to Obama, they insist, to establish for all time that the President of the United States is above all law.  He, and he alone is the “decider,” the Caesar, who determines what is permissible.  The Caesar of the “sole superpower” must now assert his authority over all law or Washington’s hegemony over the world is lost.
As I noted in an earlier column today, if Obama goes it alone, he will be harassed for the rest of his life as a war criminal who dares not leave the US.  Indeed, a looming economic collapse could so alter the power and attitude of the United States that Obama could find himself brought to justice for his war crimes.
Regardless, the United States government has lost its credibility throughout the world and will never regain it, unless the Bush and Obama regimes are arrested and put on trial for their war crimes.
Obama’s destruction of US credibility goes far beyond diplomacy.  It is likely that this autumn or winter, and almost certainly in 2014, the US will face severe economic crisis.
The long-term abuse of the US dollar’s reserve currency role by the Federal Reserve and US Treasury, the never-ending issuance of new debt and printing of dollars to finance it, the focus of US economic policy on bailing out the “banks too big to fail” regardless of the adverse impact on domestic and world economies and holders of US Treasury debt, the awaiting political crisis of the unresolved deficit and debt ceiling limit that will greet Congress’ return to Washington in September, collapsing job opportunities and a sinking economy all together present the government in Washington with a crisis that is too large for the available intelligence, knowledge, and courage to master.
When the proverbial hits the fan, the incompetent and corrupt Federal Reserve and the incompetent and corrupt US Treasury will have no more credibility than Obama and John Kerry.  
The rest of the world–especially Washington’s bullied NATO puppet states–will take great delight in the discomfort of “the world’s sole superpower” that has been running on hubris ever since the Soviet collapse. 
The world is not going to bail out Washington, now universally hated, with currency swaps, more loans, and foreign aid.  Americans are going to pay heavily for their negligence, their inattention, their unconcern, and their ignorant belief that nothing can go wrong for them and that anything that does is temporary. 
Two decades of jobs offshoring has left the US with a third world labor force employed in lowly paid domestic nontradable services, a workforce comparable to India’s of 40 years ago.  Already the “world’s sole superpower” is afflicted with a large percentage of its population dependent on government welfare for survival.  As the economy closes down, the government’s ability to meet the rising demands of survival diminishes. The rich will demand that the poor be sacrificed in the interest of the rich. And the political parties will comply.
Is this the reason that Homeland Security, a Nazi Gestapo institution, now has a large and growing para-military force equipped with tanks, drones, and billions of rounds of ammunition?
How long will it be before American citizens are shot down in their streets by “their” government as occurs frequently in Washington’s close allies in Egypt, Turkey, Bahrain?
Americans have neglected the requirements of liberty.  Americans are so patriotic and so gullible that all the government has to do is to wrap itself in the flag, and the people, or too many of them, believe whatever lie the government tells. And the gullible people will defend the government’s lie to their death, indeed, to the death of the entire world.
If Americans keep believing the government’s lies, they have no future.  If truth be known, Americans have already lost a livable future. The neocons’ “American Century” is over before it begun.  

Freedom of speech in America: A figment of their naïve imagination

Freedom of Speech As Long As You Agree With Me

Author
By Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh (Bio and Archives)  Saturday, August 31, 2013
“Die Gedanken sind frei.” “Thoughts are Free,” famous German song about freedom of thought, 1810-1820, author unknown
Shortly after I arrived in the U.S., I realized that the freedom of speech Americans thought they had, was, let’s just say, with no intention of offending anyone, a figment of their naïve imagination.

I was naïve too, having escaped a communist dictatorship, I felt free to speak my objective opinion, thinking that there would be no harmful consequences since my freedom of speech was guaranteed.
I felt elated. I did not have to fear the security police day and night; and I did not have to be mindful constantly of what I said around friends, co-workers, strangers, distant, and close relatives. 
Anything that disagreed with the communist regime’s tyrannical propaganda sent anyone to jail, a gulag, or worse yet, disappeared them permanently. If people had a strong constitution, when their jail or gulag time expired, they were set free and hopefully re-educated cheerleaders of the narcissistic president and his wife who thought themselves to be the grandiose parents of the nation. If people’s constitution was weak, they expired in jail from malnutrition, verbal abuse, and daily beatings.

As soon as I came in contact with educators, I realized, there was a problem with freedom of speech. The freedom to speak was not really free. You could speak your mind but you were ostracized, ignored, marginalized, or fired.
First, you had to have a license to teach, a college degree in arts and sciences and professional experience were not enough. Economically speaking, every time someone needs licensure, that limits the number of approved and qualified people to perform a specific profession or trade. In this case, anyone could be a teacher as long as they were willing to go through the College of Education indoctrination program.
Interestingly, many licensed teachers were marginally qualified to teach their subject area of “expertise” and scored poorly on the National Teacher Exam, but passed. 
Secondly, the teachers did not have the freedom to choose the curriculum; it was dictated by the Department of Education of each state, directly connected to the federal Department of Education.
In this system, teachers had to follow verbatim the liberal teaching method of the day, and use textbooks designed to help them achieve pre-set goals, very similar to the current Common Core nationalized education curriculum. Could they object to the directives? Yes, but their freedom of speech was neutralized by administrators and the fear of losing their jobs.
As a teacher, I objected to certain irrational methodology and rules, what I perceived to be socialized curricula, to which I got the same canned answer, “This is how we do things in the U.S., if you don’t like it, go back to where you hailed from.”
Later on, as political correctness became the number one weapon used by liberals to stifle freedom of speech, the answer became, “If you do it our way, you get to keep your job.” Some more aggressive administrators said, since you are not a “team player,” we will definitely not renew your contract next year.  The threat never materialized. America is a very litigious society, lawyers are expensive, and schools are terribly afraid of being sued, particularly when they don’t have a case.
At the college level, famous for academic freedom, conservatives did not dare express their objective and logical opinions, often contradicting the liberal talking points, lest they never make the tenured professor list.  Some conservatives escaped the progressive scrutiny, thus receiving tenure, but it was a rare occurrence.
Conservative students suffered equally under the tyranny of outrageous liberal professors who demanded from their students nothing but total agreement with their belief system; if students were foolish enough to speak their minds and question the “settled” scholarly “authority” of their professors, they failed the class.
The current mainstream media talking heads read the identically-worded paragraphs received from the same source daily, not unlike the communist era radio and television reporters behind the Iron Curtain, broadcasting the daily script from the national newspaper called “Romania Libera,” (Free Romania) which was a terrible contradiction, since we were such slaves. The paper reported as much truth as the Soviet era newspaper, Pravda (The Truth).
Politicians today regurgitate the positions fed to them by advisors and lobbyists. Liberal newspapers repeat the misinformation established by the Democrat Party, the union lobby, and the non-governmental organizations lobby.
Conservatives writers and radio talk show hosts self-censor their columns and shows for fear of litigation by powerful billionaires, ethnic lobby groups, and NGOs.
Employees hide their political views for fear of losing their jobs. Parishioners do not express their opinions in the ever more socialist churches because they don’t want to lose their place of worship or the community they’ve grown accustomed to.
Conservatives don’t plaster cars with bumper stickers that reflect their world views for fear of having cars vandalized or destroyed. Liberals are proud to display all their causes on bumpers and car windows - they know the opposition is peaceful, tolerant, rational, and non-violent. Yet liberals label conservatives “racist” and “hate mongers” if they disagree with progressive points of view, thus shutting down any opposition.
Recently, Rush Limbaugh discussed on his August 27, 2013 show the case of Mike Adams, “the only tenured conservative professor at the University of North Carolina system, who simply said that marriage is a union between a man and a woman.” Anger and outrage from the faculty ensued, demanding that Adams be fired because of his definition of marriage—so much for the world-famous academic freedom.
Mike Adams wrote a “Dear Edward” letter to the professor who wanted him fired and who called him “an embarrassment to higher education.”
“While I respect your right to conclude that I am the biggest embarrassment to higher education in America, I think you’re wrong. In fact, I don’t even think I’m the biggest embarrassment to higher education in the state of North Carolina. But since you’re a liberal and you support ‘choice’—provided we’re talking about dismembering children and not school vouchers for those who weren’t dismembered—I want to give you some options. In fact, I’m going to describe the antics of ten professors, official campus groups, and invited campus speakers in North Carolina and let you decide which constitutes the biggest embarrassment to higher education.”
The ten examples cited were approved forms of free speech in liberal academia.
  1. A women’s studies professor and a psychology professor at Western Carolina University co-sponsored in the early spring semester of 2013 a panel on bondage and S&M with the goal “to teach college students how to inflict pain on themselves and others for sexual pleasure.”
  2. At UNC Chapel Hill, “a feminist professor believes that women can lead happy lives without men. That’s nothing new. But what’s different is that she thinks women can form lifelong domestic partnerships with dogs and that those relationships will actually be fulfilling enough to replace marital relationships with men.”
  3. “At Duke University, feminists hired a ‘sex worker’ (read: prostitute) to speak as part of an event called the Sex Workers Art Show.” I am too embarrassed to repeat what the male prostitute did after his speech. It involved the rectum, a burning sparkler, and the singing of the Star Spangled Banner.
  4. “A porn star was once paid to give a speech at UNCG. The topic was ‘safe sodomy.’ After her speech, the feminist pornographer sold autographed butt plugs to students in attendance.”
  5. “A few years ago at UNC-Chapel Hill, a feminist group built a large vibrator museum in the middle of the campus quad as part of their ‘orgasm awareness week.’”
  6. “A feminist administrator at UNC-Wilmington sponsored a pro-abortion event. During the event they sold tee shirts saying ‘I had an abortion’ to students who… well, had abortions,” a not so subtle way to “encourage students to boast about the fact that they had killed their own children.”
  7. “The same UNCW administrator sponsored a workshop teaching students how to appreciate their orgasms.”
  8. “A UNCW English professor posted nude pictures of under-aged girls as part of an ‘art exhibit’ in the university library. The Provost then ordered the nude pictures to be moved away from the library and into the university union.” The incensed English professor asked the Faculty Senate to censure the Provost for violating her ‘academic freedom.’ The Faculty Senate sided with the feminist professor. The Provost was later pressured to leave the university.”
  9. “A different feminist professor at UNCW accused a male professor of putting tear gas in her office. She was later caught putting her mail in a microwave oven. She did this because she thought people were trying to poison her with anthrax and that the oven would neutralize the toxins. She was not placed on leave for psychiatric reasons. Instead, she was designated as the university’s official ‘counter terrorism’ expert.”
  10. “And then there is Mike Adams. He thinks marriage is between a man and a woman, and he is the biggest embarrassment on campus.”

Mike Adams, a criminology professor at Wilmington, wrote a book entitled “Letters to a Young Progressive: How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things That You Don’t Understand.” I must hurry and order this book before it is censored and disappears off the shelves.
At the end of the day in America, I still have my freedom of silence and my thoughts are still free until they invent a computer that can read my mind. Have they?

Obama’s war-game on Syria a publicity stunt?

Obama’s war-game on Syria a publicity stunt?

Craigslist, Netflix, Pinterest all make it impossible for you to delete your account

Dollars for docs - Florida is a mecca for pharma payoffs to hospitals and doctors

Dollars for docs - Florida is a mecca for pharma payoffs to hospitals and doctors

Japanese Mayor Says Sex Slaves are ‘’Necessary’’ to Release War Stress

Japanese Mayor Says Sex Slaves are ‘’Necessary’’ to Release War Stress

CNN Caught Staging News Segments on Syria With Actors

CNN Caught Staging News Segments on Syria With Actors

Raising Awareness on 9/11 Truth: Changing Opinions and Building Momentum

Raising Awareness on 9/11 Truth: Changing Opinions and Building Momentum

Who Really Is Behind The Syrian Chemical Attacks?

Who Really Is Behind The Syrian Chemical Attacks?

Who Benefits From A War Between The United States And Syria?

Who Benefits From A War Between The United States And Syria?

Video: Russell Brand Breaks Down Syria, Destroys Mainstream Media

Russell Brand Blasts Syrian War Disinformation

Video: Russell Brand Breaks Down Syria, Destroys Mainstream Media

Anthony Gucciardi
by
August 30th, 2013
Updated 08/30/2013
After his MSNBC appearance challenging the talking heads of mainstream media generated millions of views on YouTube in a display of just how much the public craves real information, Russell Brand is now back on air exposing the situation and Syria and the mainstream media propaganda.
Appearing in an interview with Alex Jones that filmed today, Russell brings further credibility to the power of the alternatives news and the collapse of the mega media. In fact, Russell’s breakdown of just how distorted the media reporting on the events in Syria are coincides exactly with what I have been reporting on for a number of weeks now. Ultimately, this is a display of just how much of a difference we are making in the alternative news, and more importantly how many millions we can reach by continuing to push out the truth amid the volley of disinformation coming from the media.

Top Officials: Alt News Destroying Syria War Machine

We are continually making major strides in the informational battle against skewed news, and this fact is now even being admitted by the very high level officials who seek to send us into Syria-style scenarios that could very well initiate World War 3. One such powerful admission I was extremely pleased to hear about and bring to you was the admission by top Obama adviser and Trilateral Commission co-founder Zbigniew Brzezinski that it was actually the ‘global political awakening’ that was putting a wrench in the Syria war machine.
In other words, elite control freaks like Brzezinski know that we aren’t listening to their warmongering propaganda anymore, and instead we are craving the truth on all fronts. And it’s the public craving for the truth that is halting their entire plan to launch the United States and other nations internationally into a hot war with Syria — one that, despite the information being out there, virtually no one realizes is essentially a major combat scenario with Russia through Assad.
Today’s Russell Brand interview truly highlights the effectiveness of not only alternative news juggernauts like Infowars, Drudge Report, and Storyleak, but the overall power of the entire movement as a whole.

Illegal Attack on Syria Motivations Exposed

by
August 30th, 2013
Updated 08/30/2013 
The timing of President Obama’s recent proclamation that he possesses conclusive evidence that the Syrian Government is directly responsible for the recent chemical attack on the Sryian opposition is no accident.
Here’s why.
syria-attackThe following reasons for the US-UK-France threats to launch unlawful ‘punitive’ airstrikes against the Syrian military are self evident.  As follows:
1) Every Syrian military target has been chosen with the explicit intention of degrading select Syrian military assets so as to slow down their successful ground war against the rebel opposition. The Syrian military has been enjoying remarkable success of late and the Western powers could no longer sit idle on the sidelines. The rebels’ only hope for a reversal was to receive direct military intervention from the West.
2) The US was chosen to issue the threats using Obama as the megaphone, even in the absence of the official UN chemical weapons report, because only the US political process has been so manipulated (by you know who?) to permit such a war crime to be committed in broad daylight. As the UK Parliament has well demonstrated, the British can no longer be bamboozled into another illegal war based on false accusations. The British people know that they were lied to in the run-up to the Iraq war, and they now know that it was the West which colluded with the Syrian rebels to frame the Assad Administration for the alleged chemical weapon war crime.
3) Obama himself knew that he was being set up to lay down the red line that would not be crossed without consequence for the Syrian Government. He is simply playing the role of war criminal by launching a premeditated attack on a sovereign nation without a Congressional declaration of war. To commit such an unprovoked act of war based on a deliberate false flag operation coordinated by the US et al. makes his conduct as Commander-in-Chief all the more complicit.
4) The threats of war being made against Bashar Assad do constitute a war crime by the three issuing nations of the US, UK and France. However, they are being issued by the respective prime ministers and president for specific reasons in spite of the profound damage to their reputations. Nevertheless, such threats to hit military targets have forced the Assad regime to re-arrange many of their well placed yet scarce military assets completely out of harm’s way. In this way the rebels will be able to jump start a new offensive against the government forces.  It is planned that such airstrikes, although utterly unlawful, will also serve to throw a logistical wrench in the Syrian military machinery.
5) By declaring an intention to conduct an aggressive military assault on a sovereign nation, the Western powers are quite deliberately setting an extremely dangerous but purposeful precedent. They are putting the entire community of nations on notice that any country – or rather head of state – which does not give in to their demands, will eventually be set up to be a war criminal in the eyes of the world. Just as Saddam Hussein was constantly labeled a genocidal war criminal for gassing the Kurds, now Bashar Assad is being falsely accused of using chemical weapons against his own people. In other words, the message being delivered is that all ‘incorrigible’ leaders will be painted up as a Lil’ Hitler in the future.


6) Of course, we see that the nation of Israel has been unusually quiet through this whole “international incident” and sordid affair. Everyone knows that when their is tumult in the Middle East, Israel will always takes advantage of the chaos to perpetrate more criminal land grabs. They will also use such distractions to operate covertly in the countries under assault to further undermine their governments, infiltrate their armed services, and carry out black ops against prime targets. 7) Everyone knows by now that the road to Iran for the Chickenhawks leads straight through Syria, because of the access the western navies will enjoy on the Mediterranean. Turkey is not so keen to get involved in a war against Iran. Nor is Jordan … or Iraq … or Pakistan … or Afghanistan. Therefore, controlling Syrian airspace, if things ever progress that far, can be justified by the West no matter what the cost. The following map shows just how far the West is willing to go to surround and isolate Iran.  It should also be noted that the recent coup d’etat in Egypt was perfectly timed and orchestrated before this false flag operation in Syria so as to withdraw the support which Morsi was giving to Iran.  Egypt was completely neutralized after Morsi was deposed as the West had planned.
Iran-encircled2
These are just a few of the reasons for the blatant bellicosity being demonstrated by the Anglo-American juggernaut. It is not the people of the USA and UK and France who are calling for revenge against Assad. It is the criminal governments who have unlawfully arrogated power unto themselves to commit unprovoked acts of war on a whim, which are virtually always based on false flag operations. The following headlines further illustrate what a complete sham their call for military attacks on Syria has been based upon.
It is also important to point out that the last use of chemical weapons during the Syrian civil war was also found out to be perpetrated by the Al Qaeda rebels.  In their extreme desperation to bolster their movement to overthrow Assad, the rebels have truly come to understand the magic formula to triggering the necessary response by the main NATO military powers. And so they have now pulled the trigger.
Additional sources:
US ‘backed plan to launch chemical weapon attack on Syria, blame it on Assad govt’: Report
Russia gives UN forensic proof rebels used chemical weapons in Syria
Syrian rebels’ Damascus chemical cache found by Assad army – State TV
Evidence: Syria gas attack work of U.S. allies
Syrian Rebels Manufactured Chemical Weapons Outside Damascus
Intelligence Suggests Assad Not Behind Chemical Weapons Attack

US won’t let Microsoft, Google reveal more data on FISA orders

Tech rivals vow to press forward with litigation after talks with DOJ fail.

Microsoft and Google have not been able to convince the Department of Justice (DOJ) to let the tech companies reveal how many Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) orders they must comply with.
Noting that "there are many days when Microsoft and Google stand apart," Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith today wrote that the companies are united in trying to provide more information about orders that allow the government to spy on the companies' customers:
We both remain concerned with the Government’s continued unwillingness to permit us to publish sufficient data relating to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) orders.
Each of our companies filed suit in June to address this issue. We believe we have a clear right under the US Constitution to share more information with the public. The purpose of our litigation is to uphold this right so that we can disclose additional data.
On six occasions in recent weeks we agreed with the Department of Justice to extend the Government’s deadline to reply to these lawsuits. We hoped that these discussions would lead to an agreement acceptable to all. While we appreciate the good faith and earnest efforts by the capable Government lawyers with whom we negotiated, we are disappointed that these negotiations ended in failure.
While Smith noted the US government has said it would start "publishing the total number of national security requests for customer data for the past 12 months and do so going forward once a year," he wrote that Microsoft and Google believe the public is constitutionally entitled to more than that.
"For example, we believe it is vital to publish information that clearly shows the number of national security demands for user content, such as the text of an e-mail," Smith wrote. "These figures should be published in a form that is distinct from the number of demands that capture only metadata such as the subscriber information associated with a particular e-mail address. We believe it’s possible to publish these figures in a manner that avoids putting security at risk. And unless this type of information is made public, any discussion of government practices and service provider obligations will remain incomplete."
Since the negotiations failed, Smith wrote that "we will move forward with litigation in the hope that the courts will uphold our right to speak more freely."
A Google spokesperson said today that “while the government’s decision to publish aggregate information about certain national security requests is a step in the right direction, we believe there is still too much secrecy around these requests and that more openness is needed," according to the Wall Street Journal.
The Center for Democracy and Technology, an advocacy group, said today that the DOJ is expected to file a brief in front of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opposing Microsoft's and Google's requests to publish numerical information about FISA orders.
The advocacy group said it "is extremely disappointed by the [Obama] Administration's continued opposition to meaningful transparency reporting by US Internet companies."

War Within 72 Hours: "The World Understands that the American People Are Being Zombified"

War Within 72 Hours: "The World Understands that the American People Are Being Zombified"

What To Expect During The Next Stage Of Collapse

What To Expect During The Next Stage Of Collapse

Solar-powered UAV could fly in the upper atmosphere for 5 years at a time

Conventional satellites may be decent at their jobs, but they do have some drawbacks – the spacecraft themselves are quite expensive, getting them into orbit is also a costly process, and they can’t be reclaimed once they’re in use. Titan Aerospace, however, is offering an alternative that should have none of those problems. The company’s Solara unmanned high-altitude aircraft is intended to serve as an “atmospheric satellite,” autonomously flying in the sky’s upper reaches for as long as five years continuously.
There are actually two models of the Solara in the works. The Solara 50 will have a 50-meter (164-foot) wingspan, a length of 15.5 meters (54 ft), weigh just 159 kg (350 lb), and offer a payload capacity of over 32 kg (70 lb). The larger Solara 60 will be 60 meters (197 feet) across, with the ability to carry up to 100 kg (250 lb).
On either version, the upper wing and tail surfaces of the plane will be covered in approximately 3,000 solar cells, allowing it to generate up to seven kilowatts of power during the day – at a cruising altitude of 20 km (65,000 feet), the aircraft will be above the clouds and unaffected by weather disturbances. Hundreds of watts of that power will be stored in its onboard lithium-ion batteries, to keep its motor, autopilot, sensors and telemetry systems running throughout the night.
Each aircraft will begin its mission by taking off from the ground shortly after midnight, then climbing to its cruising altitude using its own battery power. It will then have all of the next day to recharge its battery using sunlight, thus beginning a charging-and-storing cycle that could reportedly continue for up to five years. At the end of its mission, the airplane will return to the ground, allowing its cargo to be recovered and its parts to be salvaged.
The Solara’s cruising speed will be about 104 km/h (65 mph), and it will have an operating range of over 4.5 million kilometers (about 2.8 million miles). That said, most of the aircraft’s uses will likely involve it flying in circles over a given area. These uses could include surveillance, asset tracking, live mapping, or the monitoring of crops, weather, disaster sites, or pretty much anything else that a low-altitude satellite might keep tabs on.
Additionally, Titan points out that one of the aircraft could provide cell phone coverage for an area of over 6,500 square miles (16,800 sq km), offering the reach of over 100 ground-based towers.
The company has reportedly already flown smaller prototypes, and hopes to have the full-sized Solara 50 and 60 available with a year. There’s currently no word on price, but you can see some pretty animation of one flying in the video below.
Lockheed Martin is working on an aircraft that would serve some of the same functions as the Solara, in the form of its HALE-D high-altitude unmanned airship.
Source: Titan Aerospace via IEEE Spectrum

Russia to deploy ‘star wars’ missile system in 2017, report says

Source: PhysOrg
Russia’s defence ministry plans to deploy in 2017 a sophisticated new air missile defence system that can hit targets in space, a senior ministry source told Russian news agencies on Friday.
 ”The promising S-500 air defence missile system is at the development stage. It’s planned to be deployed in 2017,” the source was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
The long-range system will be able to destroy targets even if they are in space and cover the whole Russian territory, the source added.
Russia is developing more and more effective missile for use as a deterrent while opposing plans by the United States to build a missile defence shield in Europe.
Russia says its most advanced anti-aircraft and anti-missile system currently in use, the S-400 Triumph, has a range of 400 kilometres.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said last year that Russia’s armed forces would acquire around 28 S-400s over the following decade.
Russia has declined to cancel hugely controversial contracts to supply Syria with four of its powerful S-300 air defence missile systems, a deal that has sparked international concern.
Putin in June praised the S-300s as the best such systems in the world and said Russia had not yet delivered the systems to Syria to avoid changing the balance of power in the region.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told Izvestia pro-Kremlin daily on Monday that all Syria’s contracts with Russia were being fulfilled.

Neuroscience the New Face of Warfare

Source: ONI
Directed energy weapons that use wave beams to cause pain, and electrical brain stimulation that boosts a soldier’s combat ability – it may sound like science fiction warfare, but experts say advances in neuroscience mean it’s on the horizon.
Rapid progress in the ability to map brain activity and manipulate its responses with stimulants could change the face of warfare, a panel of experts said.
The experts, looking at the scope for neuroscience in future military conflict, said researchers on the cutting edge of medical science should remember that their work could have other, more harmful uses.
“We know neuroscience research has the potential to deliver great social benefit – researchers come closer every day to finding effective treatments for diseases and disorders such as Parkinson’s, depression, schizophrenia, epilepsy and addiction,” said Rod Flower, a professor of biochemical pharmacology at Queen Mary University of London, who led the panel.
“However, understanding of the brain and human behavior, coupled with developments in drug delivery, also highlight ways of degrading human performance that could possibly be used in new weapons.”
The report, published on Tuesday by the UK’s national academy of science, the Royal Society, was written by experts in neuroscience, international security, psychology and ethics.
It divided the issue of neuroscience in conflict and security into two main areas – the potential to enhance performance of military forces, and the potential to degrade or diminish the enemy’s performance.
Looking at performance enhancement, the report pointed to advances in neural interface technologies which could allow machines such as drone aircraft to be controlled directly with the human brain, and advances in neuroimaging which could help military chiefs screen for recruits with particular attributes.
“There is also a great deal of research taking place around drugs that improve the alertness, attention and memory of military personnel while in the field,” the report said.
The experts said it was in the interests of military commanders to screen for abilities relevant to a given task.
While one person may excel in detecting targets in a cluttered environment, they said, another might excel in decision making skills under stress, and advances in neuroimaging and brain stimulation techniques could help pinpoint these differences during screening and recruitment.
Irene Tracey, an expert on brain imaging from Oxford University and one of the report’s authors, said most of the applications of neural interface technology, such as brain prostheses or implants, have so far been only at the trial stage and mostly in medicine – particularly involving the rehabilitation of people using prosthetic limbs.
“You can imagine how you can be used for the military – both for rehabilitation of soldiers and for control of remote devices,” she told a briefing in London. “Some of it is the stuff of dreams at this stage, but the speed at which technologies tend develop … is always alarmingly quick.”
MIND AND MACHINE
Flower gave an example of how an aircraft like a drone could be in future be controlled by a person with such brain implant – raising tricky ethical questions.
“This idea brings about a bit of a blur in the distinction between mind and machine, which obviously has to be addressed very carefully,” he said. “If we got to the point where we could control a sophisticated machine, and the machine did something … like committing a war crime of some sort, who would be responsible for that, you or the machine?”
The report also looked at neuroscientific applications that could give rise to new weapons – particularly advances in neuropharmacology and drug delivery that could speed the development of incapacitating chemical agents.
The report highlighted new so-called directed energy weapons in development, including one called an Active Denial System (ADS) which uses a millimeter wave beam to heat the skin and cause a painful burning sensation.
Malcom Dando, a professor of international security at the University of Bradford and another of the authors, said the changes neuroscience could bring about were mostly in the future, giving experts time to assess their impact.
“We’re only at the beginning of a whole stream of neuroscience applications, and that gives us a window of opportunity to weigh up the pros and cons,” he said.

India Wants To Ban US-Based Email Systems For Government Communications Over NSA Concerns

from the pissing-off-our-allies dept

Back in June and July, during much more innocent times, Glyn Moody and Tim Cushing doubled up on stories about the intrusive surveillance system India had set up and commented on how the NSA must have been drooling over having that kind of capability. Now, those stories probably seem sweetly ignorant, since we know much more about what the NSA is both capable of doing and how little restraint they suffer, but the point is that India is not made up of saints when it comes to respecting the privacy of their citizens.

But, having said that, India is an incredibly important friend and ally of the United States. They're an important trading partner and a nation with aligned goals when it comes to fighting terrorism. So it may be a sign of trouble that India distrusts the American government enough to force government officials to pull their email from American-based email providers.
The move is intended to increase the security of confidential government data and information after it was revealed earlier that NSA may be involved in widespread spying and surveillance activities across the globe.

In a statement to reporters here J. Satyanarayana, secretary in the department of electronics and information technology, said that data of Indian citizens using US based email services like Gmail is residing on servers which are located outside India and for now the government is concerned about the large amount of official and critical data that may be resident on those servers.
That's the problem with unfettered hubris from a global power like the United States: you're going to start losing friends. It's one thing to spy on unfriendly nations. That might still have its problems, but you're going to have an easy sell to your citizens on the question and it doesn't matter all that much if you're found out because, hey, the spied-upon already hate you. But when you begin turning your spy-sights on your allies, particularly allies as important as the Indian government, you just have to wonder whether more harm than good will come of all this. Yes, there's a cynical response that this also helps those in power in India better use their own surveillance capabilities to spy on everyone within the government, but that doesn't diminish the potential harm between US and India.

In an increasingly connected globe, the postures of our allies are every bit as important as those of our enemies. The American government pissed off a friend in India, Hopefully that won't come back to bite us.

DOJ Still Refuses To Let Tech Companies Reveal How Much Info They Get Via FISA Orders

DOJ Still Refuses To Let Tech Companies Reveal How Much Info They Get Via FISA Orders

Friday, August 30, 2013

Your tax dollars at work: Inside the United States’ $52.6B “black budget”

hey America ! we got NO $$$ ... OUR GOV/SPY  agency got LOT'S of OUR Tax/extortion  $$$                   the ONLY People that don't have $$$ is the tax payer  ......you know  We The People   who  pay for every fucking thing ......................hows it going  America ..we we weeeeeee we weee  were going good huh       & you's wonder Y "they" (ass pipes )  want to dis~ ARM U.S.

Your tax dollars at work: Inside the United States’ $52.6B “black budget”

Source: Ars Technica
Your tax dollars at work: Inside the United States’ $52.6B “black budget”
The United States’ “black budget” for fiscal 2013 amounts to $52.6 billion (or $167 per American), and it details what The Washington Post calls a “bureaucratic and operational landscape that has never been subject to public scrutiny.”
According to a new front-page story on Thursday, the Post says that it now has the entire 178-page classified budget summary as supplied by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden. This entire budget comprises the annual expenditures for the NSA, the CIA, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), and other spy and military agencies.
With respect to the tech-focused highlights, the Post notes that the CIA and NSA “have launched aggressive new efforts to hack into foreign computer networks to steal information or sabotage enemy systems, embracing what the budget refers to as ‘offensive cyber operations.’”
Additionally, it appears there are far more potential leakers than we once thought. According to the Post’s reporting, the “NSA planned to investigate at least 4,000 possible insider threats in 2013, cases in which the agency suspected sensitive information may have been compromised by one of its own.”
Not surprisingly, the documents also apparently show that the United States has its eyes particularly on the international community’s two biggest pariahs: North Korea and Iran. The US intelligence community has “all but surrounded [North Korea] with surveillance platforms” and “new surveillance techniques and technologies have enabled analysts to identify suspected nuclear sites that had not been detected in satellite images [from Iran]”
Since Snowden leaked his set of documents to the Post, The Guardian, and others, there has been increasing attention focused on the vast surveillance network that captures a huge amount of digital communications. However, as Ars has pointed out previously, storing all that data for long periods of time is near-impossible—so the NSA has to resort to short-term capture and then selective searching and filtered storage.
The Post reports that of the NSA’s budget, it was “projected to spend $48.6 million on research projects to assist ‘coping with information overload,’ an occupational hazard as the volumes of intake have increased sharply from fiber optic cables and Silicon Valley Internet providers.”

SOOPER  s33kr1t

But it’s not just the NSA getting in on the SIGINT (signal intelligence) game. As the Post reports:
Even the CIA devotes $1.7 billion, or nearly 12 percent of its budget, to technical collection efforts including a program called “CLANSIG” that former officials said is the agency’s more targeted version of the massive data collection operations of the NSA.
The CIA is pursuing tracking systems “that minimize or eliminate the need for physical access and enable deep concealment operations against hard targets.”
The agency has deployed new biometric sensors to confirm the identities and locations of al-Qaeda operatives. The system has been used in the CIA’s drone campaign.
The NSA is also planning high-risk covert missions, a lesser-known part of its work, to plant what it calls “tailored radio frequency solutions” in hostile territory—close-in sensors to intercept communications that do not pass through global networks.
Sadly, neither the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s (ODNI) newly created Twitter or Tumblr accounts have a response to the new document.
“The United States has made a considerable investment in the Intelligence Community since the terror attacks of 9/11, a time which includes wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Arab Spring, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction technology, and asymmetric threats in such areas as cyber-warfare,” the ODNI’s director, James Clapper, told the Post.
“Our budgets are classified as they could provide insight for foreign intelligence services to discern our top national priorities, capabilities, and sources and methods that allow us to obtain information to counter threats,” he added.
The Post has created an interactive Web feature to better understand the black budget.

China oil giant Sinopec buys into Egypt for $3.1 bn

Source: FMT
Chinese oil giant Sinopec will pay $3.1 billion for a one-third stake in the Egyptian oil and gas business of US firm Apache Corp. it said Friday, as China builds up its access to global energy reserves.
The deal, which is still subject to regulatory approval, marks Sinopec’s first entry into Egypt’s upstream oil and gas sector, according to a company statement.
It is the latest major Chinese resources acquisition abroad and comes after CNOOC, another Chinese state-owned energy giant, bought Canada’s Nexen in a $15 billion deal last year despite political opposition in that country.
The Apache move comes despite political strife in Egypt as supporters of the country’s deposed president Mohamed Morsi clash with the new government installed after the military overthrew him last month.
Beijing has encouraged Chinese companies to go abroad to secure supplies of energy and raw materials to keep the world’s second largest economy moving.
“Through this partnership, Sinopec is able to enter the upstream oil and gas sector of Egypt for the first time and expand its international upstream portfolio,” the company statement said.
“This partnership will further build up Sinopec’s capability and experience in promoting overseas reserves and production.”
China is already the biggest energy user in the world and the second-largest oil consumer after the United States.
Houston-based Apache said its exploration and production in Egypt’s western desert was “unaffected” by political events, according to a separate statement.
Net production from its Egypt operations averaged 100,000 barrels of oil and 354 million cubic feet (10.62 million cubic metres) of natural gas per day in 2012, Apache said.
Sinopec estimated remaining reserves at 641 million barrels of oil and 3.79 trillion cubic feet (113.7 billion cubic metres) of natural gas.
-AFP

The Deep Sea Resources Rush

Source: Diplomat
Insatiable demand for minerals and rare earth elements, coupled with dwindling resources on land have stakeholders across the world looking to a new frontier: the deep sea.
Advancing mining technologies are making the prospect of exploiting seafloor minerals—including gold, copper, zinc, cobalt and rare earth elements (REEs)—not only possible but also imminent, with commercial licenses to be granted by the International Seabed Authority from 2016.
China has a stronghold on REEs, controlling a staggering 97% of global production. These finite elements and other precious minerals are used in the creation of a massive range of electronics devices, emerging green technologies and weapon systems, triggering a strategic scramble to exploit new sources.
In what has been described as a global race, governments and companies are keenly eyeing this emerging mining arena, eager to get their slice of the next “gold rush” as it’s made increasingly economically viable. In 2010, there were eight exploration licenses, currently there are 17 in the high seas of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans. There is also significant interest in the ocean’s resources within territorial waters, particularly in the Pacific Ocean, where more than 1.5 million sq km of the seafloor is currently under exploration license. This is an area roughly comparable to the state of Queensland in Australia.
The president of the International Marine Minerals Society, Dr. Georgy Cherkashov, was quoted last year linking the rush for licenses to the reality of “first come, first get,” saying the shuffle to secure the most promising sites represents “the last redivision of the world.”
Three types of deep sea mineral deposits have drawn interest. These are seafloor massive sulphides (SMS), manganese nodules and cobalt-rich crusts. In the Pacific Ocean, currently the most commercially feasible are SMS, which are created by the activity of deep sea hydrothermal vents.
Canadian company Nautilus Minerals has more than 500,000 sq km licensed in Papua New Guinea (PNG), Tonga, Fiji, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and New Zealand. Nautilus Minerals (NM) is forging the way for others in this frontier, already holding a 20-year license for the world’s first commercial seabed mining operation, 1.6 km beneath the Bismarck Sea in PNG. The company’s flagship Solwara 1 project involves exploiting SMS to extract ore containing copper and gold at a site 30km from the coast of New Ireland Province and about 50km from the town of Rabaul in East New Britain.
Between 2005 and 2011 the company spent $80 million USD on exploration programs for its PNG venture.
Greenpeace reportFor environmentalists and activists the idea of this emerging mining enterprise coming to fruition is concerning. Greenpeace released a detailed report last month stating that less than 1% of high seas (international waters) and 3% of oceans are protected. Little is known about the biodiversity that exists deep below; some scientists suggest it would take 10-15 years of extensive research before we can even begin to understand this ecosystem.
Hydrothermal vents, where SMS deposits form, are said to support one of the rarest and most unique ecological communities known to science, including creatures like two-meter long tube worms and armor-plated snails. An independent study of the Solwara 1 site found 20 new species and experts are worried that species will be eliminated from the mining site before they have been discovered.
What’s Happening in Papua New Guinea?
A respite for critics of the Solwara 1 project came in June 2012, when contract disputes emerged between the PNG government and NM. The commercial disagreement reportedly centers on the government’s share of investments costs that will lead to a 30% stake in the venture. This ongoing dispute stalled the project, which was expected to start by the end of 2013, and caused NM to suspend construction of its seafloor production system.
But these commercial issues could soon be ironed out, depending on the outcome of an arbitration hearing on August 26.
If the government becomes a shareholder in the venture, a conflict of interest is apparent that could compromise its ability to regulate the mining activities.
NM’s interim president and CEO, Michael Johnston, who was quoted in Mining Weekly Online earlier this month, seems positive about the likelihood of moving forward with the mining plans saying, “I think we’ve turned the corner.”
With severely limited land resources—in many of the Pacific region’s islands as much as 99% of sovereign territory is ocean—some Pacific Islanders are enthusiastic about the emerging mining frontier and the economic potential of their expansive sea zones.
Others are not convinced.
The Solwara 1 project has been met with massive opposition from local communities and campaign groups.
A petition to “Stop Experimental Seabed Mining,” with more than 24,000 signatures was delivered to the PNG government last year. A coalition of groups against the project, aligned as the Deep Sea Mining Campaign, argue that PNG will be the guinea pig of an untested technique in an ecosystem that the world knows little about, representing an unacceptable level of risk to both local communities and marine biodiversity.
Anxiety over environmental risks and social division associated with the Solwara 1 project is evident in a video of testimonies put together by local non-government organization Bismarck Ramu Group (BRG). Patrick Kaupun, an activist from East New Britain Province said that companies like Nautilus are “resource poor” while many of PNG’s educated are “money poor,” continuing that the resource poor and the money poor have caused the rest of the population “to get caught up in this net of theirs.”
“When you look at the idea of seabed mining, gold is not the only thing found in the sea. We have fish, which are part of our everyday lives. We have no alternative because our lives depend on the health of the sea. ”
“The sea is of customary and economic value to us. Development alternatives should compliment our existing activities. The Government is interested in getting its revenue, it has no thought for our welfare or our future.”
Details of the Mining Process and Potential Impacts
The Solwara 1 mining process involves removing the surface rock and sediment with remotely operated vehicles (about 130,000 tons of sediment and 115,000 tons of rock over 20 months) and dumping this at adjacent tip sites. Hydrothermal vents are then leveled, a mining bench cut and slurry is piped to a vessel where the ore is separated; the remaining water is pumped back to the seafloor and the ore is sent to overseas processing facilities.
NM3NM expects to ship 1.3 million tons of material to shore each year and explains that the method uses technologies adapted from the offshore oil, gas and dredging industries.
Two independent reviews of NM’s environmental impact assessment (EIA) have raised alarms. Foremost, is the possibility for upwelling (vertical water movement), ocean currents and spillages from the mining system causing a spread of heavy metal pollutants in the form of sediment plumes, potentially poisoning marine species and entering the human food chain.
Oceanographic expert, Dr. John Luick, who authored the most recent review, explains that the EIA does not give basic information needed to assess the possible impacts of sediment plumes on marine ecosystems or local communities. “The People of PNG deserve better.They should be able to feel confident that the approvals process is open and based on the best available science.”
NM dismissed Dr. Luick’s findings.
NM vice president of corporate social responsibility, Dr. Samantha Smith told The Diplomat that any extraction impacts would occur 1300m below the surface, well away from fish populations, adding that naturally occurring plumes from subsea volcanoes and hydrothermal vents don’t enter the food chain and neither will sediment plumes from mining.
Coordinator of the Deep Sea Mining Campaign, Dr. Helen Rosenbaum, is not satisfied with these assurances, as reflected in her report: Out of our Depth: Mining the Ocean Floor in Papua New Guinea.
Not only are sediment plumes likely to smother seabed biodiversity, according to Dr. Rosenbaum the toxic effects on organisms, which would accumulate up the marine food chain, have not been tested. This is especially significant because of Pacific Islander’s reliance on seafood.
In the last three years, communities in New Ireland Province, have reported incidents like cloudy water affecting diving activities, schools of dead tuna washing up onshore and sharks not responding to an ancient tradition of shark calling to local non-government organizations, Act Now and BRG. Dr. Rosenbaum attributes these events to Nautilus’s pre-mining activities. She told The Diplomat that due to lack of resources there has been no independent scientific follow-up.
“I would suggest that the vessels involved in exploration and pre-operation activities have caused disturbance and noise that has affected sharks and other marine life. The dead tuna and cloudy water would suggest high levels of chemical toxicants, sufficient to cause an acute toxic affect. ”
She questions what would have happened if locals ate the dead tuna, saying this incident highlights the lack of accountability and transparency around impacts.
NM Dr. Smith said that “none of the local communities we have engaged with claim to have seen dead fish and there have been no concerns raised about out-of-the-ordinary shark response.”
She called the claims “outrageous” and “untrue,” urging alarmed members of the public to contact the company to discuss ways forward rather then causing “undue stress and worry for all concerned.”
NM vice president of strategic development and exploration, Jonathan Lowe, told The Diplomat that the company’s exploration license is for low impact activities and that the techniques are commonly used by marine researchers. These include mapping to locate volcanic activity, measuring properties of ash plumes, gathering rock samples and drilling to estimate the amount of metals and minerals at the SMS sites.
Mr. Lowe commented that the Solwara 1 site is dynamic and resilient shown by the way it recovered in the years between drilling campaigns, one in 2007 and the other in 2010/2011. “It became very difficult, nigh on impossible, to identify and recognize where we had drilled previously. ”
Pushing for Precaution and Participation
deepsea_campaign_largeMarine experts, government representatives and campaigners alike want to see the “precautionary principle” applied, citing the serious environmental risks seabed mining poses.
The Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide supports this standard, stating in a report that the uncertainty surrounding deep sea mining warranted “unprecedented caution.” It added, “It is grossly uncertain whether the deep sea environment can withstand the assault of mechanized mining.”
Deep sea biologist, Dr. Kerry Howell, told The Diplomat that she is uneasy about mining taking place in an environment known to be vulnerable to disturbance and concerned about the cumulative impact if a gold rush ensued. “If we are to proceed it must be slowly and with the precautionary principle taking center stage. ”
“Deep sea scientists must be fully engaged with the process as this community has the greatest understanding of the deep sea ecosystem. This appears to be what has been happening with the Papua New Guinea project but whether this continues to be the case as this industry develops remains to be seen. “
Dr. Howell attended the recent Deep Sea Mining Summit in London and said she was struck by the open dialogue between industry, scientists and NGOs. Industry representatives put forward the idea that deep sea mining would be less environmentally destructive than mining on land; while rejecting this argument, Dr. Howell believes that deep sea mining would be less socially problematic because no communities would be displaced.
As resources on land become scarce the demand for these materials continues to rise.
NM’s Dr. Smith insists deep sea mining would take pressure off land-use conflicts and that going to the sea makes sense. “Our planet is known as the Blue Planet, because 70% of its surface is covered in water.  Does it make sense to continue to look to the rarer part of our planet to meet our minerals and metal demands?  Or does it make sense to look to the more abundant part?“
In addition to the precautionary principle, activists want to see the principle of “Free Prior and Informed Consent” upheld, which means local communities should be involved in any decision-making process that could affect the areas they customarily own or occupy.
This gets more complicated when it comes to matters of the sea.
The Secretariat of the Pacific Community’s (SPC) framework advises that “coastal stakeholders” should be identified during the application process, their consent sought and compensation agreed to if mining activities are likely to impinge on fishing and other customary rights.
However, ocean borders are fluid and its resources for common use, making the definition of “coastal stakeholders” slippery. This definition is also complicated by the fact that PNG laws favor state control of the sea and ignore indigenous maritime tenure. This has proved a source of contention for the West Coast Central Seabed Mining Land Owners Association, which asserts its rights over the sea’s resources in its region.
The Pacific Deep Sea Minerals Project, an independent advisory body established by the SPC, is working to address the concerns surrounding deep sea mining by running public workshops and creating information resources.  It also circulated a video. In the video, SPC director general, Jimmie Rodgers candidly says “Is it urgent? Is it important now? Yes! Because multinationals are not going to wait to give Pacific Island countries time to look at all the studies, environmental analysis, before they come in—they push in.” He continues that some countries have the technical knowledge to withstand that pressure but many do not.
Elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific
It recently emerged that the government of Vanuatu had issued 145 licenses for offshore mining exploration in the past five years, without any community consultation.
NM2
Vanuatu Minister for Land and Natural Resources, Hon. Ralph Regenvanu, said at a workshop on social impacts, that the licenses were issued without any “proper national regulatory framework for seabed mining or for scientific research,” adding that he was overseeing reform efforts to have the principle of “Free Prior and Informed Consent” enshrined in law.
He used Australia, where a three-year moratorium on underwater mining activities off the Northern Territory was enacted, as an example of the precautionary principle being correctly applied and advised Pacific Island states that have not yet issued licenses to follow suit.
Nautilus Minerals are far from the only group with seabed mining interests in the Asia-Pacific. There is also Australia-based Bluewater Metals prospecting in the Solomon Islands, U.S. company Neptune Minerals with a handful of licenses in the Pacific region, Chatham Rock Phosphate interested in phosphate mining in New Zealand, Japan with a license to explore for cobalt and nickel off the Okinawa Islands, South Korea surveying the seabed off Tonga and Fiji, and China filing the first application to search for mineral deposits in the deep seas of the Indian Ocean, to name just a few.
The 1982 Law of the Sea Convention designates the mineral resources in the high seas as the “common heritage of mankind.” It is not yet clear how this concept will work in effect. What is clear, however, is that our lack of understanding about deep sea ecosystems is as vast as the ocean. In the words of CSIRO’s Dr. Chris Yeats: “We know more about the surface of Mars and Venus than we know about the deep ocean floor, broadly speaking it is a great unknown.”
So what will be next? Mining in space? Don’t be surprised. It’s already in the pipeline.