Wednesday, July 17, 2013

The Malware That Can Spy on You through Your Own Smartphone

A form of of malware exists that could enable government agencies and others to use your own mobile devices to spy on you. The malware is called Finfisher or FinSpy, and it is actually marketed to law enforcement and intelligent agencies by a shadowy company called Gamma International.
finfisher-malware-spyGamma markets Finfisher as an “IT intrusion” software; that’s a polite term for hacking. The scary thing about Finfisher is that a variant of it called FinSpy can actually take over smartphones, including both iPhones and phones running Windows Mobile.

Marketing Video for Government Hacking

A Gamma Group marketing video first uncovered by WikiLeaks and now dug up here on Storyleak shows an agent using a package of tools called the FinIntrusion Kit to use Wi-Fi to hack into email, social media, and other accounts. This relays all the information from the accounts, including Skype, to an operative at a police headquarters. The operative can also download all of the target’s files into a police computer.
The video also indicates that Gamma Group offers training for police in these techniques. The most frightening part of the video is the FinSpy Mobile product overview. The video shows that FinSpy Mobile can be used to take over a BlackBerry smart phone and relay all of the information from it back to headquarters. Checkout the video below:                      
Presumably this would let police turn on the phone’s camera and microphones and use them to transmit pictures or video of your activity back to the police. In other words, your mobile device could be turned into a bug. So could any computer with a microphone on it.
Read: Your Calls and Emails Aren’t Just Being Tracked, They’re Being Sold
Oh, and to make hacking even easier, Gamma Group actually sells a USB device called FinUSBSuite that can transmit all the data from a computer back to agents. All a person has to do to hook it up is insert it in a computer.
In other words, somebody has paid big money to develop a suite of easy to use malware for intelligence agencies and law enforcement. Gamma Group itself is pretty scary; it’s described as a British company owned by a shell corporation in the British Virgin Islands. Nobody knows who actually owns Gamma Group, so it could be a front for an intelligence agency.

Malware for Sale to Oppressive Governments

Although some of Gamma Group’s customers have been identified, they included former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak’s secret police force. When Egyptian dissidents stormed into secret police headquarters after Mubarak’s downfall, they reportedly discovered an invoice for a FinFisher license. The mercenaries at Gamma Group had no problem selling their products to oppressive governments.
Some of the other activities that Gamma Group is accused of engaging in are also pretty sleazy. The Wall Street Journal reported that the company was boasting of its ability to send out fake iTunes updates that can infect computers and other devices with surveillance software—in other words, malware.

A Major Threat to Privacy

FinFisher’s very existence is a serious threat to basic rights and privacy. Unfortunately, the FinFisher products are still for sale online; the product’s marketing website is still up and running. To make matters worse, FinFisher and Gamma Group could be the tip of the iceberg: The Wall Street Journal uncovered a whole catalog of such devices available for use by governments.
It looks like the threat to online freedom and overall communications privacy is far greater than we thought. Strong efforts need to be made to control and curtail the use of such technology.

Money Trail: Corporations Paid Big Bucks By NSA For Allowing Spying

Daniel G. J.
by
July 17th, 2013
Updated 07/17/2013
Patriotism may not be the real reason why big companies like AT&T, Google, and Verizon have been so eagerly cooperating with the NSA’s eavesdropping on our private communications. The Associated Press and U.S. Senator Elect Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) discovered that the companies get paid when the NSA spies on one of their customers in a story that Storyleak is now highlighting from the back section of the news. 
nsa-profit-telecomVerizon charges Uncle Sam a $775 “activation fee” to set up a wiretap and $500 a month to keep the tap up and running. AT&T (the former Bell South) charges a $325 activation fee and $10 a day to keep the tap up and running. Cricket and US Cellular each charge $250 per wiretap.

Wiretapping Is Big Business

Since Verizon reportedly gets a quarter of a million requests for wiretaps each month, it’s easy to see how this cash can add up. Verizon admitted that it is paying 70 people to process wiretap requests. A publicly traded company wouldn’t be doing that if its management didn’t think it could make money off the expenditure.
It looks like these companies profit when government wants to violate our rights. AT&T admitted that it made $24 million off of wiretap fees between 2007 and 2014. Verizon refuses to divulge how much it is making from the fees.
Big tech companies like Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo don’t make as much when the NSA reads chats and emails, but they might still be profiting. The AP reported that the American Civil Liberties Union believes they get around $25 for email records. Since the AP didn’t report on the nature of the email records or their numbers, it’s impossible to say how much the companies make from this.

The Real Amount of Money Is Unknown

The amount of money the companies might be making off of these efforts might be even greater. In 1994, Congress gave telecoms $500 million to reimburse networks in order to make them easier to wiretap. There might have been other more recent reimbursements that have not been reported.
It must also be noted that some of these companies, like Microsoft, depend heavily on government contracts. They might be afraid that they will lose some of those contracts if they don’t cooperate. Yet such organized privacy violation is clearly big business. Eavesdropping has become such a profit center that some tech companies are now automating their systems to make spying easier. Sprint reportedly set up a website that lets law enforcement track its wireless users for a $30 a month fee.
This is a major scandal; unfortunately, the article detailing it was buried in the business sections of Sunday papers. Hopefully Sen. Markey will launch a major investigation of these payments to see if big companies are profiting from surveillance and how much they are making from it. Revelation of such payments could quickly destroy whatever public support exists for such massive surveillance efforts. Today, Storyleak makes this information available and encourages you to spread the word.

Goodwill denies minimum wage to disabled workers while executives make six figure salaries - Buzz.NaturalNews.com

Goodwill denies minimum wage to disabled workers while executives make six figure salaries - Buzz.NaturalNews.com

Bruce Lee'd his ..ass :o

40 Stats That Prove The U.S. Economy Has Already Been Collapsing Over The Past Decade

40 Stats That Prove The U.S. Economy Has Already Been Collapsing Over The Past Decade

10 Ways That The Iron Grip Of The Big Brother Prison Grid Is Tightening On All Of Our Lives

10 Ways That The Iron Grip Of The Big Brother Prison Grid Is Tightening On All Of Our Lives

TrackingPoint aims to produce “Super Gun” with 3,000-yard single-shot accuracy

Linux-based smart rifle manufacturer to improve its range by 3x.

Ars has written several times before about Austin-based TrackingPoint, producers of "precision guided firearms," or PGFs. TrackingPoint's current set of products is a range of bolt-action hunting rifles which use a large computerized scope to assist their users in making shots at distances of up to about 1,000 yards (about 915 meters). The system works well enough that even novice rifle users can reliably place rounds on target at that distance, as we found out when we demoed several PGFs back in March.
TrackingPoint's initial run of PGFs have almost all been pre-sold, and the company is looking to expand in a big way: it plans to construct a technology demonstrator tentatively called the "Super Gun," which will be able to fire a large projectile and achieve a typical PGF's single-shot accuracy at distances out to more than 3,000 yards—that's about 1.7 miles, or 2.7 kilometers.
"We wanted to be able to push the limits of what the technology is capable of," explained TrackingPoint CEO Jason Schauble to Ars. "We came up with the project to challenge our engineering team, to take things to the next level. Because if I can take it [from twelve hundred yards] to three thousand yards plus, I know I can also hit anything in between."
Some of the challenges in scaling up TrackingPoint's products have to do with simple physics —the 75W pulsed laser range-finder in today's PGF needs to be scaled up, and although the 35x fixed magnification optic will likely remain the same, the CMOS sensor behind the glass through which the scope sees the world will also likely need to be increased from its current 14.1 megapixel resolution. The software challenges brought about by extending the PGF's effective range, however, overshadow most of the hardware issues.
Enlarge / The computerized tracking scope is a major (and heavy) feature of TrackingPoint's PGF weapons. To scale up to 3000 yards, the scope's laser and computer components would need to be upsized.
Steven Michael
"Once you get beyond about a mile—that's about fifteen hundred meters," he continued, "you get a lot more of a complex ballistic solution, and the downrange effects are multiplied." Schauble characterized the difficulty of computing an accurate shot as increasing geometrically rather than linearly with distance—tripling the range of a PGF is actually close to a six-fold increase in ballistic complexity. Things like the Earth's rotation and the behavior of the fired projectile as it transitions between supersonic and subsonic velocities become significant factors that must be very accurately modeled and accounted for.
Because the "Super Gun" project is intended to be a technology demonstrator rather than an actual production firearm, the engineering group at TrackingPoint is tossing in a lot of additional features to complement the long range. For example, automatic wind compensation and visibility into additional spectra—such as thermal imaging—are also on the table.
Most significantly, Schauble wants the "Super Gun" technology to be usable while in flight—for example, while mounted on a helicopter or drone. "We intend to put something up in the air that can fly, to test out the capabilities of our inertial measurement unit," he said. Schauble went on to explain that the weapon's inertial measurement unit is a key component in the PGF system, allowing it to account for the weapon's motion. "The true test of that inertial measurement unit is to put it up into a true three-dimensional space and see if it can still calculate ballistics properly, and what it would take to do so."
Schauble has a significant pedigree in the precision firearms world. In addition to his military service as an officer in the US Marine Corps (during which he was awarded a Silver Star), he was also a vice president at Remington Defense, where he worked on projects like the military XM2010 enhanced sniper rifle. Though TrackingPoint has maintained that its existing PGF products are intended for civilian hunting applications, the company has also said in the past that selling future products to military or law enforcement was part of the plan. The long rifle hunting PGFs currently on the market are only the first round of PGFs that TrackingPoint intends to make.
"We are in conversation with a number of different military units about applying our technology to their particular requirements," Schauble elaborated when I asked about military customers. Those conversations include discussions on potentially adding PGF technology to existing military tools like unmanned drones, bolt-action rifles, or even crew-served weapons like 50-caliber belt-fed weapons. "We want to be able to provide flexible solutions to the government, just like we provide a specific closed-loop solution to a hunter," he said, referring to the fact that the bolt-action hunting rifle PGFs currently being sold are single-purpose units for hunting, while the military versions would be more adaptable.
The "Super Gun" weapon, though, is envisioned purely as a demonstration of TrackingPoint technology. To that end, TrackingPoint is thinking of developing its own custom weapon and ammunition to nail those 3000-yard shots. I asked Schauble what the "Super Gun" might look like—will it be a large-bore rifle similar to existing PGFs? What type of ammunition would it fire?
Enlarge / TrackingPoint's existing PGFs are all bolt-action hunting rifles, accurate out to between 800 and 1200 yards, depending on the model.
Steven Michael
"As a general rule," said Schauble, "the larger the caliber, the flatter the trajectory. So we have to take something that's in a [caliber] greater than .40 or .50, but we don't want to go up past 20mm, because there are laws constraining what you can do past .50 caliber."
In the interest of practicality, the "Super Gun" would stick to the large-but-not-ludicrous area around .50 caliber. "We're looking to create something unique," he went on. "We'll probably work with a McMillan action—McMillan is pretty good in the long gun space—and we'll start with a bolt gun....and we're going to wind up having to come up with a unique load to satisfy our requirements."
"So this isn't going to use off-the-shelf .50 BMG or anything?" I asked.
"No," confirmed Schauble, "because while people have been able to achieve hits with that ammunition at those ranges, it definitely isn't a first-round-hit situation."
The "Super Gun" doesn't actually exist yet as a fireable product, but TrackingPoint is busily working on creating it. Many of the fundamental pieces of hardware are already on order from vendors, and the company is looking to spend the fall of this year on integration and testing, with the goal of having a workable product to demo in the front half of 2014.
I closed the interview by asking Schauble about TrackingPoint's opinion on the potential misuse of its weapons—in the TrackingPoint stories we've run in the past, there are always commenters who ask about the potential consequences of a criminal using a PGF to wreak havoc from a mile off. "Right now, firearms exist that can do all of these things that are legally bought and owned by commercial users," he answered. "Forty percent of the people in this country own over three hundred million firearms, and most people who are worried about the capabilities we're able to provide are worried writ large that anyone has a gun....for those people, I'm not ever really going to be able to say anything that will fully satisfy them."
Enlarge / The PGF rifles all include the ability to mirror the scope's picture to an iPad via Wi-Fi and also to record audio and video of shots. Both law enforcement and military have expressed keen interest in this particular aspect of the PGF design.
Lee Hutchinson
"Certain capabilities we're not going to sell commercially," he continued. "But the ones that we've initially put out we're comfortable with. Allowing someone to make ethical kill shots on an animal at range, as opposed to wounding that animal—we think that's a very positive thing, and the hunting community is embracing that. The ability to record and share their shot... people are finding that is a value-add to their hunting experience."
An aircraft-mounted PGF is one of the capabilities Schauble does not expect to sell to the general public. "Experimenting with three-dimensional space and how to best optimize my inertial measurement unit is not going to be a product that I sell commercially... For some of our government customers who have asked us to look at these things, it lets us give them answers that we can quantifiably back up."
Enlarge / Looking downrange at targets up to about a thousand yards away. Increasing that distance by 3x makes for a long, long shot.
Lee Hutchinson
"We are a smart weapons company," concluded Schauble. "We're trying to take this smart weapon technology and figure out how we come out with capabilities that are greater than what exist today."

Cyprus resists international pressure to sell gold reserves

Source: Res Inv
Cyprus is resisting pressure from the European Commission (EC) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) to sell its gold reserves to finance its “bailout.”
Yesterday the Cypriot Finance Minister said that a sale of its gold reserves was not the only option under consideration to pay down its debt and that other alternatives were being considered.
Cyprus has 13.9 tonnes (c. 447,000 troy ounces) of gold reserves which are worth some 436 million euros at today’s market prices.
The international bailout imposed on Cyprus involved 10 billion euro ($13 billion) and therefore the Cypriot gold reserves are worth a mere 4.36% of the bailout.
“The possibility of selling gold is known, but only as an option,” Finance Minister Harris Georgiades told reporters. He did not elaborate on what the alternatives were according to Reuters.
The government in Cyprus may realize that in the event of Cyprus leaving the euro and returning to the Cypriot pound, their gold reserves could provide support to the fragile newly launched national currency.
International lenders have imposed a 10 billion euro bailout on the country, which was forced to seize bank deposits in two major banks in radical new “bail-ins” to finance the sudden “bail out” in March.
Cyprus continues to see capital and currency controls today — meaning that a euro in Cyprus is no longer the same as a euro in France or Germany.
The International Monetary Fund and the European Commission stipulated that Cyprus should sell its gold reserves at the time of the bailout.
“It will be considered, when the time comes, with options, or rather, all other options,” Georgiades told reporters. Asked if this meant there was a possibility of Cyprus not selling its gold, he answered: “When that time comes other options will be examined.”
At the weekend, Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades said he hoped there would never be a need for the sovereign nation to sell its gold reserves. Anastasiades said responsibility for the issue rested with the country’s central bank.
“I want to believe there will never be such a need,” Anastasiades told a news conference in Nicosia at the weekend. “The issue is not being discussed by the government, it is a responsibility of the central bank,” he told reporters.
An assessment of Cypriot financing needs prepared by the European Commission in March said that Cyprus has to sell its gold reserves. Officials have attempted to play the issue down, saying the matter is not a priority for the government.
There was much unfounded speculation that news of the potential sale helped drive the biggest fall in gold prices ever last April. However Cypriot gold reserves are miniscule at just 13.9 tonnes.
To put that number into perspective, it is about 7% of monthly gold deliveries on the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE). Demand leading to monthly gold deliveries on the Shanghai Gold Exchange are roughly 200 tonnes per month – 236 tons in April, 224 tons in May and 180 tons in June.
There was also speculation that a possible gold sale would be a precedent and could lead other Eurozone and other debtor nations to consider gold sales and a suggestion that this contributed to gold’s weakness.
Largely ignored in much of the analysis was the fact that under the Washington Agreement,extended in 2009, central banks are prohibited from gold sales outside of “a concerted programme of sales over a period of five years, starting on 27 September 2009”.
Nations may consider using gold reserves as collateral, as proposed by the World Gold Council, in order to maintain confidence in their debt and keep yields low but they will be reluctant to sell gold reserves completely. Even if indebted central banks such as Cyprus were forced to sell their gold reserves, it would likely be to another central bank or to the IMF or the ECB, and would not make its way onto the open market and create extra supply.
Should the Cypriot gold sale happen, it would be unlikely to set a precedent for other troubled Eurozone countries such as Italy as these nations now greatly value their gold reserves as important stores of value that will protect against currency devaluations.
There is also the likelihood that debtor nations will be very reluctant to sell their gold reserves to finance bailouts of their banks and financial sectors which have been lent to irresponsibly by international banks.
Cash strapped people and nations such as Cyprus are being forced by circumstance to sell their gold while creditors are continuing to accumulate gold.

‘Neural dust’ brain implants could revolutionize brain-machine interfaces and allow large-scale data recording

Source: Time
In a potential neuroscience breakthrough, University of California Berkeley scientists have proposed a system that allows for thousands of ultra-tiny “neural dust” chips to be inserted into the brain to monitor neural signals at high resolution and communicate data highly efficiently via ultrasound.
The neural dust design promises to overcome a serious limitation of current invasive brain-machine interfaces (BMI): the lack of an implantable neural interface system that remains viable for a lifetime. Current BMI systems are also limited to several hundred implantable recording sites, they generate tissue responses around the implanted electrodes  that degrade recording performance over time, and are limited to months to a few years.
Neural dust could also provide the large-scale recording of neurons required for the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative, the scientists suggest.
System Concept
Neural dust system diagram showing the placement of ultrasonic transceiver under the skull, the neural dust sensing nodes dispersed throughout the brain, and external transceiver (credit: Dongjin Seo et al.)
The neural dust system has three basic elements:
  • Thousands of low-power CMOS chips — neural dust — are embedded (via fine-wire arrays that are then removed) into the cortex between neurons. They detect extracellular electrophysiological signals via an electrode and a piezoelectric sensor converts ithe signals into ultrasonic signals.
  • A subdural (the dura surrounds the brain and keeps in the cerebrospinal fluid) ultrasonic transceiver (transmitter+receiver) receives ultrasonic signals from the neural dust.It also powers the neural dust with ultrasonic energy.
  • A battery-powered external transceiver communicates via ultrasound with the subdural transceiver and transmits the data to an external computer.
Embedded ~2 mm. in the brain, the powered neural dust chips can be as small as tens of microns (millionths of a meter). Ultrasound is attractive for in-tissue communication given its short wavelength and low attenuation.
The design also uses more efficient “backscatting”: instead of transmitting energy, the chips passively modulate ultrasonic energy from the sub-dural transceiver and reflect it back.
The researchers calculate that the neural dust chips can be as much as 10 million times more efficient that chips using electromagnetics (magnetic or electric signals), which have high attenuation in brain tissue. They would be encapsulated in an inert polymer or insulator film.
The arXiv paper mentions a number of challenges that need to be addressed in developing a practical system.

Remember those slender gleaming spikes Keanu Reeves and pals jacked into the backs of their noggins to go virtual-reality tripping in The Matrix? That’s certainly an image: prong-to-brain networking, your neurons serviced by skewer.
But then the movies — what can you do? The future of brain-machine interfaces may be less, umm, visible if cutting-edge research by scientists at the University of California Berkeley proves viable.
One of the biggest challenges for brain-machine interfaces (BMI) is how to create one you could use indefinitely (like for a lifetime). Even in The Matrix, connecting to the cloud seems awfully inconvenient: sit back in a chair, stab yourself in the skull. Existing real-world BMI systems are clumsier still. As KurzweilAI notes: “Current BMI systems are also limited to several hundred implantable recording sites, they generate tissue responses around the implanted electrodes that degrade recording performance over time, and are limited to months to a few years.”
What if, instead, we built entire armies of tiny dust-sized sensor nodes that could be implanted in the brain (though not autonomously — this isn’t colonize-your-brain-stem time yet) to facilitate communication of whatever sort, in this case keeping high-res tabs on neural signals and relaying data back to aggregation devices via ultrasound?
neural-dust
Dongjin Seo, Jose M. Carmena, Jan M. Rabaey, Elad Alon, Michel M. Maharbiz / arXiv.org
Here’s how it might work: First you pop through the skull and the brain’s dura (the membrane surrounding the brain), dipping into the brain’s neural sea itself, roughly two millimeters down, where you position thousands of low-powered CMOS chips (the “neural dust,” each as tiny as millionths of a meter) to begin capturing neural signals using electrodes and piezoelectric sensors, which convert the data to ultrasonic signals. Those signals are then picked up by a sub-dural transceiver (sitting just above the “dust” chips and simultaneously powering them ultrasonically), which relays the data to an external transceiver resting just outside the skull (ASIC, memory, battery, long-range transmitter), which in turn communicates wirelessly with whatever computing device.
Like most futurist notions, this one hasn’t been tested yet — it’s just a formal proposal — but it’s another fascinating glimpse into where we might be headed, bypassing clumsy literal BMI head-jacks for micro-scale interfaces that would link us, wire-free, to future galaxies of virtual information.

Two Key Cases Involving Gatekeepers Using Copyright To Try To Kill Disruptive Startups Come To Very Different Conclusions

Two Key Cases Involving Gatekeepers Using Copyright To Try To Kill Disruptive Startups Come To Very Different Conclusions

Woman Who Bragged That She Was 'The Queen Of Tax Fraud' On Facebook Gets 21 Years In Jail

from the seriously,-stop-breeding dept

The stupid never seems to stop when it comes to dumb criminals. Whether it's accidentally dialing 911 during their murder-plotting or jumping on YouTube to make sure grandma knows what a great little bank-robber you are, there's just something about these criminals that make them go internet stupid. How else could you explain when these guys bilk money out of companies and governments, then jump on Twitter to taunt the authorities? Criminals, by and large, are stupid.
this little piggy
"Go in after them? No, no, we just wait outside until they come stumbling out looking for a bathroom."
Image source: CC BY 2.0


Well, let's put another one up on our wall of jack-ass-ery, shall we? Meet Rashia Wilson of Tampa, Florida. Rashia is the self-proclaimed "queen of IRS tax fraud." And she self-proclaimed this everywhere, including on her very personal Facebook page which had her very verifiable name splashed all over it. And, I have to admit, Rashia was very good at IRS tax fraud.
Prosecutors have said Wilson was among the most brazen thieves to commit identity theft tax refund fraud in Tampa. In 2011, she boasted to be Tampa's "queen of IRS tax fraud" in a Facebook post while stealing as much as $20 million, according to court documents.

A prosecutor said Wilson used the money stolen from taxpayers for "personal greed and glorification." Wilson bought a $90,000 car and a $30,000 birthday party for her 1-year-old daughter with the money, according to court documents.
See? Really good. What she was less good at was keeping that hidden. After brazenly posting about how awesome at crime she was on Facebook, the authorities came more quickly than...no, you know what? I'm not going to make that joke. They just got her, okay?

In any case, faced with 22 years in the clink, Rashia pleaded guilty and then wrote the court an apology letter and begged for leniency. The judge obliged, knocking a whole year off and saddling her with a measly 21 years in the federal pen. Nicely done, Rashia Wilson! Enjoy your stay!

Can Americans sue over NSA surveillance?

http://news.yahoo.com/americans-sue-over-nsa-surveillance-061900179.html
The government has long argued that since people can't prove they were targeted, they don't have standing to sue. But after Edward Snowden's revelations...
Since the George W. Bush administration's warrantless domestic wiretapping program was uncovered in 2005, some 70 lawsuits have been filed in federal court to challenge the government's broad collection of Americans' telephone and internet data. Nearly all of them have been dismissed, in part because the plaintiffs couldn't show they were targeted by the top-secret programs.
Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden's leaks may have changed that, according to legal scholars and civil libertarians. At least five new lawsuits have been filed since he first revealed in June that the NSA indiscriminately collects and stores some telephone metadata of U.S. citizens.
SEE ALSO: 11 things that are banned in other countries but legal in the U.S.
The "one critical difference from the Bush era," American University national security law expert Stephen Vladeck tells The Washington Post, is that "we now have indisputable physical evidence that the conduct being challenged is actually taking place." That makes it "more likely" that courts will start allowing legal challenges to surveillance practices, Vladeck adds.
On June 8 in San Francisco, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White took a first big step toward allowing the laws to be challenged on Fourth Amendment grounds. White ruled that a 2008 lawsuit, Jewel v. NSA, filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against NSA "dragnet" phone-data collection, didn't fit under the Obama administration's invocation of "state secrets" privileges, in part because of "the multiple public disclosures of information regarding the surveillance program." The EFF's Kurt Opsahl was ebullient:
CNET's Declan McCullagh is a little more measured, noting that White's ruling "is anything but a final decision." But, he adds, "overcoming the hurdle of the administration's 'state secrets' claims is still a major step," and one that allows the case to continue. On Monday, another little beam of transparency shone through, as the chief judge of the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court — charged with overseeing the NSA surveillance, and accused of being a rubber stamp — urged the Obama administration to declassify its ruling that allegedly compelled Yahoo and other internet providers to turn over customer data. That's a win for Yahoo, which wants to prove it fought on behalf of its users, but also a potential window into the FISA court's legal rationale for allowing metadata collection.
SEE ALSO: Will the George Zimmerman case teach Americans to mind their own business?
What's more, says The Washington Post's Carol D. Leonnig, FISA court Judge Reggie B. Walton's "order was released on a public docket the court recently created after revelations about National Security Agency programs." That itself is a big step for the reticent "spy court, which hears arguments in sealed, windowless courtrooms and has treated all its opinions as classified secrets."
In practice, though, Americans still face the same hurdle to challenging the surveillance laws — specifically the 2008 expansion of FISA court oversight — in federal court, says Adam Liptak in The New York Times. In February, the Supreme Court sided 5-4 with U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. and rejected a challenge to the 2008 law from Amnesty International. They relied, says Liptak, on a commitment from Verrilli:
He said, a little comically in retrospect, that the human rights groups, lawyers and reporters who sought to challenge the law had no particular reason to think that their communications were being collected.... If the government wants to use information gathered under the surveillance program in a criminal prosecution, he said, the source of the information would have to be disclosed. The subjects of such surveillance, he continued, would have standing to challenge the program. [New York Times]
Since the Supreme Court ruling, however, federal prosecutors in Miami and Chicago have refused to say if the 2008 law was used to target defendants accused of plotting to blow up targets in New York and Chicago, respectively. In effect, and contrary to Verrilli's assurances, Liptak says, these prosecutors "have immunized the surveillance program from challenges under the Fourth Amendment, which bans unreasonable searches and seizure."SEE ALSO: 5 things that make you irresistible to mosquitoes
Even if all the challenges to NSA surveillance end up being thrown out, says The Washington Post's Jerry Markon, "the lawsuits could still serve a larger purpose for opponents of the programs by raising public awareness of the issues surrounding surveillance and possibly forcing the government to make changes or disclose more." Previous lawsuits have led to changes at the U.S. prison camp at Cuba's Guantanamo Bay and a public acknowledgment of the U.S. drone program.
Whoever is president, "the government does things to avoid embarrassment," University of Pittsburgh law professor Jules Lobel tells The Washington Post. "And lawsuits are a key pressure point."

FBI withholds autopsy of Tsarnaev associate ‘shot in head’ during questioning

Abdulbaki Todashev, the father of Ibragim Todashev, shows photographs of his son's body at a mortuary during a news conference in Moscow May 30, 2013. (Reuters/Maxim Shemetov)RT News
The FBI has ordered a Florida medical examiner’s office not to release the autopsy report of a Chechen man who was killed during an FBI interview in May over his ties to one of the suspected Boston Marathon bombers.
The autopsy report for Ibragim Todashev, 27, killed by an FBI agent during an interrogation which took place in his apartment on May 22 was ready for release on July 8. However, the FBI barred its publication, saying an internal probe into his death is ongoing.   
The FBI has informed this office that the case is still under active investigation and thus not to release the document,” according to statement by Tony Miranda, forensic records coordinator for Orange and Osceola counties in Orlando.
The forensic report was expected to clarify the circumstances of Todashev’s death.The Bureau’s statement issued on the day of the incident provided no details of what transpired, saying only that the person being interviewed was killed when a “violent confrontation was initiated by the individual.”
Back in May Ibragim Todashev’s father showed pictures of his dead son’s body at a press conference in Moscow, revealing he had been shot six times.
“I only saw things like that in movies: shooting a person, and then the kill shot. Six shots in the body, one of them in the head,” Abdulbaki Todashev said .
The medical examiner’s office promised to check on a monthly basis whether the FBI is ready to grant permission for release of the autopsy report.
Todashev was interrogated by the FBI several times following the Boston Marathon bombings, with the final interview resulting in a fatal altercation. He was supposedly questioned over his alleged role in an unsolved 2011 triple homicide in Waltham, Massachusetts, which bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev have been implicated in. Todashev was reportedly about to sign a written statement which would have tied him to the murders when he allegedly attacked an FBI agent.

Reniya Manukyan seen with her husband, Ibragim Todashev. (Image from vk.com)Reniya Manukyan seen with her husband, Ibragim Todashev. (Image from vk.com)

Investigators, most of them speaking anonymously, would later offer conflicting accounts of what happened in Todashev’s final minutes, with some claiming the man brandished a knife and others insisting he was unarmed.
Despite the FBI’s promise to look into the case, civil rights activists have called for an independent investigation.
The US Department of Justice Civil Rights Division announced on Monday it was overseeing a federal inquiry into the shooting incident.
Federal prosecutors will review the evidence and make an independent determination whether a federal criminal investigation is warranted,” the Boston Herald cites a letter by US Deputy Assistant Attorney General Roy L. Austin as saying.
Todashev’s widow, Reniya Manukyan, welcomed news of the federal inquiry.
We are glad that DOJ started. Hopefully it will bring more attention of the public and everybody will question the FBI and why they are not releasing anything,” she said.
http://rt.com/usa/fbi-blocks-release-todashev-autopsy-195/

World Trade Center Owner Larry Silverstein Sues Airlines for Billions Over 9/11 After $5 Billion Insurance Payment

The notorious owner of the World Trade Center, Larry ‘Pull It’ Silverstein, doesn’t think that his $5 billion in insurance payments are enough to reimburse his losses during 9/11. Despite admitting to ‘pull’ World Trade Center 7 despite moderate fires, Silverstein is now suing the airlines whose planes flew into the towers for extra billions.

Photo: Story Leak
Photo: Story Leak
By Anthony Gucciardi
Story Leak
July 17, 2013
Instead of donating even a penny to the 9/11 first responders who were told they would be fine while inhaling toxic substances only to be denied healthcare for their chronic conditions, Silverstein says that he simply hasn’t been relieved of his ‘economic’ loss that suffered after 9/11. Even after receiving around $5 billion from his insurance company following the destruction of the World Trade Center buildings, he says that he needs another $3.5 billion to line his pockets. An additional 3.5 billion that brings the total to 8.5 billion, which airline attorney Roger Podesta says will be 2 1/2 times the fair value of the fallen buildings.
Perhaps Silverstein wants to be in league with the global bankers, who make a cool $83 billion from taxpayer’s each year that is then turned into financing for Mexican drug cartels and terror cells as admitted by NBC. A New York judge will ultimately decide if Silverstein will be granted the billions following the completion of the three-day trial that started on Monday.

Larry ‘Pull It’ Silverstein

But before we even look at the ridiculous loads of cash that Silverstein is seeking after already raking in billions from his hefty insurance policy, let’s look at how he suffered these ‘economic losses’. For this, we are focusing in on World Trade Center 7. In a PBS interview, Silverstein plainly states that he actually told the fire department to demolish the building due to the minor fires inside. Fires that were nothing compared to the fires we’ve seen in nations like Chechnya, where the country’s tallest building burned for hours and did not collapse.
In other words, Larry ‘Pull It’ Silverstein went ahead and demolished a building that most likely did not need to be taken down. You can watch the interview segment where Silverstein details all of this below, where he talks about how he made the ‘decision to pull it’:              
 So at this point we have Silverstein making a nice $5 billion on a building that was suffering from minor fires, cashing out on the relatively new insurance policy that he acquired. Fast forward to 12 years later, and it turns out the $5 billion wasn’t enough. Will Silverstein get his extra billions? Will anyone highlight the fact that he decided to demolish his own building despite moderate fires that even foreign skyscrapers can sustain?

Government Caught Paying Protesters After Trayvon Martin Shooting To Create Racial Division

Government Caught Paying Protesters After Trayvon Martin Shooting To Create Racial Division

Stealth Terror II: Hurricanes, 9/11, and Geoengineering 

The following is the second installment of an exclusive four part series on memoryholeblog.com probing the relationship between America’s police state and less-understood weather warfare programs. Part I of Stealth Terror may be found here. The work will run weekly through July 30. -JFT

Expanding the Stealth Terror Thesis: Hurricane management
The following Atlantic hurricanes, of those exceeding $10 billion in damage, are the costliest to date.  Dollars are approximate, Sandy’s estimates still in flux.  Those in bold occurred after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) took responsibility for the weather-control program beginning in 2003.
                        Katrina     $108 billion           2005          Bush 43
                        Sandy           72                       2012          Obama
                        Ike                38                       2008          Bush 43
                        Wilma         29                        2005          Bush 43
                        Andrew        27                       1992          Bush 41
                        Ivan              23                      2004          Bush 43
                        Irene             17                       2011          Obama
                        Charley        16                       2004          Bush 43
                        Rita              12                       2005          Bush 43
                        Gilbert         10                       1988          Reagan
Of the next ten in rank (less than $10 billion in damage but more than $5 billion) Bush 43 had five,  thus the majority of the “top 20” hurricanes were during the presidency of George W. Bush. Only one of these, Tropical Storm Allison in 2001, was prior to DARPA’s jurisdiction.  Before Obama’s entry with Irene and Sandy, George W. (Bush 43) could claim 69% of the dollar cost of this list.  Following from this, those hopeful that Obama would not continue the Bush excesses may find little reassurance.
Another means of comparison of all 32 hurricanes costing more than $1 billion is by the percentage of total cost of all 32.  Bush 43 had 62%, Obama had 19%, Clinton 8%, Bush 41 8%, Reagan 3%, Carter a third of 1%
No president saw nearly as many damaging hurricanes during his presidency as the younger Bush following the DARPA takeover in 2003, which has HAARP as a central feature of its work.  The High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program in its final form was the project of BAE (British Aeronautical Enterprises) headquartered in the United Kingdom.  HAARP can be involved in all aspects of weather control.
Hurricane Ike, which took out half of our magnolia tree in Ohio, was heading west in the Gulf early in September, 2008 after beating up on Haiti, Cuba, Florida and the other Gulf states. As I watched and wondered about the target, it was amazing to see how it developed in strength and size, seeming repeatedly to refresh itself in order to continue. Would Ron Paul, much in the news that election year, rank as a target?  Paul was growing in prominence, a Republican in stark contrast, a Populist, a straight arrow without the shaggy histories of John McCain and Sarah Palin.  When Ike turned north toward the Texas shoreline its eye, unusually large, stretched from one side of Paul’s congressional district on the Gulf Coast to the other, like a monster mouth opening to chomp down on his district.  It flooded his primary congressional headquarters at Galveston, flooding and wrecking the office sufficiently to put it out of operation for the rest of the year.  Paul had been growing in interest as a presidential candidate, but when Ike swamped Paul’s office on September 13, McCain had already been selected in the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minnesota ten days earlier.  Ike was Texas’ second hit, a million people already in evacuation after Gustav two weeks earlier in an area of east Texas and Louisiana.  For days after entering Louisiana Gustav pointed straight for Denver, Colorado where Barack Obama had been nominated Democratic candidate on August 27.  Gustav turned to the northeast on September 1 to head away.  (I am told by experts that Mother Nature does not have hurricanes move in a straight line.)
Ike’s damage to Ron Paul was in the debilitation of his district containing the people who voted him into office to represent them, an area today still not back to normal.
Ike had made a quick turn to the north to travel through Ontario and Quebec to the Atlantic Ocean.  Ohio and Indiana each had seven fatalities and with near hurricane-force winds the loss of trees, downed poles and wires causing weeks of electricity loss.  Ike made its impression as far as Iceland, where wind speeds were even higher than in Ohio
When all insurance payments had been counted, it turned out to be the most expensive storm in Ohio’s history–$1.33 billion.
For a hurricane seemingly named after Dwight D. Eisenhower to be sent to chastise a Republican who wasn’t impressed with the party’s leadership seems to be a compelling analysis to remove coincidence as a motive, but it’s pretty thin.  It makes for a guessing game—were the controllers unable to get Gustav enduring enough so that Paul’s district could be hit on September 2, the day John McCain and Sarah Palin were nominated?  The huge punch by Ike was worth more, because the debilitation of Paul’s district was the main point, and “Ike” was too good to pass up.  “Ike” was a listed hurricane when the year began.  Was it planned that far ahead?  Coincidence or code?
Hurricanes are well known in the secret world of weather warfare, exposed in many books and articles for years.  See a January 3, 2013 article at the Free Press and Bob Fitrakis’ 2004 book “Star Wars, Weather Mods, and Full Spectrum Dominance.”  He tells the story precisely and well.
On October 29, 2012 did Mother Nature side with Obama’s re-election, to be delivered nine days later as she laid Sandy, a unique last-of-the season hurricane, against human political markers?  David Cay Johnston in “Everyday Armageddon” in the November/ December Newsweek suggests that the money for repair and renovation should put Governors Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie in good position for the presidential nomination in 2016 with this “opportunity to do what’s right instead of what’s politically expedient.”  (Just announced: Christie will pay $300 million for storm-damaged homes, to be lived in or leveled.)  Prospects for this scenario may be seen in the enthusiastic 16-page special section in The Times by the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) assuring that all will cooperate in the recovery.  The new business area at the World Trade Center will draw occupants.  “If you look downtown,” one REBNY member is quoted, “you are looking at a complete, desirable area that is a magnet for tenants coming into the city.
Was Sandy sent as a gift?  If so, not everyone understood it.  No one publicly asked the question that would be considered irresponsible if published.  When anyone asked “Why did they let this happen?” it was to blame it on the victims as the result of procrastination. To quote Klaus Jacob (July 9 installment): “They “failed to recognize that the authorities were playing Russian roulette.”
These things someone can say.  But they do not have leeway to say that this happened because it was likely set up in the secret chambers somewhere inside the Defense Department or the White House.  If it was not created by someone at a console, and was in fact entirely an act of nature, then ask the question: “Why did they not head it off?”  That is what guiding the jet stream can do.  One way the jet stream can be used, for which Irene’s weakening was typical, is to cut off the cloud mass above the twisting core so that it loses its power.  In Irene’s case it was said to be the fact that instead of the jet stream cutting across her for a route inland, it went beside her guiding northward so that she spread very widely and thus dryly.  This caused a greater area of wind damage, by the time she reached New York she was too moderate to do damage equivalent to Sandy’s.
The hurricane that swamped New York City in 1938 was featured in the 2008 History Channel video: “New York City Hurricane” which was in essence a warning, often repeated, that there was more to come and we’d better get ready for it.  The producers at the History Channel may well have known what was possible by human control.  Many of their programs over the years until 2010 were bolder than you might imagine today, with facts and analyses given by people in a position to know.  One of their JFK investigations several years ago implicated so many prominent people they were required to pull it—no more broadcast, no more video.
When you have an unprecedented, permanent-fact-changing event like Sandy a few days before a presidential election, we coincidence-checkers do a double-take.  It’s a lot like finding out about the early warnings of a plot to crash hijacked airplanes into the World Trade Center that Bush had received, yet somehow his Secretary of Defense couldn’t get the Air National Guard interceptors off the ground to do anything but circle above the rising smoke.  FAA controllers, puzzled, met together and recorded their conversations about the breakdown in communication.  Then their boss destroyed the tape.  If you try to follow the action, as the controllers did, you wonder why the fighter pilots had to sit so long before takeoff, as in the case when Flight 77 was reported to be heading for the Pentagon.
At this point I turn your attention to a Rumsfeld-amended special procedure for handling hijacked airplanes:  Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction J-3 CJCSI 610.01A, as amended in the first week of June, 2001.  Its new instruction would have been most interesting to the befuddled watchers, including fighter pilots with their engines idling, to find the reason they had to endure the long waits that prevented their involvement, thus allowing the disaster they were trained and equipped to prevent.
The change requires that in the case of an aircraft piracy (hijacking) emergency, they must (1) forward the request to the appropriate unified command to determine if suitable aircraft are available and then (2) forward the request to the Secretary of Defense for approval.  (Explained by Peter Tiradera, a physician and former Air Force officer, in “9-11–Coup Against America,” 2006.)  It is unfortunate that Secretary Rumsfeld was so involved with other matters that he could not make these connections promptly, even to protect others in the Pentagon who could have moved away from the west wall with the minute or two they would have had.  This is easily proven.  One can be there to see how it looked in detail in a book by one of the victims, LTC Brian Birdwell, “Refined by Fire” (2004), who casts no blame on his boss.  Evidently to make up for this failure that so fatally involved the Pentagon, Rumsfeld hastened to the impact scene on the far west side of the building to help move the injured to ambulances, seen on television later and acclaimed as heroic.  During that time, Flight 93 was still reported heading toward Washington.
Dr. Judy Wood in her book “Where Did the Towers Go?” (2010) presents evidence of HAARP use of “directed free-energy technology” in the “dustification” of the Twin Towers.  (See “Tesla-Hurricane-Magnetometer Correlation,” Wood p. 431.)  Did you know that September 11 each year is “Hurricane Day” (The New York Times weather page, 9/11/01) because of the statistical frequency of hurricanes on that day?  There was one offshore on 9/11 that had headed straight for New York for several days, then on 9/11 as the towers were struck turned and headed east, not to return.
Hurricane Erin is mentioned routinely on page 6A of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune for that day: “Hurricane Erin kicks up surf along East Coast,” relating that it had “sideswiped Bermuda” over the weekend and “kicked up the surf along the East Coast on Monday.”  It was the first Atlantic hurricane of the season, with top sustained winds of 115 mph.  It was expected to turn to the northeast, away from the U.S., but there were 3 to 5-foot waves in New Jersey with lifeguards keeping a close watch on swimmers.  The Coast Guard posted small-craft advisories along parts of Long Island.  The big story in Sarasota was that President Bush had arrived the day before, to speak at Booker Elementary School on the 11th.  The next day, storms in the Gulf might double back with 15 inches of rain over south Florida, but a reconnaissance plane could not check on the weather because the order from Washington was that all planes were grounded.
(Pausing to look around: After he was notified of the second plane and that “we are at war” Bush continued to listen to the first graders for a few minutes, then stalled until 10:30 for a TV appearance.  His visit well-announced, another “hijacked” plane could have been on the 25-minute route from Miami International Airport to result in a schoolful of dead children, which caused a marine guard to burst in and yell “time to go” and get shushed.  Mothers all over Sarasota were hopping into their cars to bring their children home.  (Sarasota Herald-Tribune)  Cheney then had Bush flown to Omaha apparently so that he would not get in the way.)
The Times mentioned Erin that day with no alarm in the Weather Report on page A22 under “National Forecast,” noting that it will begin to weaken as it interacts with the jet stream.  In its “FOCUS” paragraph, September 11 was “HURRICANE DAY,” saying:
“Hurricane Erin spinning north of Bermuda will add to the reputation of Hurricane Day.  In 9 out of 10 years since 1886, at least one tropical storm or hurricane has raged in the Atlantic on Sept. 11.  No other day has had more storms.  Water temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean peak in early September, providing optimum conditions for tropical storms that draw energy from the warmth of the seas.  At the same time, strong high-level winds that are capable of tearing storms apart are”
Check that last line, shown exactly as it appears on the page, which does not complete the reference to “strong high-level winds.”  That issue was delivered to my door in Ohio on September 11.  It will give you pause if you have seen Dr. Judy Woods’ book “Where Did the Towers Go?” because her theory involves a hurricane and a strong high-level wind from the West.  The hurricane revolves counterclockwise, the wind strikes it at the north edge, clockwise, to create the “directed free energy” to enable the World Trade Center buildings to be turned to dust.  It is a compelling theory, contested by other hard-working and respected 9/11 researchers, but I find it important for consideration without abandoning the engineering analysis which fits the story of former CIA asset Susan Lindauer who tells of three “truck vans” arriving at the WTC at 3 a.m. on “ten to twelve nights” between August 23 and September 3 or 4, leaving by 5 a.m.  (Lindauer, “Extreme Prejudice/ The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Coverups of 9/11 and Iraq” 2010 p. 29)  Materials were seen moved into parts of the buildings that were closed in the daytime as if for renovation, noted by WTC occupants as peculiar.  Presumably to hold mini nukes or thermite bombs.
The other tie to a hurricane is the NOAA graph showing tropical storm Erin coming in from Africa, heading toward the Gulf of Mexico, a turn north on September 6, northwest a day later when it appears to establish a base from which it takes a bee line toward Cape Cod.  On the fourth day of this unlikely straight line for an Atlantic hurricane, namely September 11, a NASA photo shows the outer bands of Eric reaching within 170 miles of the World Trade Center site pouring dust southward and southwest into the harbor.  Having done her duty, Erin turned 145 degrees to head due east–at a moment when the  HAARP crew could have been informed that both towers were gone–“dustified.”
Dr. Wood admits that this subject requires more explanation.  It is rich with coincidence such as the obvious lack of comment in the Times even though it was a major hurricane and the first Atlantic hurricane of the year.  Had Erin not turned as it did when the Trade Center towers went to dust its eye would have touched Long Island about September 14, conceivably a Sandy-like track.  My suggestion concerning the difference in analysis between the engineers and Dr. Wood is that plotters may well have used both HAARP and the planted explosives, not certain if they could pull off their attempt at formation of a “Tesla coil.”  (These show up in nature during tornadoes, to do things like jabbing a straw through a wooden pole as molecules of the pole and the straw separate, then reform.)
In the case of Sandy, her birthright must be examined because of her unprecedented and atypical formation.  In late October there was no Bermuda high pressure system left to pull the storm around in the Atlantic to the northeast, the usual fate of a tropical storm in the Atlantic.  The climatologists in Europe, with more advanced equipment, were the first to display the correct route toward Atlantic City, while the Americans offered a bouquet of waving varicolored strands that confused a warning.  An unusually large nor’easter met the Atlantic storm from the land side, its several-hundred-mile length and its winds merging with Sandy’s larger mass, still strong with hurricane force because the Atlantic Ocean that year was five degrees warmer than normal.  The eye of Sandy was pulled against the moving mass from the West by a “U” in the jet stream so that thus joined, the masses would comprise an outsized monster more than 1,000 miles across, improbably heavy with water transported by high winds, affecting 24 states.  This includes Ohio for Lake Erie damage, which is scheduled for part of the appropriation of $50.5 billion that finally came through three months (91 days) after Sandy put so many lives on “hold.”
HAARP, from its Alaskan base, is central to the question “whodunit?”  It has had expert discussion for years, including several excellent books not yet banned, an early one being the late Rosalie Bertell’s Planet Earth / The Latest Weapon of War (2000).  Bertell, only recently deceased, was a Canadian member of the Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart, holder of many awards including five honorary doctorates.  She tells of Nikola Tesla’s discoveries, such as use of electromagnetic force to cause earthquakes prior to 1900.  She tells about ELF waves and Russia’s early involvement with Tesla’s ideas.  At page 131: “The key to geophysical warfare is the identification of environmental instabilities to which the addition of a small amount of energy would release vastly greater amounts of energy.” 
Two books whose authors have mastered this subject are Dr. Nick Begich of Alaska with Angels Don’t Play This HAARP (2002, with co-author Jeane Manning), and the late Jerry E. Smith (died too young on March 13, 2010) of California, with Weather Warfare / The Military’s Plan to Draft Mother Nature (2006).  Begich and Smith star in the History Channel DVD “Weather Warfare.”  Smith wrote an earlier book entitled HAARP / The ultimate weapon of the Conspiracy (1998) which contains patent language, drawings, old news articles including a 9/22/1940 article from the Times headed “Death Ray for Planes,” a Tesla offer to build a dozen plants for $2 million, taking three months to construct, that would melt the motor in airplanes 250 miles away and thus build a Chinese wall around the country.  The article favored the idea, as a small cost for a country in preparation for war.  The “teleforce,” as it was called, would save billions.  Tesla stressed his stipulation that he “would not suffer interference from experts.” (p.56)  They didn’t take him up on it, possibly because FDR was afraid it would work.  You will recall that he moved the aircraft carriers out of Pearl Harbor so they would be intact to fight  following the expected attack.
The  program advanced during the Bush/Cheney administration, well-known within the U.S. Congress as had been the ENMOD Treaty in 1977, eagerly joined by the US and the USSR, both involved in “environmental  modification”(ENMOD) including earthquakes, which “modify the environment.”  DARPA can move the jet stream to create or divert tornadoes and hurricanes as with British Petroleum’s fatal well site in the Gulf of Mexico, exempted from hurricanes for three years so far.  During the first season it was obvious that Mother Nature would be drafted to protect BP from having to face further damage by hurricane to complicate its status by oil-and detergent-filled storms loading residential and seaside vacation areas on Florida’s gulf coast to make the present damage seem minor.  Having studied BP’s slimy-shady background I wrote that there would be no Gulf hurricanes that would seriously affect them.  I hereby make that bet for year four.
The Critical Role of the “Chemtrail”
This is a “police state” subject.  It refers to the long white trails left by tanker aircraft in the skies over the United States, Europe, and elsewhere.  The subject has more importance than one might realize—an importance communicated by the remarkable intransigence of government agencies to even admit there is such a thing.  If one asks the Air Force, or the Federal Aviation Administration, or any other federal agency, silently followed by all other agencies of state government and the mainstream media, what we “conspiracy theorists” think we see is actually the normal jet exhaust that follows jet aircraft at altitudes of 35,000 feet or higher, containing ice crystals and carbon dioxide.  Not a boa constrictor.  Only a garter snake.
While I have suggested calling the chemtrail a “PSA,” for “Police State Aerosol,” Wikipedia calls it a “Chemical conspiracy theory” with statements such as “the Chemtrail hoax has been investigated and refuted by many established and accredited universities, scientific organizations, and major media publications,” referencing a fact sheet published in 2000 “to dispel the rumors” issued by the Environmental Protection Agency, the FAA, the National Aeronautical and Space Administration, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
How is it that this false cover can continue for fifteen years as earnest sky watchers persist in documenting their existence?  William Thomas’ 2004 book Chemtrails Confirmed fully tells the story, as have many more authors in the continuing decade.
The most recent examinations are by Michael J. Murphy, producing two videos in his attempt to inform, the first one in 2010 that a friend called to my attention: What in the World Are They Spraying?  I had assessed the subject as a minor nuisance—thus giving me a personal understanding of the blank stare of some 98 or 99 percent of the population today who simply haven’t looked.  I simply hadn’t looked.  Having looked, the subject for me has come to play a role like watching a daily reminder that we have been imprisoned below these white, all-consuming bars.  Murphy’s new video, released in August and titled Why in the World Are They Spraying? is highly pertinent for weather forecasters, parents, farmers, and absolutely essential for those who wish to bet on the weather at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.  It is most instructive for those who would view with their own eyes, from their own property, the day-by-day confirmation of a police state.
I can tell you of the situation in central Ohio from my own records, which begin on February 13, 2011.  In the calendar year 2012 there were 262 days in which I observed chemtrails, none on 34.  All-day thick overcast made viewing impossible on 70 days.  I have been both honest and conservative in this count.  For accuracy in import, I would include those 70 with the 262, for 332 days (roughly 90 %), because I have repeatedly watched, and photographed, chemtrails lain across the sky row after row, the older ones already grown, in two hours swelling and merging into brownish cloud banks to blot out the entire sky—which hides other chemtrails and the sun, and anything else above a few thousand feet.  Even with cirrus clouds or cloud cover, I do not count a chemtrail unless it is clearly unnatural.  In 2011 I saw none on 29 days, with viewing impossible on 96.  One striking difference was a series of five days in October of 2011 with no clouds, no chemtrails or trace thereof, as the sky day by day lost its haze and became a true blue.  This was unique, and although I could not measure or record the scent, to me it smelled like fresh air, the kind Clifford Carnicom lost in 1998.  On October 4,5,6,7 and 8 of 2011 the skies were free morning to night.  The uniqueness of these five days is underlined by my further counts in which I found no four-day or three-day series since I began counting, and only nine sets of two days in two years.  They are also made at night, floating into this area.  Our weather is under constant control.  If a meteorologist contests this conclusion, he should watch Murphy’s DVD.
On an auto trip to D.C. from Columbus in 2011, and on my return a few days later, I saw skies of chemtrails the entire distance both ways.  Add to Ohio: Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and the District of Columbia.
As you read this, if you have visible sky the odds are that you will see these trails being made, or view their elongated clouds as they stretch across the sky and slowly expand into haze.  It takes persistence to keep a complete record.  If I don’t see them as the sun comes up I must keep an eye out until sunset.  It requires dedication to the count.
Tests have shown that chemtrails contain metal sulfates–barium, aluminum, and strontium, recently a report from Europe that they now contain fluoride.  A number of other chemicals for particular purposes are best described by Carnicom.  He explains the concept of “plenum,” which is important in understanding the effect of chemtrails, whether being used for weather control or something else.  The earth’s atmosphere is a plenum because every particle of atmosphere contains the same elements as in his example of the full bathtub containing pure water.  If one puts a drop of red dye in the tub, every drop of water in the tub will contain its percentage of that drop of red dye.  It will not show, but it is there.  As one adds more to the tub, at some point a pinkish cast will appear.  Whatever is included in a chemtrail at 35 or 40,000 feet or so, when its cloud has been made and dispersed so that the sky shows “clear,” the chemical content is becoming part of the world’s atmosphere.  If it is a debilitating element, all people will be affected, as they will if it is an element that only changes natural weather to cause, for instance, more severe drought, which is the predicted result of long-term spraying in the atmosphere.
Carnicom, living in New Mexico in 1998 found the cloudless blue sky there an irreplaceable fixture of that state’s scenic environment.  It was losing its blue, becoming hazy—the generator of haze being long white streams following jets at high altitude as the streams swelled into long white clouds turning the blue sky into grey as they expanded.  Carnicom has since devoted his life to analysis of this subject.  Dr. James F. Tracy, Associate Professor of Communications at Florida Atlantic University, gives an account of Carnicom’s work and experience following a December 10, 2012 conversation with Carnicom on GlobalSkyWatch in which Carnicom emphasized the biological aspect of chemtrails, concluding with his humble statement in answer to a question:  “How do we get this to stop?  How do we get the government to respond to us?”  His answer includes a John F. Kennedy quote: “Ask not what your country can do for you.  Ask what you can do for your country.”
He goes on to answer with the deep seriousness that the subject deserves:
Just skip the patriotic aspect of it and ask yourself what you’re going to do.  The first thing that I would do is extend to every one of us the necessity for involvement and using your talents.  The second thing is that our world has been transformed now.  Normal things don’t work.  Frustration does not eliminate the call for duty that exists upon each of us … This is more a level of consciousness and awareness, of planting a seed, but the level that is going to be required is so different in this world than anything that has been imagined in terms of the right to a healthful and peaceful existence on this planet, it’s going to have to happen at a level that we’re not thinking of right now because the normal processes are not working.  The Million Man March doesn’t cut it.  I wish that I could answer simply what it is going to be.  But it is going to (require) a shift in consciousness and awareness that is so forthright and direct that all of the games and manipulations—and the business of three, four, six companies controlling the media—no longer works and no longer applies.  I don’t want it to be decades in our future.
This response contains a painful recognition, and a sadness, that I share.  With a lawyer’s reaction, I submit that my property, my family, and my cat are being medicated without due process of law.  Whom do I sue?  As a citizen, I must realize that if this clearly obvious spraying is admitted by the government as fact, it will undermine or destroy the “plausible deniability” which permits secret warfare to defend our nation (assuming that is necessary).  For the loyal citizen of course it causes the same conflict as with the costly disaster of Hurricane Sandy, or our grand historic event that occurred on 9/11/01, when the U.S. was placed under police-state procedures which had been prepared for instant application after 9/11 when fear and dismay would create an atmosphere for acceptance.
Chemtrails were in our skies even before that Bush/Cheney event, for weather control along with HAARP, guiding storms by movement of air pressure differentials.  Chemtrails would have been useful for the impact of Hurricane Sandy, or for the cascade of tornadoes ripping up Texas and Oklahoma this year.  We excuse Mother Nature for the death of humans and ruin of our property, because we know rain and wind and snow and ice are inevitable and that Mother Nature follows principles such that she cannot avoid harm when humans get in the way.  But when some high-level controller has Mother’s arms tied behind her back so that he can kill the humans of his choice, it allows a new depth of evil.  Those few who do not shrug are those aware of the permanence of chemtrails and the continuing increase in metal content in the atmosphere that we all must breathe.
Carnicom’s emphasis is on the content of chemtrails.  These are metal sulfate showers sucked into our lungs which have sometimes contained toxins, and could be used for population control today or tomorrow without notice.  They are already believed by many analysts to cause breathing disorders, increase asthma, and to result in pneumonia especially for young children.  Mind control has been a hidden federal activity for many years.  The accepted, ignored, almost daily use of large-volume tanker aircraft could begin this role with no alteration in its appearance.  The tanker pilots would not know, or being foreigners, would say “that’s war for you,” just as they note the cynical disrespect for innocent life in U.S. drone attacks in the Middle East.
*James Hanson is a native of Nebraska and graduate of Oberlin College. His first job was as reporter for the Defiance, Ohio Crescent-News.  Drafted, he was with the Korea Military Advisory Group (KMAG) 1952-1953.  His law degree is from the University of Michigan, where he learned the importance of well-drafted legislation.
For the Ohio Water Commission, born of the 1959 flood, Hanson assisted in creating an intelligent framework for water management.  He was legal advisor to the Director of Natural Resources, then legislative counsel for the Ohio Legislative Service Commission.
In private practice Hanson’s long-term representations were for environmental organizations such as the volunteer Water Management Association of Ohio and the Ohio Water Development Authority, bond-issuing agency for municipal sewer and water facilities.  The Wildlife Legislative Fund and the Wildlife Legislative Fund of America became his major clients, which he created under the direction of James H. Glass as the defenders of sportsmen’s interests in Ohio and wherever wildlife laws came under attack.  Their present successor is the U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance.
Retired, Hanson was writing histories of immigration into Nebraska when he suddenly found himself duty-bound to concentrate on the flood of government falsehoods spilling over especially since 2001.