Big Banks Manipulated Energy Markets In California and the Midwest … Ripping Off Tens of Millions of Dollars in 9 Months

Posted on July 29, 2013 by WashingtonsBlog

Energy Markets Are Manipulated

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission says that JP Morgan has massively manipulated energy markets in  California and the Midwest, obtaining tens of millions of dollars in overpayments from grid operators between September 2010 and June 2011.
As shown below, big banks have manipulated virtually every other market as well – both in the financial sector and the real economy – and broken virtually every law on the books.

Commodities Are Manipulated

The big banks and government agencies have been conspiring to manipulate commodities prices for decades.
The big banks are taking over important aspects of the physical economy, including uranium mining, petroleum products, aluminum, ownership and operation of airports, toll roads, ports, and electricity.
And they are using these physical assets to massively manipulate commodities prices … scalping consumers of many billions of dollars each year.

Interest Rates Are Manipulated

Interest rates are rigged:

• The big banks have conspired for years to rig interest rates … upon which $800 trillion in assets are pegged

• This was the largest insider trading scandal ever … and the largest financial scam in world history

• Local governments got ripped off bigtime by the Libor manipulation

• Libor is still being manipulated

Derivatives Are Manipulated

The big banks have long manipulated derivatives … a $1,200 Trillion Dollar market.
Indeed, many trillions of dollars of derivatives are being manipulated in the exact same same way that interest rates are fixed: through gamed self-reporting.

Currency Markets Are Rigged

Currency markets are massively rigged.

Gold and Silver Are Manipulated

The Guardian and Telegraph report that gold and silver prices are “fixed” in the same way as interest rates and derivatives – in daily conference calls by the powers-that-be.

Oil Prices Are Manipulated

Oil prices are manipulated as well.

Everything Can Be Manipulated through High-Frequency Trading

Traders with high-tech computers can manipulate stocks, bonds, options, currencies and commodities. And see this.

Manipulating Numerous Markets In Myriad Ways

The big banks and other giants manipulate numerous markets in myriad ways, for example:

• Engaging in mafia-style big-rigging fraud against local governments. See this, this and this

• Shaving money off of virtually every pension transaction they handled over the course of decades, stealing collectively billions of dollars from pensions worldwide. Details here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here

• Charging “storage fees” to store gold bullion … without even buying or storing any gold . And raiding allocated gold accounts

• Committing massive and pervasive fraud both when they initiated mortgage loans and when they foreclosed on them (and see this)

• Pledging the same mortgage multiple times to different buyers. See this, this, this, this and this. This would be like selling your car, and collecting money from 10 different buyers for the same car

• Cheating homeowners by gaming laws meant to protect people from unfair foreclosure

• Pushing investments which they knew were terrible, and then betting against the same investments to make money for themselves. See this, this, this, this and this

• Engaging in unlawful “frontrunning” to manipulate markets. See this, this, this, this, this and this

• Engaging in unlawful “Wash Trades” to manipulate asset prices. See this, this and this

• Otherwise manipulating markets. And see this

• Participating in various Ponzi schemes. See this, this and this

• Charging veterans unlawful mortgage fees

• Cooking their books (and see this)

• Bribing and bullying ratings agencies to inflate ratings on their risky investments

The Big Picture

The big picture is simple:

• The big banks manipulate every market they touch

• Too much interconnectedness leads to financial instability

• The government has given the banks huge subsidies … which they are using for speculation and other things which don’t help the economy. In other words, propping up the big banks by throwing money at them doesn’t help the economy

• Top economists, financial experts and bankers say that the big banks are too large … and their very size is threatening the economy. They say we need to break up the big banks to stabilize the economy

• The big banks own the D.C. politicians … so Congress and the White House won’t do anything unless the people force change

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Besting Barry through Chattering Class Communication

By Judi McLeod (Bio and Archives)  Monday, July 29, 2013 http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/56857

The most effective way to survive President Barack Obama is to keep right on doing what he doesn’t want you to do.  In one word: Communicate.

These are the days when Communication is more important than most anything else. Communicate to as many others as you can by every means possible.  Communication is how Obama keeps his control over America.
Patriots taking a page out of Obama’s book will one day turn the tables on the most anti-American president in history.
While he takes away jobs and deliberately stokes racial unrest, Obama wants you to suffer in silence. 
Don’t comply.
“He’s stealing our country!”  “He’s canceling the Constitution!”  “He’s disappearing individual rights!”  “He’s impersonating the Creator!”

Shout it from the rooftops!
Blog it!  Write it! Tweet it! Skype It!  Shout it!  ‘Like’ it!
Talk it up among your friends.  Put back real meaning in the term ‘Chattering Classes’.  Make yours ‘The Chattering Classes of all Time’.
Be like the iconic 9/11 picture of the firemen raising the flag at Ground Zero that almost never made it to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum all because it was deemed by Museum Creative Director Michael Shulan as “too rah-rah American”.
When you have an American president traveling the globe putting down America, when he’s not at home working on fundamentally transforming America, it is impossible to be “too rah-rah American”.
Don’t worry about a mainstream media in the tank for Obama and ignoring the news that matters.
Patriots prefer the Internet over the mainstream media.  The pentagon’s so worried about it that this is the headline on Drudge this morning: ‘Pentagon vows American people should hear it from us, not as scoop on DRUDGE REPORT’.
“On Thursday, the DoD bemoaned DrudgeReport.com and the fact that, because of citizen journalists, social media and other online platforms reporting news in real time, the public is more quickly becoming aware of the constant patterns of contradictions and habitual lying by a government long ago captured by a group of corrupt interests.”
Ignore the government’s all too willing Ministry of Propaganda Mainstream Media by being your own media.  You know more about the news than the mainstream media because you have been living the Marxist Misery ever since Obama was sworn in on Jan.20, 2009.
Obama and Company need you to think that they’ve got you coming and going.  They’re reducing civil society to life in a goldfish bowl and the mainstream media reminds you where you are on a daily basis. 
The NSA, IRS, DHS, FBI, CIA are peering in at you, watching your every move.  Make that paid to peer in at you.  There is no longer any privacy in your not-so-long-ago-private vehicle,  and Big Government can both demand and get the password to your website.
Bumbling bureaucrats on Obama’s watch are more like the Keystone Kops than Double O Sevens.  More anxious to please their government bosses, bumbling bureaucrats lack the know-how about how to use mass data against their perceived enemies.  Carry on with your life as though they’re not there, because they’ll have to be gotten rid of before Obama’s replacement takes over.  Who will vote for an incoming president who carries on with the spying-on-the-masses NSA, IRS, DHS, FBI, and CIA?
It takes full time energy for politicians to oversee the world of spydom.  There’s no contest when it comes to running spydom smoothly or feathering their own nests. Count on the politicians being where you can always find them; in the back-room troughs counting the riches that unfortunately come with being an elected official today.
So the government now has the technology that can remotely explode your car with you in it.  Big Government can chase you into your own barn with one of its countless drones.
Like the television footage where the leopard finally catches up with the weakest member of the running herd, Big Government can only do it one at a time too.
They can’t go after the entire herd because they’ll be stampeded.
No matter how tough the going gets, always remember that more than anything else Obama wants a thoroughly demoralized America.
Don’t let him have it.
Retreating into a stony silence and wallowing in depression and despair is totally un-American and doesn’t cut it for future generations.
The Chattering Class of All Time can drown out Obama’s oft-repeated promise to “fundamentally transform America”  with one galvanizing chant: “USA! “USA!”

Copyright © Canada Free Press

Muslim Brotherhood demands the U.S and NATO to invade Egypt and destroy its army

Muslim Brotherhood demands the U.S and NATO to invade Egypt and destroy its army

Secret DARPA Mind Control Project Revealed: Leaked Document | The Daily Sheeple

Secret DARPA Mind Control Project Revealed: Leaked Document | The Daily Sheeple

GMO Re-Education: Monsanto, Dow and Biotech Firms Unite to Launch Disinformation Site | The Daily Sheeple

GMO Re-Education: Monsanto, Dow and Biotech Firms Unite to Launch Disinformation Site | The Daily Sheeple

FEMA Insider: A Large Number of Truck Drivers Have Vanished While Delivering Weapons, Grenades, Ammo *Video*

FEMA Insider: A Large Number of Truck Drivers Have Vanished While Delivering Weapons, Grenades, Ammo *Video*

Joint Intelligence: Pine Gap, Australia’s most secretive location

Source: The Australian

LAST week, it was revealed that the Australian research facility Pine Gap might be indirectly responsible for US drone strikes which have killed Pakistani citizens.
How did that happen? And what exactly is Pine Gap? Here’s a quick cheat sheet for those of you who’ve vaguely heard of Pine Gap but never bothered to find out much more.
SHHHH! IT’S A SECRET!
Pine Gap is a secretive facility nearly 20km south-west of Alice Springs which has been there since 1970. Run by both Australia and the United States, its official name is the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap, even though our government really hates to admit it exists.
As for persuading the government to describe what it’s there for, forget it. We contacted the national office of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and none of the three lines answered. So we rang two state offices, both of which told us to ring the national lines that weren’t answering.

 ”It is fair to say that Pine Gap has some fairly awesome capabilities when it comes to intelligence gathering,” said a former worker at Pine Gap, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak about his work. “It’s hard to imagine, but I suppose that’s the nature of the game. It’s secretive.”

YES, BUT WHAT IS IT THERE FOR?

Surely they should know better than to tell you to turn around this close to double lines. Source: Supplied

Pine Gap is essentially a satellite tracking station, situated in the middle of nowhere because that makes it hard for other countries to intercept the signals emitted from within. It is thought that the US controls all of its spy satellites from Pine Gap, and that the US and Australia “listen to Asia” from the 14 antennae concealed beneath white domes at Pine Gap. Put it this way, those white domelike structures aren’t a cat boarding facility.
WHAT’S THE EDWARD SNOWDEN CONNECTION?
Renegade American intelligence guy Edward Snowden revealed just recently that Pine Gap is one of the key facilities used in US surveillance.
WHICH IS WHY PINE GAP IS IMPLICATED IN DRONE STRIKES
Yes. A Pakistani lawyer went on record this week saying Pine Gap tracks the communications of al-Qaeda and Taliban militants. This, he says, enables the US to target those militants with its drone strikes. Sadly, these strikes kill civilians in addition to killing military targets.
IT BASICALLY RUNS THE ALICE SPRINGS ECONOMY

Pine Gap is the small cleared area above the pink A in the bottom left. The town of Alice Springs is top right. Picture: Google maps Source: Supplied

Pine Gap employs up to 1000 people. When you think about it, 1000 jobs in a town of 25,000 people is like 160,000 people working at one company in a city of four million people such as Melbourne. So basically, it’s the biggest employer in town. Not that anyone admits that. Meet one of the Americans who seem to be everywhere in The Alice and they’ll tell you they work as a “gardener”, when they’re probably some sort of high-level intelligence operative. Because of the American influence, festivals such as Halloween and Thanksgiving are huge in Alice Springs.
MANY PEOPLE ARE OPPOSED TO IT

A 1986 picture of Peter Garrett, then just a rock star, who was campaigning to close the Pine Gap facility. Source: News Limited

There have been numerous protests on site over the years, although Pine Gap’s remote location has the effect of making mobilised opposition difficult. The excellent ’80s rock band Midnight Oil sang several songs in opposition to US military presence in Australia, and Pine Gap bobbed up in the famous song Power and the Passion in the line:
Flat chat, Pine Gap, in every home a Big Mac
That lyric appeared to be referring to an insidious American incursion into our lives at all levels – cultural, military and so on.
These days Peter Garrett works for the same government that won’t pick up its phone to acknowledge Pine Gap’s existence.
WEIRD STUFF
Several groups believe Pine Gap is a secret facility investigating UFOs and aliens. According to one particularly imaginative website, three UFOs are being dissected at Pine Gap as we speak – complete with frazzled bodies. The UFO guys didn’t answer the phone either.

Oakland to ban hammers, wrenches, tripods, walking canes, shields and other 'tools of vandalism' in bizarre Orwellian disarmament push

Oakland to ban hammers, wrenches, tripods, walking canes, shields and other 'tools of vandalism' in bizarre Orwellian disarmament push

MSNBC host says newborn infants don't count as 'alive' unless parents decide they do; infanticide is the new abortion

MSNBC host says newborn infants don't count as 'alive' unless parents decide they do; infanticide is the new abortion

FBI Admits to Flying Drones Over US Without Warrants

FBI Admits to Flying Drones Over US Without Warrants

The Important Things We DON’T Have Money For, And The Crazy Things We DO Have Money For…

By Michael Snyder, July 29,2013

In an age of "belt tightening" and "budget cuts", you would think that government officials would be trying to spend our money wisely.  Unfortunately, when it comes time to cut spending our politicians tend to do everything that they can to protect their own interests and their own pet projects, but they don't seem to mind implementing cuts that deeply hurt military families, the poor and the elderly.  The facts that you are about to read will likely upset you very much.  The federal government and our state governments are wasting money in some of the most ridiculous ways imaginable.  Meanwhile, we are being told that we don't have any money for a lot of really important things.  Our hard-earned tax dollars are being horribly mismanaged, and the American people deserve to hear the truth about this gross negligence.
Now before I go any further, I want to make it very clear that I believe that the federal government and our state governments are already taking in more than enough money.  They should be able to do everything that they need to do on the money that they are already extracting from all of us.  And if we had been living within our means all this time, we would not be drowning in debt as a nation today.
Unfortunately, our politicians did choose to go into tremendous amounts of debt, and the American people did not stop them.  So now we are rapidly heading toward a debt crisis unlike anything the world has ever seen before.
And our politicians should be reducing spending.  There is no question about that.  But what this article is about is priorities, and right now our politicians really seem to have their priorities messed up.  What follows are some examples of this...
The city of Detroit says that it is totally broke and has no money for pensions...
...but somehow the city has 444 million dollars to spend on a new hockey arena for the Detroit Red Wings.
Large numbers of federal employees have been hit with mandatory furloughs in 2013 due to the sequester...
...but somehow the federal government is able to spend tens of millions of dollars to fill our skies with surveillance drones.
The U.S. government is so broke that it has had to borrow more than a trillion dollars from China...
...but somehow we have plenty of money to help  "modernize China’s energy grid".
The U.S. Congress has cut $60,000,000 for schools on Indian reservations across the country...
...but somehow the IRS is able to pay out $70,000,000 in bonuses to their workers.
It is being projected that federal budget cuts will cost the U.S. economy 1.6 million jobs through the end of 2014...
...but somehow the federal government has plenty of money to provide many former members of Congress with six-figure annual incomes for life...

Members of Congress receive retirement benefits that are far more generous than those earned by the average worker, according to a recent Bankrate analysis.
Not only do congressional representatives and senators earn the guarantee of a monthly pension check -- a benefit that has become increasingly rare for most U.S. workers -- they also receive Social Security payments and can opt to pay into the federal Thrift Savings Plan, a 401(k) style-plan with fees that are far lower than most retirement plans.
As a result, longtime members of Congress can easily retire with six-figure annual incomes for life.

The Obama administration is forcing the U.S. Army to reduce the number of active combat brigades from 45 to 33...
...but the Obama administration has no problem finding millions of dollars to send to radical jihadist Syrian rebels that are beheading innocent Christians over in Syria.
Barack Obama says that there simply is not any money available for White House tours...
...but the Obamas are able to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on exotic vacations.  In August, Obama and his family will be spending 8 days in a beautiful home on the Massachusetts island of Martha's Vineyard.
The federal government says that there was not enough money for the traditional 4th of July fireworks at many military bases around the country this year...
...but somehow the National Institutes of Health has $509,840 to spend on "a study that will send text messages in 'gay lingo' to methamphetamine addicts to try to persuade them to use fewer drugs and more condoms."
Due to "budget cuts", swimming pools for military families are being shut down all over the country...
...but Barack Obama felt that it was so important to send $500,000,000 to the Palestinian Authority that he signed a national security executive order last Friday that enabled him to get around an act of Congress that was intended to prevent him from sending that money to them.
The state of California is so strapped for cash that it may have to release thousands of violent criminals back on to the streets...
...but somehow the state of California has plenty of money to provide a multitude of welfare benefits for illegal immigrants.
A total of about 38 million dollars is being cut from "meals on wheels" programs around the nation due to the sequester...
...but somehow the federal government has plenty of money to hassle ordinary citizens with ridiculous amounts of red tape.  For example, a small-time magician out in Missouri that does magic shows for kids was recently forced to submit a 32 page "disaster plan" for the rabbit that he uses in his shows.
With priorities like this, is it any wonder that our national debt is completely and totally out of control?
If the U.S. national debt was reduced to a stack of one dollar bills, it would stretch from the earth to the moon five times.  It would circle the earth at the equator 45 times.
If our politicians would have been spending our money wisely all of these years, we would have enough money to do the essential things that the government should be doing.
But instead, our money has been wasted in some of the most bizarre ways imaginable, and yet the American people just continue to sit back and allow our politicians to flush our money down the toilet.
So what do you think about all of this?  Are there any additional examples that you would add to the list above?  Please feel free to share what you think by posting a comment below...

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Telco Astroturfing Tries To Bring Down Reviews Of Susan Crawford's Book

Telco Astroturfing Tries To Bring Down Reviews Of Susan Crawford's Book

Public Outlook Shifts: More Worried About Gov't Stomping On Civil Liberties Than Terrorism

Public Outlook Shifts: More Worried About Gov't Stomping On Civil Liberties Than Terrorism

New Stunning Surveillance Video Shows Fiery Michael Hastings Car Crash

Jul. 28, 2013 5:00pm Jason Howerton

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/28/new-stunning-surveillance-video-shows-fiery-michael-hastings-car-crash/

American journalist Michael Hastings reports from the Obama campaign trail the day before the general election November 5, 2012 in Des Moines, Iowa. Credit: Getty Images

Newly unearthed footage captured on an Los Angeles restaurant’s surveillance camera allegedly shows the final moments before journalist Michael Hastings’ vehicle burst into flames on impact.

Hastings was killed after his Mercedes Benz smashed into a tree on Highland Avenue on June 19. His vehicle was traveling at extremely high speeds before the vehicle hit the tree and was immediately engulfed in flames.

The video was reportedly captured by one of the surveillance cameras at Pizzeria Mozza, a well-known pizza restaurant located just a few hundred feet from the site of the crash. The owner of the restaurant, Nancy Silverton, gave the footage to police the day after the accident, according to LA Weekly.

In the unsettling video, Hastings’ vehicle is allegedly seen speeding down the road seconds before the car wrecked and went up in flames. Watch below (Warning: Video may be disturbing to some viewers):

A number of questions remain unanswered in the death of Michael Hastings. Many are hoping that autopsy and toxicology test results will help answer some of those questions. However, more than a month later, the L.A. County coroner’s office has not provided an official cause of death or the results of a toxicology test.

The lack of answers surrounding the circumstances of the Hastings accident has allowed conspiracy theories to thrive on the Internet. The LAPD said they found no signs of foul play as the coroner continues to investigate.

Hastings, who was just 33-years-old, is best known for his Rolling Stone profile on Gen. Stanley McChrystal, which ultimately forced his resignation.

(H/T: THR)

Kim Dotcom Battle Sees Kiwi Public Burn Through US$1.6m in Legal Costs

• Andy
• July 29, 2013
• kim dotcom,
  MegaUpload

When you have as many problems with the law as Kim Dotcom there are a few things you can’t do without – a regular supply of headache pills, unfaltering family support, and a crack legal team. While Dotcom’s lawyer bills continue to skyrocket, the Kiwi taxpayer is also having to foot an ever-escalating bill. Latest estimates show that almost 10,000 hours have been invested in the case, at a cost to the public of US$ 1.6m.
For years Kim Dotcom and his Megaupload associates lined the pockets of lawyers in several countries, a regular business expense for anyone running a large business with worldwide reach.
But by early 2012 the revenue streams had not only dried up, but all existing assets had been scooped up by United States, Hong Kong and New Zealand authorities following raids against his now-defunct Mega empire.
Since then Dotcom and associates Mathias Ortmann, Finn Batato and Bram van der Kolk have been engaged in a non-stop and seemingly never-ending legal battle on several fronts.
On the one hand the Internet entrepreneur is fighting off an aggressive United States government, who wish to see their prey extradited to face copyright infringement charges. For this Dotcom has a legal team run by Ira Rothken, who together have spent hundreds of hours on the case.
In New Zealand a parallel process is being played out, with Dotcom and his co-defendants not only fighting extradition, but an illegal raid against his home and property in January 2012, damages against both the police and NZ spy agency GCSB, and efforts to have his assets released.
All of this requires money – lots of money – and over the last 19 months the time invested and associated costs have being increasing at an alarming rate. But of course, costs are also being accrued by those on the other side, whose ultimate aim is to send Dotcom to the United States to face justice.
Costs to the US taxpayer have not been revealed but according to the latest estimate by NZHerald, lawyers fighting Dotcom on behalf of the New Zealand government have already run up bills of around $1.6m (NZ$2m). They have investing around 9,693 hours in the case so far, with a further 200 hours having been billed to outside counsel.
While cash to finance the government action is coming from the public purse, Dotcom is having to pay his own bills. Even that isn’t simple – he’s also having to fight to have millions seized in 2012 returned to him. In August last year Justice Judith Potter allowed Dotcom to borrow approximately US$4.83m against a government bond. The amount released was destined to cover New Zealand-based legal bills and pay rent on his Coatville mansion.
Those funds won’t last forever and in the hours to come they’ll take another hit. Today the Supreme Court will hear an appeal on whether the Megaupload founder and his associates will be permitted to see the evidence the United States has on them, or whether the New Zealand government should simply accept the US government’s word that there is a case to answer and send them for trial.
Whatever the outcome, Dotcom will continue to burn through money in defending his case, the final bill for which is likely to be substantial. In May this year he estimated that total costs would probably play out to US$50m.
http://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-battle-sees-kiwi-public-burn-through-us1-6m-in-legal-costs-130729/ 

A 'Watershed' For The Internet, An Invitation To Use A N. Korean ISP And Other Fallout From The UK's Porn Filtering Plan

from the who-knew-people-having-sex-could-be-this-much-trouble? dept

It's been a rather eventful weekend as David Cameron's porn vendetta (porndetta?) is now completely underway. Just in the past week, we found Cameron blaming search engines for child porn, claiming topless women in British newspapers were NOT porn and that the UK government had outsourced its filtering system to a company headquartered in China.

In other, non-Cameron news, a self-appointed Guardian of Purity, Claire Perry, had her website hacked, goatse'd and referred to in a blog post. Perry's response? To blame the hacking on the blogger reporting the news and threatening to call his editor and discuss... well, something, I guess. Long story short: Perry is now facing a possible defamation suit for calling the blogger a hacker.

Over the weekend, the inadvertent gift kept on giving.

First off via Slashdot, the Polish Minister of Justice got swept up in the anti-porn spirit and declared Cameron's filtering system to be just the sort of thing Poland needs. This set off a debate which, unlike many, was resolved by the end of the day, when the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk (along with the Minister of Administration and Digitization, Michal Boni) took the idea 'round back and had it shot.

We shall not block access to legal content regardless of whether or not it appeases us aesthetically or ethically.

That's PM Tusk leaving zero room for argument with a firm statement. Boni, showing he's one of the rare politicians who understands how the Web works, added:

I would like to find solutions that are effective and at the same time do not cause concerns regarding surveillance of Internet users or over potential of erroneous limiting our Internet activity. (...) Filtering does not remove the content.

It's a sad statement on the world's political leaders when a little technical know-how is enough to set you apart from your peers. Claire Perry's grasp on "hacking" seemed to rely on the "fact" that screenshots and hyperlinks are interchangeable, as well her assumption that reporting on a site hacking is the same as hacking the site.

On the plus side, Perry's lack of knowledge still puts her ahead on another anti-porn crusader, Rhoda Grant of the Scottish Parliament who, back in June, posed this question:

“If there’s a watershed on the TV then why isn’t there one for the internet?”

O....K.....

Absolutely, Rhoda. We'll get right on it. We'll send a letter down to The Internet (a.k.a. "Google") informing it of the 10 PM cutoff. Once the kids are in bed, Google The Internet is free to resume its regularly scheduled programming of porn and sweary bits. But not before 10 PM. (P.S. That includes Image Search.)

Speaking of obtuseness, Deborah Orr at the Guardian has a lengthy editorial wondering what's so bad about filtering porn and why are so many people outraged.

[I]t's irksome to me that I've had to write this piece, which is essentially an appeal for calm in a climate that says, with a baffling disregard for the view of the vast majority, that the right to porn must be universal and that access to it must be protected from all possible inhibitions

There's a lot more to it than that, although if you're paying attention, you already know she's arrived at the wrong conclusion. Orr spends time attacking every argument against Cameron's filtering, including the censorship argument.

The most shrill complaint against Cameron's wheeze is that it's "censorship". This seems to me like saying that not placing a copy of Anna Karenina in every home, pre-web, was censorship against Russian novels. No one is telling people that they aren't allowed to access porn on the web. They're saying that in order to do so, you have to tick the box pretending that you've read the terms and conditions. And why not? Even in the highly sexualised public spaces of contemporary Britain, there's still broad agreement that footage of people humping shouldn't be up on a screen at Piccadilly Circus. There's absolutely no reason why the internet should be any different.

But it is censorship, Deborah, even if it's a low-flying, somewhat malign, "opt-in" version of censorship, one that proves Cameron's not above using the bodies of murdered children as a platform. With Cameron's plan in place, a person's internet is now filtered by the government (routed through a Chinese third party). No one's expecting porn to come bursting out of their computer unbidden, but people would still like to believe they can use the web un-fucked with by the government.

Illegal images, such as child porn, are already blocked. So is other illegal material. At this point, the government is treating adults like children in order to protect children from adult images. This makes no sense.

The worst part about Orr's editorial is that she seems completely unaware this really isn't about porn. That's the just a way to get a governmental foot in the door. "Kids shouldn't be exposed to porn, right?" it asks and then hands out a list of pre-checked boxes that cover a whole lot of non-porn territory.


If you can't read the photo, here are some of the other types of content that are filtered:

- Dating sites
- Drugs, alcohol and tobacco
- File sharing sites
- Gambling
- Suicide and self-harm
- Weapons and violence

This is the slippery slope. Block a crowd-pleaser like pornography and you can set up shop in the public's internet service, ready to toss filters on anything else deemed "offensive." People aren't fighting for porn. They're fighting against government intrusion. If they're not doing anything illegal, the government should be willing to let individual responsibility be the watchword, rather than lurking in the background reading over the public's shoulder.

If that's how you want your internet, Deborah, by all means, support this plan. Most people don't. Most ISPs don't. UK ISP Andrews & Arnold has no interest in offering a filtered internet and it's released a statement making its feelings clear on Cameron's plan.

Active choice is NOT a choice

The government wants us to offer filtering as an option, so we offer an active choice when you sign up, you choose one of two options:-

Unfiltered Internet access - no filtering of any content within the A&A network - you are responsible for any filtering in your own network, or

Censored Internet access - restricted access to unpublished government mandated filter list (plus Daily Mail web site) - but still cannot guarantee kids don't access porn.

If you choose censored you are advised: Sorry, for a censored internet you will have to pick a different ISP or move to North Korea. Our services are all unfiltered.

Is that a good enough active choice for you Mr Cameron?

The ISP also offers a very thorough Q&A/fact sheet at the same site detailing the flaws with this plan and offers advice for those who want to offer a safer Internet for their kids, leaving the decision in the hands of the consumers. As it should be.

Finally, via Boing Boing, Jeremy Hardy of BBC's The News Quiz, asks the question everyone's afraid to ask:

"A porn filter is all well and good, but who's going to empty it?"

Feds Say It's Classified Info To Say Who We're At War With

from the why,-we've-always-been-at-war-with-eurasia dept

Back in May, we noted the oddity of the charges in Bradley Manning's trial, in which he was accused of aiding three different "enemies," with the last one being classified. Specifically, he was accused of aiding Al-Qaida, Al-Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP, which is different than AQ itself) and... mystery enemy. Back at the beginning of July, the government quietly dropped the charge against the classified enemy, so that's no longer in play in that case. That said, apparently this concept of classifying who we're at war with wasn't just limited to the Manning trial. ProPublica has the ridiculous and frightening tale of finding out that the answer to the simple question of who the US is at war with, is apparently classified as well.

At a hearing in May, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., asked the Defense Department to provide him with a current list of Al Qaeda affiliates.

The Pentagon responded – but Levin’s office told ProPublica they aren’t allowed to share it. Kathleen Long, a spokeswoman for Levin, would say only that the department’s “answer included the information requested.”

The Pentagon also went on to tell ProPublica that revealing who we're actually at war with would do "serious damage to national security." The main reason? They think those groups would use the info as good publicity and allow them to recruit more. But that's ridiculous, since those groups are already being targeted by the US:

Jack Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law who served as a legal counsel during the Bush administration and has written [6] on this question [7] at length, told ProPublica that the Pentagon’s reasoning for keeping the affiliates secret seems weak. “If the organizations are ‘inflated’ enough to be targeted with military force, why cannot they be mentioned publicly?” Goldsmith said. He added that there is “a countervailing very important interest in the public knowing who the government is fighting against in its name."

It really goes beyond that when you think about it. This lack of transparency out of some silly fear that these groups would use it to build up their own reputation is just wacky. It leaves open such massive loopholes for abuse by the government.

Every time we talk about things like this, people trot out the same old joke: it really means that "the public" is "the enemy." That, obviously, is an exaggeration, but the level of secrecy around all of these kinds of efforts -- in the mistaken belief that letting anyone know who you're fighting and what you're doing will somehow undermine the whole campaign -- is entirely antithetical to the kind of example we should be setting around the globe. And, of course, it's doubly ironic that the very same people who are defending this lack of transparency are the ones who trot out the "if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide." The obvious response, then, is that we should be asking exactly what our government is trying to hide, because it sure sounds like they've done a lot of things wrong.