Another Sudden Death of JPMorgan Worker: 34-Year Old Jason Alan Salais

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 23, 2014
On the evening of Sunday, December 15 of last year, six weeks before the onset of the latest rash of tragic deaths of young men in their 30s employed at JPMorgan, the Pearland, Texas police received a call of a person in distress outside a Walgreens pharmacy at 6122 Broadway in Pearland. The individual in distress was Jason Alan Salais, a 34-year old Information Technology specialist who had worked at JPMorgan Chase since May 2008.
A family member confirmed to Wall Street On Parade that Salais died of a heart attack on the same evening the report of distress went in to the police. The incidence of heart attack or myocardial infarction among men aged 20 to 39 is one half of one percent of the population, according to the National Center for Health Statistics and National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, based on 2007 to 2010 data, marking this as another unusual death at JPMorgan.
A person identifying himself as Dave Steiner wrote the following about Salais in the online condolence book provided by the funeral home: “My condolences to your entire family at the sudden passing of Jason. When I had the pleasure of interviewing Jason to be a part of the team at J.P. Morgan back in 2008, it was clear to me within just a few short minutes that he was a man of character, intelligence, work ethic, kindness and integrity. In the years that followed, and until the sad news of this week, I was witness to his hard work, the friendships he built, stories of his beloved family and of course baseball…”
According to the LinkedIn profile for Salais, he was engaged in Client Technology Service “L3 Operate Support” and previously “FXO Operate L2 Support” at JPMorgan. Prior to joining JPMorgan in 2008, Salais had worked as a Client Software Technician at SunGard and a UNIX Systems Analyst at Logix Communications.
Six weeks after the sudden death of Salais, Gabriel Magee, a 39-year old Vice President who was also engaged in Information Technology at JPMorgan, this time in London, died under extremely suspicious circumstances. A Coroner’s Inquest into the matter will be held on May 15 in London.
Family and friends report that Magee was a happy, healthy, vibrant young man who emailed his girlfriend on the evening of January 27 to say he was finishing up at work and would be home shortly. When he did not arrive, his girlfriend notified police and called local hospitals. According to the Metropolitan Police in London, at around 8:02 a.m. the next morning, workers looking out their windows saw Magee’s body lying on a 9^th level rooftop that jutted out from the 33-story JPMorgan building in the Canary Wharf section of London.
London newspapers immediately called the death a suicide, initially suggesting that thousands of commuters had seen Magee jump from the 33^rd level rooftop. When Wall Street On Parade pressed the Metropolitan Police on the issue of actual eyewitnesses who had seen Magee jump, the Police backed away from the suggestion that the fall had actually been observed by eyewitnesses.
Magee worked in the European headquarters for JPMorgan at 25 Bank Street in the borough of Tower Hamlets. Drawings and plans submitted by JPMorgan to the borough after it purchased the building for £495 million in 2010, show that the 9^th floor roof is accessible “via the stair from level 8 within the existing Level 9 plant enclosure…”
According to Magee’s LinkedIn profile, his specific area of specialty at JPMorgan was  “Technical architecture oversight for planning, development, and operation of systems for fixed income securities and interest rate derivatives.”
Two young employees engaged in computer technology dying in such a short span of time might seem bizarre at a bank. But JPMorgan is not just any bank when it comes to computer technology. According to Anish Bhimani, the Chief Information Risk Officer at JPMorgan Chase, in an interview published at the Information Networking Institute (INI) at Carnegie Mellon, JPMorgan has “more software developers than Google, and more technologists than Microsoft…we get to build things at scale that have never been done before.”
Let that sink in for a moment: a bank that has “more software developers than Google.” The growing concern in Congress is that America’s biggest bank by assets is now so complex in terms of derivative risks on and off its books and software programs that are incomprehensible to its regulators, that it could pose systemic risk to the U.S. economy in a replay of the Citigroup debacle of 2008.
Six days after the death of Magee, Ryan Crane, an Executive Director involved in trading at JPMorgan’s New York office, was found dead in his home in Stamford, Connecticut on February 3.  No cause of death or circumstances surrounding the death has been released to the public.  The Chief Medical Examiner’s office will only say that the cause of death is “pending” and final results will not be announced for several more weeks. Wall Street On Parade called the Stamford Police last week to ask for the police incident report. Under Connecticut sunshine laws that report should be available to the press. We were informed that if we were able to obtain the incident report, most information would likely be redacted.
Crane’s death on February 3 was not reported by any major media until February 13, ten days later, when Bloomberg News ran a brief story.
On February 18 of last week, again reports emerged of many witnesses having seen a 33-year old JPMorgan employee jump from the rooftop of a 30-story office building, Chater House, in Hong Kong where JPMorgan leases space. No eyewitnesses have been identified by name.
The decedent’s age and the fact he was employed by JPMorgan is all that the media can agree on. The South China Morning Post, an English language newspaper in Hong Kong, has published four articles calling the deceased an “investment banker” and warning that stress in this job may lead to suicide. The South China Morning Post’s competitor in Hong Kong, The Standard, also an English language newspaper, reports that the employee is an accountant working in the finance department at JPMorgan – about as far removed from an investment banker as one could get.
The man’s name has been reported by various media in all of the following incarnations: Dennis Li, Li Junjie, Dennis Li Jun Jie, and Dennis Lee.
Despite four emails to Joe Evangelisti, a Managing Director and spokesperson for JPMorgan, Evangelisti would not provide the name and job title for the deceased employee, saying only that “Our HK team communicated with reporters late last week on this. Here’s the Bloomberg story.” The Bloomberg story provided by Evangelisti was seven sentences long and does not appear on the U.S. web site of Bloomberg News. The earlier story by Bloomberg News, circulated further at the San Francisco Chronicle, depicted the employee as a “foreign exchange trader” citing the (wait for it) South China Morning Post.
When Wall Street On Parade pointed out via email to Evangelisti that under Fair Disclosure rules (Reg FD) a publicly traded company in the U.S. has an obligation to issue its press releases to everyone at the same time and that we would like a direct statement from him on the employee’s name and job title (not another media outlet’s interpretation of JPMorgan’s statement), Wall Street On Parade heard no further from Evangelisti, despite openly copying the media relations folks at the Securities and Exchange Commission on the entire email thread.
The New York Post pointed out in its reporting that there is “no other known link between any of the deaths” outside of the individuals working for the same company. In fact, there are numerous links: all of the men are in their 30s, while according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the expected longevity in 2011 for a U.S. male is 76.3 years. All of the men are believed to have been covered by a life insurance policy which pays JPMorgan upon the death of its employees. (Insurance experts say that larger death benefits can be obtained on younger, highly skilled workers because the death benefit is a function of the number of years of lost earnings.)
But perhaps the most important link is this: three weeks before the death of Salais and within a little more than a month of the other deaths, JPMorgan had been put under a form of probation by the U.S. Justice Department. In exchange for a Deferred Prosecution Agreement that ran for two years and $1.7 billion in fines to avoid the criminal indictment of individuals and the firm for facilitating the largest financial fraud in U.S. history, Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, JPMorgan was forced to agree to “secure the attendance and truthful statements or testimony of any past or current officers, agents, or employees at any meeting or interview or before the grand jury…provide in a responsive and prompt fashion, and upon request, on an expedited schedule, all documents, records, information and other evidence in JPMorgan’s possession, custody or control as may be requested by the Office, the FBI, or designated governmental agency…bring to the Office’s attention all criminal conduct by JPMorgan or any of its employees…commit no crimes under the federal laws of the United States subsequent to the execution of this Agreement.”
When a rash of sudden deaths occur among a most unlikely cohort of 30-year olds at a bank that has just settled felony charges and been put on notice that it will be indicted if it commits any further felonies; when it is currently under investigation on multiple continents for potentially committing criminal acts in the realm of interest rate and/or foreign exchange rigging — for the press to cavalierly call these deaths “non suspicious” before inquests have been conducted and findings released by medical examiners shows an unseemly indifference to a worker’s life and an alarming insensitivity to the grief stricken families still searching for answers.

Related Articles from Wall Street On Parade:
A Rash of Deaths and a Missing Reporter — With Ties to Wall Street Investigations

Suspicious Death of JPMorgan Vice President, Gabriel Magee, Under Investigation in London
JPMorgan Vice President’s Death in London Shines a Light on the Bank’s Close Ties to the CIA

As Bank Deaths Continue to Shock, Documents Reveal JPMorgan Has Been Patenting Death Derivatives 
JPMorgan and Madoff Were Facilitating Nesting Dolls-Style Frauds

WELCOME TO ALGORITHMIC PRISON

On February 22, 2014 by stratagem

Source: NextGov
Corporations and government are using information about us in a new – and newly insidious – way. Employing massive data files, much of the information taken from the Internet, they profile us, predict our good or bad character, credit worthiness, behavior, tastes, and spending habits – and take actions accordingly.
As a result, millions of Americans are now virtually incarcerated in algorithmic prisons.
Some can no longer get loans or cash checks. Others are being offered only usurious credit card interest rates. Many have trouble finding employment because of their Internet profiles. Others may have trouble purchasing property, life, and automobile insurance because of algorithmic predictions. Algorithms may select some people for government audits, while leaving others to find themselves undergoing gratuitous and degrading airport screening.
An estimated 500 Americans have their names on no-fly lists. Thousands more are targeted for enhanced screening by the Automated Targeting System algorithm used by the Transportation Security Administration. By using dataincluding “tax identification number, past travel itineraries, property records, physical characteristics, and law enforcement or intelligence information” the algorithm is expected to predict how likely a passenger is to be dangerous.
Algorithms also constrain our lives in virtual space. They determine what products we will be exposed to. They analyze our interests and play an active role in selecting the things we see when we go to a particular website..
Eli Pariser, argues in The Filter Bubble, “You click on a link, which signals your interest in something, which means you are more likely to see articles about that topic” and then “You become trapped in a loop…” The danger being that you emerge with a very distorted view of the world.
If you’re having trouble finding a job as a software engineer, it may be because you got a low score from the Gild, a company that predicts the skill of programmers by evaluating the open source code they have written, the language they use on LinkedIn, and how they answer questions on software social forums
Algorithmic prisons are not new.. Even before the Internet, credit reporting and rating agencies were a power in our economy. Fitch’s, Moody’s, and Standard and Poor’s have been rating business credit for decades. Equifax, the oldest credit rating agency, was founded in 1899.
When algorithms get it right (and in general they do a pretty good job), they provide extremely valuable services to the economy. They make our lives safer. They make it easier to find the products and services we want. Amazon constantly alerts me to books it correctly predicts I will want to read. They increase the efficiency of businesses.
But when algorithms get it wrong, real suffering follows.
Read More: NextGov

Additional Reading

• ‘Minority Report’ policing comes to the UK
• Raytheon’s RIOT program tracking people’s movements and predicting future behaviour
• U.K. spy agencies plan to install Web snooping ‘black boxes’
• NYPD launches new analytics tool for fighting terror, crime – Domain Awareness System
• What Facebook Knows
• Drones over America. Are they spying on you?
• The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)
• Ireland Signs Controversial ‘Irish SOPA’ Into Law; Kicks Off New Censorship Regime
• NSA Spying Gets Even Creepier With Facial Recognition Software
• How A ‘Deviant’ Philosopher Built Palantir, A CIA-Funded Data-Mining Juggernaut

Category : Computer Science, Panopticon, Surveillance

Tags : algorithmic prediction, Corporations, Intelligence, Security, Social Media, Surveillance

Reddit Censors Big Story About Government Manipulation and Disruption of the Internet

Posted on February 25, 2014 by WashingtonsBlog

Reddit Moderators Go to Extreme Lengths to Censor the Most Important Story of the Year

The moderators at the giant r/news reddit (with over 2 million readers) repeatedly killed the Greenwald/Snowden story on government manipulation and disruption of the Internet … widely acknowledged to be one of the most important stories ever leaked by Snowden.
Similarly, the moderators at the even bigger r/worldnews reddit (over 5 million readers) repeatedly deleted the story, so that each new post had to start over at zero.
For example, here are a number of posts deleted from r/news (click any image for much larger/clearer version):


Related posts from other sites – like 21stCenturyWire – were deleted as well:
And here are a number of the posts deleted by the moderators of r/worldnews:


Write-ups of the same story from other sites – like Zero Hedge – were also deleted:
Two Redditors provide further information on the censorship of this story:

This isn’t the first time Reddit moderators have been caught censoring:

• Censorship Costs Reddit Thousands of Readers

• Reddit Busted Censoring Alternative Media

• Biggest Social Media Sites Censor Alternative News

Source links: Here, here, here, here, here and here.

What Are The Rules In A Robot/Human Society?

What Are The Rules In A Robot/Human Society?

image source

Nicholas West
Activist Post

In the video below, PBS Off Book takes a balanced look at the world of robotics which is quickly transforming human society.

The concerns are finally beginning to mount about the unintended consequences of creating something that has the potential to be smarter than us, while also achieving a startling level of independence. Robots are a physical presence that, like any physical presence, can potentially do harm.

Until now, these considerations have been whispered by mainstream media as light afterthoughts in the shadow of the bright future that is sold to us with every new tech development promising an enhanced life of more productivity, better entertainment, and a longer life span. PBS takes a surprisingly alternative look at this narrative.

We are already seeing the negative economic impacts of increased automation that are unparalleled since the Industrial Revolution. Self-driving vehicles, drone delivery and much more are in development for wide-scale rollout.

The emergence of interconnected "smart" devices known as the Internet of Things is also rapidly taking shape with AT&T, IBM and Google leading the way toward a matrix of centralized machine tracking and decision making of economic and social policies.

We are seeing drones impact the rules of foreign wars and domestic surveillance. Each new development in the global drone arms race aims to perfect autonomous systems of data collection and target assessment. These systems should bring into question the legal and ethical underpinnings of their actions. As Peter Asaro, PhD correctly questions about drone warfare, "If these things accidentally kill people or commit something that if it was done by a human we would consider it a war crime; now it's being done by a machine, so is that just a technological error or is it a war crime?" The fact that we are asking this question now, and there still is an insufficient answer, is indicative of the predicament in which we find ourselves.

We are also seeing robotic elements being put in place in the medical field with everything from robotic pills that replace injections to DNA nanobots, bringing us to what futurist Ray Kurzweil has called the Human Body Version 2.0. Much like the questions surrounding warfare, the same line of questioning must be considered in the area of human health services. Who is ultimately responsible?

Beyond the technology itself, however, there is the social impact of robots (especially emotional robots) as they become an increasing part of our daily interaction with the world. The PBS video highlights how empathy associated with functional human-to-human interaction is beginning to slowly shape the human-robot dynamic as well.

Above all, this video does an excellent job of highlighting the speed at which all of this is taking place ... perhaps quite a bit faster than our considerations about potential worst-case scenarios.

In the end, the types of robots we embrace might wind up to be a direct reflection of ourselves.

Featuring:

The New Rules of Robot/Human Society | Off Book | PBS Digital Studios

Peter Asaro, PhD Assistant Professor, The New School
http://www.peterasaro.org/

Wendell Wallach, Ethicist & Scholar, Yale University's Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics
http://www.yale.edu/bioethics/bioethicsscholars.shtml

Kate Darling, Robot Ethics Researcher, MIT Media Lab
http://about.me/katedarling



Hat Tip: 33rd Square

CNN’s Piers Morgan Dumped – ‘British Accent’, Gun Obsession, and Endless Trolling on Twitter to Blame

February 25, 2014 By 21wire 

21st Century Wire says… i say bye ,bye piles "pussy face " more~guns  ...pussy
It’s an old saying in the TV business: “the numbers don’t lie”. That is certainly the case with CNN’s highly unpopular sinking flagship program, ‘Pier Morgan Live’, pulling in modest viewer numbers comparable to another Nielsen-busting foreign hit, al Jazeera America.

Piers Morgan is the latest British TV anchor to be shown the exit door, after the humiliating meltdown and implosion of MSNBC’s Martin Bashir only a few months ago.

According to David Carr, a columnist for America’s paper of record the New York Times, what annoyed Americans the most about Morgan was his prig British accent. Carr explains:

“When something important or scary happens in America, many of us have an immediate reflex to turn on CNN. When I find Mr. Morgan telling me what it all means, I have a similar reflex to dismiss what he is saying. It is difficult for him to speak credibly on significant American events because, after all, he just got here.”

“Old hands in the television news business suggest that there are two things a presenter cannot have: an accent or a beard. Mr. Morgan is clean shaven and handsome enough, but there are tells in his speech — the way he says the president’s name for one thing (Ob-AA-ma) — that suggest that he is not from around here.”

Yes, there’s nothing worse than getting a stiff lecture on American value from a millionaire British carpet bagger. Like an old pair of basketball shoes, the stench of it just lingers. It’s a shame that Americans just couldn’t seem to connect with this avatar, who was meant to be the latest ‘big thing’ but ended up being just the latest in a long line of overpaid, and over-valued talking heads (which shows you how out of touch CNN execs really are).

But as anyone intelligent observer will tell you, it’s not purely his accent that put people off, but rather Morgan’s tendency to grab at and obsess on issues and shiny side bars. Instead of learning about the ideological roots of America in relation to the US Constitution, Morgan overplayed his hand on both the Gun grab, as well as the media Trial of George Zimmerman – a measured, calculated lunge, but one that sent his celebrity stock into near free fall.

Like his countryman Bashir, Morgan was desperate to ingratiate himself and win the love of as many Americans as quickly as possible, so it was natural that a foreigner with a shallow understanding of his new environment might reach for the easy play towards America’s liberal left – not so risky seeing that a democratic regime is in power and CNN’s traditional role of always backing the ruling clique. Like with Martin Bashir, this move backfired badly, and like Bashir, Piers Morgan was handed the golden Rolex and then kicked to the curb.


TWEETING CRICKET: Morgan thought Americans would eventually embrace his beloved Cricket.Journalist Carr confirms one of Morgan’s awkward obsessions:

“There are other tells as well. On Friday morning, criticizing the decision to dismiss a cricket player, he tweeted, “I’m sure @StuartBroad8 is right and KP’s sacking will ‘improve performance’ of the England team. Look forward to seeing this at T20 WC.” Mr. Morgan might want to lay off the steady cricket references if he is worried about his credibility with American audiences. (His endless trolling of his critics on Twitter did not exactly help, either.)”

Morgan has been forced to eat humble pie, and conceded: “Look, I am a British guy debating American cultural issues, including guns, which has been very polarizing, and there is no doubt that there are many in the audience who are tired of me banging on about it”.

That was about the most genuine statement he’s made since arriving on American shores. Better late than never.

Maybe there’s still hope for him yet.

READ MORE HOLLYWOOD NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Hollywood Files

‘Magic Formula of Physics Moves Every Kind of Animal on Earth’

February 25th, 2014 Via: Houston Chronicle:
A magic formula of physics is propelling animals across the planet, from birds and sharks to jellyfish, according to a new discovery by researchers at Texas A&M Univeristy.
While people struggle with fixed-wing aircraft and solid propellors, animals triumph with flexible wings, fins and tails and now we know that despite their other vastly differing characteristics, they are all moving in essentially the same way.
“We found insects, birds, bats, whales, fish, dolphins, even smaller molluscs are all using the same basic mechanics,” said Marine Biologist Nathan Johnson from A&M at Galveston who did the study with colleagues from Harvard, California Institute of Technology, Indiana University and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.
It shows just how advanced Mother Nature’s designs are compared to human engineering. Scientists hope their findings will help technology catch up with millions of years of evolution.
They found that the animals all flex their wing, tail or fin within a “magic range” of 30 to 60 degrees, and they all bend just 30% of whatever their relevant propulsor is.
Sounds obvious, but it’s something humans have yet to replicate by relying only on stiff wings for aircrafts and similar non-flexible propellors for boats. Thus missing out on nature’s discovery of a potentially perfect universal design.
“The best reason we can think that these similarities are there in nature is that they are the most energy efficient,” said Johnson.
Research Credit: alvinroast

Arrest of Obama's Business Partner Sinaloa Drug Cartel Head El Chapo Guzman Was Likely Faked

February 25, 2014

Source: Lee Rogers, Daily Slave/BLN

There are a number of questions surrounding the high profile arrest of the Mexican drug lord known as El Chapo Guzman.  Not surprisingly, none of these questions are being asked by anybody in the corporate controlled media.  Instead, they are acting like this was just a straight forward arrest which is curious considering Guzman’s history.  Guzman was said to be the man in charge of the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel which has been called one of the most powerful drug cartels not just in Mexico but the entire world.   The cartel has historically maintained close ties to the United States government which is one of the primary reasons why it has grown into such a successful business enterprise.  None of this history is being discussed giving people a completely false notion of what’s really going on. 
One of the first questions is if the man being paraded around as El Chapo Guzman is really El Chapo Guzman or an actor.  Looking at the man that we were told was arrested and earlier photos of Guzman there’s a possibility that who we are being shown is not the real guy.  For all we know this Guzman character who has accumulated billions of dollars from his drug operation may have decided that he wanted to retire.  What better way to retire than to get his buddies in the United States government to fake his arrest.
This might sound far-fetched but it really isn’t considering that it is an admitted fact that the Drug Enforcement Agency or DEA maintained a close working relationship with the cartel since the 2000s.  An investigation from El Universal a Mexican media outlet published court documents revealing a correlation between the cartel’s rise and the DEA’s contact with one of the cartel’s lawyers.  The cartel was essentially allowed to smuggle billions of dollars of drugs into the United States in exchange for information on rival cartels.  If you read between the lines it is clear that a high level business decision was made in which the United States government decided to do business with just one cartel.  This is how the Sinaloa operation became so big.  Any of their competitors were selectively targeted.
Even more interesting is the fact that the cartel has been responsible for supplying the vast majority of cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines to Chicago.  The cartel made this city one of their most important distribution points.  Barack Obama and his regime have numerous connections to the local power players in Chicago which raises even more questions.  It is doubtful that Guzman would have chosen Chicago as a major distribution point for his products if he wasn’t given some sort of guarantee that his operations would be secure.
The Fast and Furious gun running operation which became a huge scandal for the Obama regime was actually designed to supply weapons to the cartel.  The story about tracking weapons to find drug dealers was just a cover story for the real operation.  Between this and the Chicago connection, it is fairly obvious that the cartel was doing business with the Obama regime.
On top of this, it is hard to believe that Guzman’s alleged arrest came just days after Obama went down to Mexico to meet with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto.  Obviously one of the primary discussions Obama had with the Mexican President involved the cartel.  It would be ridiculous to think otherwise considering the timing of the arrest that followed.
The story surrounding Guzman’s alleged arrest was said to have involved a joint operation between Mexican authorities and the DEA.  Supposedly they were able to easily capture him after locating him in a Mazatla Mexico hotel.  In the course of just a few days some of his close associates were said to have turned on him and provided information on his whereabouts.  This story is a bit difficult to believe considering this was a man with expansive resources.  It makes no sense that he would have put himself in such a vulnerable position to be captured so easily nor does it make sense that so many of his close associates would turn on him in such a short period of time.  The media has made his arrest sound like it was the result of hard police work but in reality the DEA probably already knew where this guy was to begin with.   After all, the DEA was doing business with this guy for years.  No matter how you look at it, there is nothing about this story that adds up.
Either Guzman’s arrest was completely faked or the DEA and the Obama regime decided to turn on him.  It seems to make more sense that his arrest was staged and the guy being paraded around in front of the media is an actor.  Guzman was involved in the drug business for several decades so it would make sense that he might want to retire and a staged arrest would allow him to gracefully exit.  His business connections with the Obama regime, his associations with the DEA and his business dealings in Chicago seem to make this a likely possibility.  Even a satire piece suggesting a similar possibility was put out by Huzlers.com which will undoubtedly help discredit people who question if the arrest was staged.  After all, if you make the truth seem like fiction it makes it easier to discredit anyone attempting to tell the truth.
Whatever the case, it is obvious that we are not being told the full story by anyone in the federal government or by anyone in the corporate media.  At the very least, the Obama regime’s business dealings with the cartel should be the subject of a large scale investigation.  Unfortunately this will not happen because the CIA, DEA and other government agencies have been involved in the drug dealing business for many years now.  This is just standard operating procedure for the federal government. 

Google Glass for the Battlefield

On February 24, 2014 by stratagem

Source: Wired
Walking around Silicon Valley with an augmented reality display on your face makes you a glasshole. On the battlefield, though, similar technology will soon turn U.S. soldiers into a lethal cross between the Terminator and Iron Man.
Q-Warrior, the newest version of helmet-mounted display technology from BAE Systems’ Q-Sight line, is a full-color, 3D heads-up display designed to provide soldiers in the field with rapid, real-time “situational awareness.”
With a high-resolution transparent display, Q-Warrior overlays data and a video stream over the soldier’s view of the world. Q-Warrior also includes enhanced night vision, waypoints and routing information, and the ability to identify hostile and non-hostile forces, track personnel and assets, and coordinate small unit actions.
“Q-Warrior increases the user’s situational awareness by providing the potential to display ‘eyes-out’ information to the user, including textual information, warnings and threats,” Paul Wright, the soldier systems business development lead at BAE Systems’ Electronic Systems, said in a statement. “The biggest demand, in the short term at least, will be in roles where the early adoption of situational awareness technology offers a defined advantage.”
This technology is not the stretch you might think. Specialty work-related applications for everyone from cops to doctors are increasingly considered the future of wearable computing. BAE clearly wants to be the Google of the warzone.
The display would play well with the Army Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (TALOS) currently under development. TALOS is a powered exoskeleton to haul heavier equipment with liquid armor capable of stopping bullets and the ability to apply wound-sealing foam.
Read More @ Wired

Additional Reading

• US Military Seeks Sixth Sense Training
• Transhumanism and War
• ARF:Russia’s Weapons Research Agency Strives To Rival U.S. Counterpart
• U.S. SOCOM Increases Investment in Weaponized Fixed-Wing Aircraft
• Military Interventions are ordered by Corporates not politicians/Governments
• AFRICAP: U.S. State Department’s solicitation for Corporate Mercenaries
• U.S. Army Wants New High-Tech Gear for Tunnel Warfare
• The Next Step For U.S. Special Forces: Cybernetic Exoskeletons
• Full Spectrum Dominance: Code Name for US Continual Wars
• Israeli Army Unit 8200 – little difference between tracking consumers and tracking terrorists.

Category : Military Industrial Complex, Military Operations, Technology

Tags : 3D heads-up display, BAE Systems, Military Operations, Q-Sight line, Q-Warrior, TALOS

U.S. Air Force reveals ‘neighborhood watch’ spy satellite program

On February 22, 2014 by stratagem    :) r  & "watch"  what's going on  ...Out there ?

Source: Yahoo News

The United States plans to launch a pair of satellites to keep tabs on spacecraft from other countries orbiting 22,300 miles above the planet, as well as to track space debris, the head of Air Force Space Command said.

The previously classified Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) will supplement ground-based radars and optical telescopes in tracking thousands of pieces of debris so orbital collisions can be avoided, General William Shelton said at the Air Force Association meeting in Orlando on Friday.

He called it a “neighborhood watch program” that will provide a more detailed perspective on space activities. He said the satellites, scheduled to be launched this year, also will be used to ferret out potential threats from other spacecraft.

The program “will bolster our ability to discern when adversaries attempt to avoid detection and to discover capabilities they may have which might be harmful to our critical assets at these higher altitudes,” Shelton said in the speech, which also was posted on the Air Force Association’s website.

The two-satellite network, built by Orbital Sciences Corp will drift around the orbital corridor housing much of the world’s communications satellites and other spacecraft.

The Air Force currently tracks about 23,000 pieces of orbiting debris bigger than about 4 inches. These range from old rocket bodies to the remains of an exploded Chinese satellite.

The Air Force released a fact sheet emphasizing the program’s debris-monitoring abilities. Brian Weeden, technical advisor with the Washington-based Secure World Foundation, said the U.S. military already has a satellite in a better position to do that job.

“I think the (Obama) Administration is being more honest when it says that it declassified this program to try and deter attacks on U.S. satellites,” in geostationary, or GEO, orbits located about 23,000 miles above Earth, Weeden wrote in an email to Reuters.

“The U.S. has a lot of very specialized and important national security satellites in the GEO region and it is very concerned about protecting those satellites … so by telling other countries that it has some ability to closely monitor objects near GEO and their behavior, the U.S. hopes that will deter other countries from attacking its important satellites,” Weeden said.

The new satellites also will give the U.S. military greater insight into what other countries have in orbit.

“There’s nothing wrong with that, but it is exactly the sort of thing the U.S. is worried other countries will do to it,” Weeden added.

Costs and technical details of the program were not released.

The satellites are scheduled for launch aboard an unmanned Delta 4 rocket, built by United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida during the last quarter of 2014.

Shelton said two replacement satellites are targeted for launch in 2016.

Additional Reading

• India’s armed forces set up ‘think tank cells’ to study China
• U.S. launches military communication nanosatellite piggy-backed on a National Reconnaissance Office payload
• ‘Operation Lowrider’ NORTHCOMs Covert Operation Helps Capture Drug Traffickers in Mexico
• U.S. Agencies Said to Swap Data With Thousands of Firms
• CIA chief John Brennan made clandestine visit to Pakistan
• Iranian specialists deployed to aid Assad’s war effort
• Israeli army intelligence Unit 9900 signs up ‘Rain Man’ image analysts
• The Secret Battles Between US Forces and Chechen Terrorists
• On Syria, a spymasters’ conclave
• NSA and Australia Signals Directorate decrypt foreign diplomatic and military communications

Category : Intelligence, Military Operations

Tags : GEO, Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program, neighborhood watch program, Orbital Sciences Corp, satellite reconnaissance, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Military, U.S. satellites

Connecticut sends out the first confiscation letters

  how many of U.S.  & how fucking many of them ?   ...fights come~in ,folks
February 25, 2014http://breakingdeception.com/connecticut-sends-first-confiscation-letters/

(American Liberty Riders) Gun confiscations is one step closer in Connecticut.  The mainstream media spins it as “one more chance” for non-compliant gun owners who failed to register their scary guns before the January 1 deadline.
In reality, these letters - 106 to rifle owners, and 108 more to residents with standard capacity magazines – are the first step in the Connecticut State Police beginning to round up guns arbitrarily made illegal last year in that state.  These guns include America’s favorite rifle, the AR-15 and magazines over 10 rounds, which include the standard capacity magazines made for that America’s favorite rifle.
Failure to register is now a felony now in Connecticut.
How long will it be before there is bloodshed over this law?  We’re not sure, but we’re confident it is coming unless the law is rescinded or struck down by the courts.
Mike Vanderboegh of the edgy Sipsey Street Irregulars released an open letter a couple of weeks ago,warning of what’s coming to Connecticut.  The Connecticut State Police aren’t listening.  Yet.
We suspect attitudes may change after the first few rounds of bloodshed.
As it stands right now, the best estimates are that 4% of newly-regulated guns and magazines in The Nutmeg State have been registered, leaving a hundred thousand or more newly classified potential felons looking over their shoulder.
Editor’s note:  We’re not going to link to the article because they are hiding most of the content behind a paywall and we won’t drive thousands of readers to their website.

One more chance for gun owners
Posted: Monday, February 24, 2014 3:35 pm | Updated: 3:36 pm, Mon Feb 24, 2014.
Manchester, CT (Journal Inquirer) – When state officials decided to accept some gun registrations and magazine declarations that arrived after a Jan. 4 deadline, they also had to deal with those applications that didn’t make the cut.
The state now holds signed and notarized letters saying those late applicants own rifles and magazines illegally.
But rather than turn that information over to prosecutors, state officials are giving the gun owners a chance to get rid of the weapons and magazines.

Bombshell Documents Vanish in the JPMorgan-Madoff Investigation

By Pam Martens: February 25, 2014   hehe  fuck~in no shit ? :o

Jennifer Shasky Calvery, Director of FinCEN, Speaking at a Press Conference to Announce Federal Charges Against JPMorgan for its Role in the Madoff Ponzi Scheme

According to a Freedom of Information Act response received by Wall Street On Parade, Federal law enforcement may share the blame with JPMorgan Chase for allowing Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme to be perpetuated for so long.
On January 7 of this year in a press conference called to announce felony charges against JPMorgan Chase for its role in the Madoff Ponzi scheme, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge George Venizelos, and the Director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, Jennifer Shasky Calvery, took turns at the podium excoriating JPMorgan for observing brazen, long-term money laundering activity occurring under its nose in the business bank account it held for Bernard Madoff while ignoring its legally mandated duty to file a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) with the federal government.
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known throughout Wall Street and the banking world as FinCEN, is a bureau of the U.S. Treasury Department that receives the SARs and is tasked with making sure the reports are seriously investigated.
JPMorgan Chase and its predecessor banks, Chase Manhattan and Chemical, oversaw Madoff’s primary business account for more than 20 years. During that time, flagrant money laundering signs should have set off automated bells, whistles and sirens inside the banks and triggered repeated SARs to FinCEN. None were filed by JPMorgan or its predecessor banks according to U.S. law enforcement until after Madoff turned himself in.
The brazenness of the activity was captured in a 2011 court complaint filed against JPMorgan by Irving Picard, the trustee of the Madoff victims’ fund. Picard told the court that “during 2002, Madoff initiated outgoing transactions to [Norman F.] Levy in the precise amount of $986,301 hundreds of times — 318 separate times, to be exact. These highly unusual transactions often occurred multiple times on a single day. As another example, from December 2001 to March 2003, the total monthly dollar amounts coming into the 703 Account from Levy were almost always equal to the total monthly dollar amounts going out of the 703 Account to Levy. There was no clear economic purpose for such repetitive transactions that had no net impact on Levy’s account at BLMIS [Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities]. There was a huge spike in activity between Levy and the 703 Account in December 2001. In that month alone, Madoff engaged in approximately $6.8 billion worth of transactions with Levy…” (The term “703 Account” refers to Madoff’s primary business account at JPMorgan Chase which ended in the numbers “703.”)
Making JPMorgan’s failure to report even worse in U.S. law enforcement eyes was the fact that it did file a report of suspicious activity by Madoff with the United Kingdom’s Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA) on October 28, 2008 but failed to file the same report with U.S. authorities.
FinCEN’s Jennifer Shasky Calvery was particularly harsh in her assessment of JPMorgan’s failure to file a SAR at the press conference on January 7, where JPMorgan was charged with two felony counts, given a deferred prosecution agreement that puts the bank on probation for two years, and a $1.7 billion fine payable to the U.S. Department of Justice that will be distributed to Madoff’s victims. (Including the payment to the Justice Department and other Federal regulators and civil litigants, JPMorgan paid a total of $2.6 billion in the Madoff matter.)
Calvery said: “…it’s about lost opportunities and the catastrophic consequences that can flow. When JPMorgan failed to file a SAR with FinCEN, an opportunity to stop this fraud was missed. JPMorgan’s concerns about potential fraud went unheard, leaving law enforcement and regulators in the dark.”
Calvery is no Johnny come lately. She has served as Director of FinCEN since September 23, 2012. Prior to that she had a 15-year career at the U.S. Department of Justice where her focus was on money laundering and organized crime.
The takeaway from this press conference was clearly that the biggest crime committed by JPMorgan was its failure to file the SAR, thus aiding the “catastrophic consequences” that continued against Madoff’s victims. But what if another bank had filed a SAR in the matter with FinCEN and Federal law enforcement did nothing. What if Federal law enforcement or FinCEN is equally responsible for the “catastrophic consequences” that have destroyed the lives of Madoff victims throughout the U.S. and around the globe?
Within the documents filed against JPMorgan on January 7 by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, we learn that in the 1990s another bank where Madoff held an account observed these round-trip transactions between Madoff and Levy and filed a SAR with FinCEN.  According to the U.S. Attorney’s documents, Madoff was writing checks from an account at “Madoff Bank 2” – a bank other than JPMorgan – to Levy, a mutual customer of both Madoff’s firm and JPMorgan. Later the same day, Madoff would transfer money from his primary business account at JPMorgan to his account at Madoff Bank 2 to cover the earlier check. In the final leg of the transaction, Levy would transfer funds from his own JPMorgan Chase account to Madoff’s primary business account at JPMorgan in an amount sufficient to cover Madoff’s original check to him.
Levy is not mentioned by name in these documents but it’s clear from Picard’s earlier filing that the client involved is Levy. The documents also mention in a footnote that this client died in September 2005, the date of Levy’s death at age 93. Levy was a Manhattan real estate broker and one of Madoff’s largest and oldest clients.
According to the documents, Bank 2 investigated these round-trip transactions, met with Madoff employees, and concluded there was “no legitimate business purpose for these transactions, which appeared to be a ‘check kiting’ scheme.” Bank 2 terminated its relationship with Madoff Securities and filed its SAR with FinCEN, along with details about the facilitating actions of Levy and JPMorgan Chase’s predecessor bank, Chase Manhattan.
If the SAR was filed in the 90s, Wall Street On Parade wondered why a Federal investigation had not exposed Madoff at that time when the funds he ultimately stole from investors would have been significantly less. We filed a Freedom of Information Act request with FinCEN. A stunning response came back on January 20 of this year: there are no documents suggesting an investigation ever resulted from the 1990s SAR. (See FinCEN Response to FOIA from Wall Street On Parade in JPMorgan-Madoff Matter.)
Amanda Michanczyk, a Disclosure Officer at FinCEN wrote: “…we conducted a thorough search of our investigative and enforcement records for the time period estimated in your request using search terms you provided and can find no documents responsive to your request.”
This is what is called the “Wow Factor.” The Feds slap a $1.7 billion penalty on a bank, file a two-felony count indictment against it, put it on probation for two years – all for not filing a Suspicious Activity Report and yet when a bank did file a Suspicious Activity Report no documents exist to show there was ever an investigation. Welcome to the Orwellian juncture of high finance and Federal regulators. We are left to ponder if the investigative documents have been shredded, stolen, or no investigation ever occurred.
Last week, David Rosenfeld of the law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Central Laborers’ Pension Fund and Steamfitters Local 449 Pension Fund against 13 current and former executives of JPMorgan and its Board of Directors, including Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon. The lawsuit charges these individuals with “recklessly permitting the Company to facilitate and perpetuate Madoff’s massive Ponzi scheme in the face of repeated and glaring warnings signs, and willfully failing to establish an adequate AML [anti-money-laundering] program.”
The lawsuit calls attention to what the Justice Department did not tell the public when it settled the case against JPMorgan: “The Statement of Facts depict a bank with unparalleled insight into Madoff’s fraud.  However, the extent to which JPMorgan’s actual knowledge of or willful blindness to Madoff’s fraud reached the highest echelon of the Bank is not disclosed in the Deferred Prosecution Agreement, nor anywhere else in the public record.”
Anyone who has ever worked as a relationship manager or a stock broker at a major Wall Street bank knows that there is only one way that flagrant signs of money laundering are ignored over decades. Someone in a position of power had to shut down the automated warning system on this account and/or quash any internal investigations.
The fact that when FinCEN received a SAR from another major bank it still did not investigate or someone has erased the details of that investigation raises the additional alarm that someone in a position of power may have influenced that investigation inappropriately.
The Justice Department’s role in potentially preventing a full public accounting of the Madoff fraud was further called into question in December when news broke that the Justice Department had killed a subpoena request for internal JPMorgan documents related to the Madoff fraud that had been made by its primary bank regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and supported by a second demand from the Inspector General of the U.S. Treasury.
Why the Justice Department would block regulators from obtaining critical documents, why FinCEN has no documents pertaining to the 1990s SAR filing, why brazen round-trip money laundering was allowed to continue at a major Wall Street bank are all issues waiting for transparent answers.

How to Beat Coming Killer Food Shortages

Holly Deyo February 25th, 2014 Millennium Ark

The following article has been generously contributed to our community by Holly Deyo, the author of the widely popular Dare to Prepare reference guide, now in its 5th edition. She and her husband Stan Deyo are also the developers of Prudent Places USA, which provides an insightful handbook on how to relocate and where to go in times of crisis. 
PREFACE: Only a small space is required to grow most fruits and veggies for a family. So Stan and I will scamper over to our local garden center this week and for additional organic compost to augment our Super Soil and get those growies growing! By the end of Summer our own compost piles should be ready to sustain the gardens hereafter. It just takes a little while to get there.
Sunday, we planned out this year’s garden – including more than usual. Definitely making time for canning this year. Had the equipment, not the time. Since warmth – and dry (drat!) – are coming early this year to the West, Southwest and Southeast, it’s important to get our garden ready in February and seedlings sprouted and sunk in the ground by late March instead of late April – a full month ahead of normal. The most time-consuming aspect will getting the Super Soil pre-warmed as described in Garden Gold, which will only require a couple hours, so plants get a head start and beat this Summer’s killing heat.
These NOAA maps show the probability of temperatures exceeding the norm, so roughly 1/3 of the Country can get their veggies and fruits in early. Unfortunately, as 2014 progresses, a bunch of us will be sweating bullets living in tank tops and shorts.
Click on the different NOAA 3-month outlooks (under More POE Outlooks) on the left to see how temps are revving up hotter and earlier this year. It’s weird that after this blisteringly bitter cold winter, we have to think in terms of excessive heat, but that’s what extreme climate change is about and something Stan and I have warned would descend since 1995. Now that it’s here, everyone must act with fore-thought and planning. With what’s coming, every day counts. —Holly
TAN DROUGHT KILLING THE GOLDEN STATE

Government has lost its mind. It is no more evident than their decision last week to cut off water to America’s food basket. Squeezed by the worst-ever drought in the state’s history, California is dying of thirst. Crushing news was delivered to farmer’s that no water would be coming from the Federal government. This dreaded decision was compounded by the Sierra Mountains getting just 25% of normal snowpack. There is no water to replenish already dangerously low reservoirs, so no water for farmers.
Photo: A pipe emerges from dried and cracked earth that used to be the bottom of the Almaden Reservoir on January 28, 2014 in San Jose, California. Now in its third straight year of drought conditions, California is experiencing its driest year on record, dating back 119 years, and reservoirs throughout the state have low water levels. Santa Clara County reservoirs are at 3% of capacity or lower. (Justin Sullivan, Getty Images)
Despite recent storms, it’s done nothing to alleviate the staggering dryness. California needs snow. Desperately. Down bursts can’t soak into parched, concrete-like soil so it rolls off, unused, into sewers and drainage ditches. Snowpack melts slowly and is easily funneled into reservoirs and sinks into land and eventually groundwater basins.
Gov. Jerry Brown declared a drought emergency 5 weeks ago and conditions have worsened since.
Farmers who thought this might be coming delayed planting crops. Some have given up altogether. Even late harvests, where possible, would be better than wasting the cost of fuel to run equipment, paying farm workers to work dying fields, paying for seeds that likely won’t survive summer – and have it all come to nothing. Over half a million acres won’t even be planted.
Not that anyone wants a business penalized, but golf courses will be allowed to waste water in the most extravagant method possible. What would you rather have: food on the table or 225,000 acres of lush golf links? The amount of water required to keep them verdant is staggering. Residential customers are already being warned to conserve and some cities have passed mandatory water restrictions. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that 17 communities are at risk of running dry.
Image: It’s clear from the image below that regions of California worst hit and in danger of running out of water are the prime food growing areas.
DROUGHT = SLOW DEATH
We saw this same scenario play out in Beulah, Colorado in 2002 – the year after Stan warned the Pine Drive Water District they needed vastly more water storage. They didn’t listen. The very next yearwhen residents turned on their faucets, literally not a drop dripped. So dire was the situation, it made national news. It was a shock to have literally no water available.
Huge white plastic water storage tanks were hastily set up in front yards and water was trucked in weekly from Pueblo. Wells went completely dry and livestock were reluctantly sold off. It was either that or watch them die.
The next Spring when Stan and I drove around Beulah, the wildlife took your breath. Most telling were larger animals. Baby deer that survived were unbelievably scrawny. Their mothers’ ribs stuck out of their backs and sides from patchy coats like awkward jagged tree branches. Their faces were unhealthily gaunt, lit by haunted eyes. It was heartbreaking.
That was one small mountain community. Now we’re talking about an entire state facing extreme conditions. Heaven help them in the 2014 fire season, which for Californians, began January.
PROMISES, PROMISES
Last week Pres. Obama promised $100 million in livestock-disaster aid, but that doesn’t make water fall from the sky. This is less than a pittance when livestock and poultry alone gross nearly $10 billion in California.1 Instead farmers, like Beulah residents, will be forced to sell their animals. This is a calamity. We’re not talking about a few hundred head. On average, when drought conditions hammer down, like those in Texas a couple years ago, it takes at least 3 years to rebuild herds. This means further rising beef prices that we Americans are already experiencing. Just wait, it will get worse. I warned in 2010 what the Texas drought would do to beef prices in the next few coming years, and this story bears it out: Ground Beef Prices Have Skyrocketed, Here’s Why. The article warns to expect steak to double.
Three weeks ago news agencies reported that beef herds are the smallest since 1951 – and this didn’t factor in what will surely be a massive cattle sell-off in the Golden State.
Other crops feel it too. “Retail prices for tomatoes rose 10% in the 12 months through Jan. 31, and U.S. retail prices for beef, bacon, lettuce and broccoli have also risen at least 10% last year.”2 This hike came before farmers found out they won’t be getting water for crops and 8 million California farmland acres depend on federal and state irrigation.
MEGA-DROUGHT, MEGA-DISASTER
In a stunning report from Time Magazine, Bryan Walsh writes that scientists fear California’s dryness “could get much, much worse” bringing back the horrible era of mega-droughts. “These mega-droughts aren’t predictions. They’re history, albeit from a time well before California was the land of Hollywood and Silicon Valley. And the thought that California and the rest of the modern West might have developed during what could turn out to be an unusually wet period is sobering. In 1930, a year before construction began on the Hoover Dam, just 5.6 million people lived in California. Today more than 38.2 million live in the largest state in the U.S., all of whom need water. California’s 80,500 farms and ranches produced crops and livestock worth $44.7 billion in 2012, but dry farming districts like the Central and Imperial Valleys would wither without irrigation.”3
Image: According to the Drought Monitor, 91% of California is in Severe to Exceptional Drought. For comparison, the rest of CONUS looks much better except Nevada and they don’t grow much of anything.

SQUEEZE PLAY
As one Millennium-Ark reader pointed out in an email last week, after the jump in beef prices, people will look to chicken, pork, fish and turkey. Chicken is already up though not as much as beef.  This will, in turn, drive up their costs and affect availability of these other meats. Keep in mind that California also produces all of these proteins plus lamb. Then consider this: Ag Specialists Warn of Higher Wheat Prices Due to Drought. It’s not just beef, weather is clobbering food from all angles. Rising Threat to Crops from Climate underscores it.
Not to be totally depressing, but remember to factor in possible health issues from the Corexit ridden fish and seafood in the Gulf courtesy of BP’s Deepwater Horizon debacle. Then there’s Fukushima Daiichi’s radiation affecting fish all up and down the West Coast.
Food production is not a national only issue. We export food around the world. In the grain arena, so does Argentina, Australia, Canada, the EU with India, Pakistan, Thailand, the U.S. and Viet Nam contributing to world rice production. Every – single – country is being hit with flood, heatwaves or drought.
Friends, serious climate issues are clobbering beef, grain, fruit and veggies – nearly all food – with unpleasant trickle-down repercussions coming. At this point, it doesn’t matter if it’s caused by geo-engineering, climate change (aka global warming), natural cycles or Sun-driven events. We must deal with the fallout and it’s coming fast.
If you think the beef and grain scenario is bad, check what’s happening in the fruit and veggie department.
CALIFORNIA’S GOLDEN BREAD BASKET
California grows half, HALF of America’s produce. Another 13% is exported4 around the world. California’s yearly produce is valued at more than $45 billion5. In the list below, out of some 400 different foods it grows for our Nation, California leads production for 79 of them. Out of these 79, California grows ALL of 14 crops (in bold). Keep in mind, this list is only 79 out of some 400 foods including sugar beets, mushrooms, oats, potatoes, cucumbers and many more.
Now scroll down to one very important item in the 4th column – Greenhouse Vegetables. These are the nicely potted vegetable, fruit and herb seedlings people purchase every year at building materials centers and nurseries around the Country. These are now at risk.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, START YOUR SEEDS!
People who have never grown their garden plants from seed think it’s hard and jet down to retailers to buy what they want to grow. There’s nothing wrong with this; we’ve done it too. However, it is so much more economical – and fun – and easy – to start your own plants from seed.
For those who are interested in starting their seedlings this year, here are some practical reasons.

1) Most retailers don’t offer non-hybrid, non-GMO, open-pollinated and heirloom plants.
2) It saves a bunch of money in the long run.
3) Allows a head start on the growing season. Retailers normally have their veggies and fruits for sale on a predictable timetable not taking into account yearly climatic differences. It’s possible to lose weeks in the growing season.
4) Get what you want. Last spring, some plants we wanted, like romaine, NuMex chilies and red lettuce, sold out early. Due to the economy, some veggies were completely unavailable as they only stocked the most popular. Additionally, we noticed that Lowe’s and Home Depot didn’t carry as extensive a variety as they normally do.
5) Avoid greenhouse-borne diseases.
6) This is a fun project for kids and grandkids – a good educational tool so they see how plants make food from seed to table.

Assuming you see the need to get busy, this is the set-up we use.
Photo: From top left, clockwise: seed tray bottom, lights set into the plastic dome cover, seed tray, heating mat.

Seeds don’t need sunlight to sprout, but do need warmth around the clock. We set the Seedling Heat Mat on a 1″ piece of styrofoam. The foam both protects the tabletop and keeps the warmth from escaping out the bottom. The heat mat keeps the soil temperature consistent and 10-20 degrees warmer over room temperature air. They’re relatively inexpensive and really improve germination and seedling growth.
The bottom tray goes on top of the mat with the little seedling plastic pots set inside. Depending on how many seedlings are needed, it’s more economical to do these plastic pots in a sheet than peat pots. It’s cleanable and reusable. If you’re only going to start 20 or so plants, then peat pots save washing it out.
The Seedling Heat Mat  (9” x 19-1/2”) and lights are extra. Mats are about $20 and grow lights are about $21 each, but vary widely in price depending on retailer.

Then the clear plastic greenhouse dome cover sits on top with its edges resting on the sides of the bottom tray. Stan puts aluminum foil between the dome and the metal so it doesn’t turn the plastic an ugly yellow-brown. The yellowing problem we found out the hard way and ruined one dome. No place mentions this tip – and others – except in Garden Gold.

It’s important to get a greenhouse that has a high enough dome cover. Some kits’ covers are only about 2″ or 3″ tall. We use the Mondi 7″ dome (7-1/2” H x 11” W x 21-1/4” L) that sells for $4.60 and fits the 1020 tray. As the seedlings grow, if the lights become too close, they can burn tender leaves and suck the life out of tiny plants. Stan has even put in a set of 2″ or 3″ risers at each end between the dome and the bottom tray if the seedlings grew too tall. Risers can be made out of anything that’s not too heavy, just strong enough to support the dome and not break the bottom tray’s lip. The 1020 Tray runs $1.40 and the 72-cell propagation tray that fits perfectly inside is $9 for 10.
Photo: This is how it looks assembled – all ready for 72 seedlings waiting fill your food needs!

Some seed starter kits come without the plastic tops, but you need the dome to both hold the lights and keep moisture in. On top are two circles for moisture control. They can be opened or closed as needed.

Simply setting planted seeds in a window won’t provide enough light once the seedlings sprout. Plus, windows can get transmit cold, which can either delay or stop germination altogether and defeats the purpose of the heat mat.

Stan cut holes in the ends toward the top of the greenhouse dome and inserted 4 grow lights that are 2 feet long. We use Sun Blaster F24T5 24W HO lights. If you’re looking on-line for the best price, they are normally listed as “Sun Blaster T5 HO”. Gave a cursory look and the best price so far was at GroswersHouse.com: growershouse.com/sun-blaster-t5-ho-fluorescent-strip-light-2.

GETTING SEEDY

NOW is the time to purchase open pollinated, organic, non-genetically engineered seeds. When we ordered onion sets last week, I noticed there were already a few products on Seeds of Change that had sold out or were temporarily sold out. People are getting on the stick early this year!

You’ll get further savings from companies that offer seed in bulk. This is a smart purchase for the foods you love. We did this several years ago and now have our own seed bank.

Here are 4 great resources – ones we use – for open pollinated, heirloom seeds:

• Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds – rareseeds.com
• Fedco Seeds – fedcoseeds.com
• John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds – kitchengardenseeds.com
• Seeds of Change – seedsofchange.com

If they don’t have what you want, Garden Gold lists over 350 suppliers with their contact information and websites. You’ll spend less time hunting for open-pollinated seeds and supplies, which leaves you more time to get your plants going.
NO COLORADO DOPE, JUST THE STRAIGHT SKINNY
I’m no mystic, but do see what’s coming down. It will be hurtful – possibly signaling prophetic bells to remind of us of Revelation’s 3rd Seal. ALL of our food is being squeezed one way or another. Just after I placed that short note Sunday on our website about getting the garden going, within 15 minutes a dozen people wrote saying they feel that same pressing urgency.
For many fruits and veggies, you can greatly lessen the pain at the grocery store simply by starting (or continuing) your home gardens. While community gardens and farmer’s markets are preferable to depending on the grocery stores and getting ‘robbed’ at check out, it’s best to have fruits and veggies right in your own yard. As they say with precious metals, if it’s not in your hand you don’t own it. You can harvest so much in such little space by using the ancient Chinese technique of bio-intensive growing described in Garden Gold. You will have produce running out your ears. There will be enough to can or sell depending on your family size. Whatever method of gardening you choose, get your beds ready soon.
Now for the beef and other proteins dilemma, if you have a spare freezer, it would behoove you to stock up now before prices shoot up further. You would easily be money ahead to purchase a freezer and stock that baby till it’s ready to burst. Alternately, look at some freeze-dried meats. The last time we checked, the food price bump had not yet hit this industry. Why? Because they literally buy tons of meats at a time and process same until they nearly run out. Then they take the hit on food prices and pass it onto customers. However, we the grocery store consumer, feel every bump and tickle along the way. There is a window of opportunity here…
We caution you to buy from only reputable, long-established retailers. It’s questionable for some smaller outfits where they got their foods, especially if they are a new name. One company is selling food that was around at least since 1998 and has been repackaged to look new. This is a smaller, lesser-known company so stay with the power names for best freshness: Mountain House, Alpine Aire, Thrive (Shelf Reliance). Read What They Don’t Tell You About Storable Foodsfor more insight. Also check these reviews: Mountain House, Provident Pantry / Emergency Essentials, Shelf Reliance / Thrive, Wise, EFoods Direct.
Don’t miss my next article coming shortly: How to Start Your Own Seed Bank.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Holly Drennan Deyo is the author of three books: bestseller Dare To Prepare (4th ed.), Prudent Places USA (3rd ed.) and Garden Gold (2nd ed.) Please visit she and her husband’s website: standeyo.com and their FREE Preparedness site: DareToPrepare.com.