The Chinese Are Acquiring Large Chunks Of Land In Communities All Over America

By Michael Snyder, on March 31st, 2014

Has the United States ever experienced a time when a foreign nation has attempted to buy up so much of our land all at once?  As you will read about in this article, the Chinese are on a real estate buying spree all over America.  In fact, in some cases large chunks of land are actually being given to them.  Yes, you read that correctly.  China is on the way to becoming the dominant land owner in the entire country, and that is starting to alarm a lot of people.  Do we really want a foreign superpower to physically own so much of our territory?
There are some that are playing down this threat by making a distinction between the Chinese government and Chinese corporations, but things work differently over in China than they do here.  In China, the government is involved in everything.  In fact, 43 percent of all corporate profits in China are produced by companies that the Chinese government controls.  And all of the rest of the companies are very careful to follow the lead and direction of the Chinese government.
That is why what is going on in places such as Thomasville, Alabama is so alarming.  Small communities such as Thomasville are so starved for jobs that they are willing to give land away for free to Chinese companies in order to entice them to build factories…

Gov. Robert Bentley said Friday that he will announce an economic development project in Thomasville, Ala., Monday morning.
That project is likely a copper tube plant to be built by Golden Dragon Precise Copper Tube Group. A legal notice published Thursday indicates that the city of Thomasville and others intend to give land and other incentives to GD Copper USA, which state corporation records identify as a Florida-based subsidiary of Golden Dragon.

And in this particular case, we are not just talking about a small plot of land.  We are talking about a 40 acre chunk of land worth 1.5 million dollars…

The legal notice indicated the city plans to give Golden Dragon a 40-acre site. Thomasville Mayor Sheldon Day has said that land is in a city industrial park south of Thomasville High School. It includes a $1.5 million, 50,000-square-foot building that the city constructed in 2009 to attract businesses.

But in most cases, the Chinese actually have to spend money to acquire our real estate.  And they are starting to make some really high profile acquisitions in some of our most expensive cities…

China Vanke and Tishman Speyer signed a deal for a $620 million luxury condo project in San Francisco this winter. In April, another deal for a cool $1.5 billion was inked in Oakland between Zarsion and Signature Development Group.
In June, several big deals in New York City went down. Zhang Xin, CEO of Soho China , joined forces with the wealthy Safra family (of Banco Safra fame) of Brazil to buy a stake in the General Motors Building in Midtown, The New York Times reported on June 25. Dalian Wanda Group, another Chinese developer, is planning to build a greenfield luxury hotel in Manhattan.

In other cases, the Chinese are gaining control over vast tracts of U.S. territory by buying up our large corporations.
For example, when the Chinese purchased Smithfield Foods, they suddenly owned 460 large farms and became the top employer in dozens of communities all over the United States…

Smithfield Foods is the largest pork producer and processor in the world.  It has facilities in 26 U.S. states and it employs tens of thousands of Americans.  It directly owns 460 farms and has contracts with approximately 2,100 others.  But now a Chinese company has bought it for $4.7 billion, and that means that the Chinese will now be the most important employer in dozens of rural communities all over America.

And the Chinese seem to have a particular interest in economically-depressed areas of the country.  Perhaps they feel that now is the time to gobble up companies and properties in such areas for bargain-basement prices.  For instance, the following is from a CNBC article that detailed how the Chinese are aggressively “putting down roots in Detroit”…

Dozens of companies from China are putting down roots in Detroit, part of the country’s steady push into the American auto industry.
Chinese-owned companies are investing in American businesses and new vehicle technology, selling everything from seat belts to shock absorbers in retail stores, and hiring experienced engineers and designers in an effort to soak up the talent and expertise of domestic automakers and their suppliers.

Speaking of Michigan, one company known as “Sino-Michigan Properties LLC” actually had plans to buy up 200 acres of land near the town of Milan, Michigan.  The goal was to build an entire “China City” with artificial lakes, a Chinese cultural center and hundreds of housing units for Chinese citizens.
But that is nothing compared to the “China City” that was being planned for New York state.  The following is a short excerpt from one of my previous articles…

The Chinese have made trillions of dollars flooding our shores with super cheap products, and now they are using some of that money to buy land and property all over America.  For example, there is now a proposal to construct a multibillion dollar “China City” that would span approximately 600 acres in a remote area of New York state.  This “China City” (that is actually what it would be called) would be located on Yankee Lake in Sullivan County, New York.  The plans anticipate large numbers of Chinese businesses, plenty of homes for Chinese immigrants, a Chinese high school, a college, a casino and even a theme park.  And the first 600 acres is only for “phase one” of the plan.  Ultimately, the goal is for “China City” to cover more than 2,000 acres.  Those promoting this plan say that it will be a great way for New Yorkers to learn to appreciate Chinese culture.

But of much greater concern is the huge wave of real estate purchases that are quietly happening all around us every single day.
The following is from a recent CNBC article entitled “Chinese buying up California housing“…

At a brand new housing development in Irvine, Calif., some of America’s largest home builders are back at work after a crippling housing crash. Lennar, Pulte, K Hovnanian, Ryland to name a few. It’s a rebirth for U.S. construction, but the customers are largely Chinese.
“They see the market here still has room for appreciation,” said Irvine-area real estate agent Kinney Yong, of RE/MAX Premier Realty. “What’s driving them over here is that they have this cash, and they want to park it somewhere or invest somewhere.”

So what happens when we get to the point when the Chinese government and/or Chinese citizens own 10 percent of all the real estate in the entire country?
Will it be a problem then?
What about if we get to 20 percent or 30 percent?
At what point will we be forced to admit that we have a major problem on our hands?
Many of our leaders seem resigned to the fact that the future will be dominated by communist China.
For example, the President of the St. Louis Federal Reserve recently stated that “attitudes in the U.S. are going to have to change” because America “will not permanently be the global leader”…

That’s according to Federal Reserve Board of St. Louis President James Bullard, who spoke to the Wall Street Journal on the sidelines of a conference during a recent visit to Hong Kong.
“Attitudes in the U.S. are going to have to change, because the U.S. will not permanently be the global leader,” Mr. Bullard said.

In fact, Bullard insists that it is inevitable that the U.S. will end up playing second fiddle to communist China…

In that case, “the U.S. would be playing a role to China similar to the role the U.K. plays to the U.S. today,” Mr. Bullard said. “People think it’s 50-75 years away but it’s probably only 25 or 20 years away, something like that.”

And this is one of the guys that is running the U.S. economy?
There is more than one way to dominate your enemy, and the Chinese understand this.
Sadly, most Americans have absolutely no idea what is happening.
What about you?
What do you think about all this?
Please feel free to share your opinion by posting a comment below…

CIA Scandal: Leaks Reveal Brutal Torture Methods and Government Lies

By Eric London

Global Research, April 02, 2014

World Socialist Web Site

Region: USA

Theme: 9/11 & 'War on Terrorism', Intelligence, Law and Justice

A still-classified Senate Intelligence Committee report contains damning information on both the extent of US torture methods and the lies of top CIA officials about these programs, according to information in a Washington Post article on Monday.
The government torture methods revealed by the Post, based on information from anonymous administration officials, include sadistic forms of inflicting pain that are associated with the most brutal police state and fascistic regimes.
According to the Post, the Senate report “concludes that the CIA misled the government and the public about aspects of its brutal interrogation program for years—concealing details about the severity of its methods, overstating the significance of plots and prisoners, and taking credit for critical pieces of intelligence that detainees had in fact surrendered before they were subjected to harsh techniques.”
The terms utilized by the Washington Post in its article—“brutal” torture methods, “excruciating” pain, “sprawling” black sites—gives an indication of the chilling and deeply criminal character of a torture operation directed by the highest levels of the CIA as a matter of official state policy. The original crimes and their subsequent coverup, by both the Bush and Obama administrations, are all impeachable and prosecutable offenses.
The report details how one prisoner, Ammar al-Baluchi, was taken from Pakistan in 2003 to a CIA black site called “Salt Pit” near Kabul, where he “endured a regime that included being dunked in a tub filled with ice water. CIA interrogators forcibly kept his head under the water while he struggled to breathe and beat him repeatedly, hitting him with a truncheon-like object and smashing his head against a wall, officials said.”
After he endured torture at “Salt Pit,” Baluchi was transferred to a CIA torture chamber in Romania where he was held until 2006. He was then taken to Guantanamo Bay, where he remains today. Military prosecutors have opposed a Senate Intelligence Committee request for Baluchi’s medical records.
Anonymous US officials also pointed to the similar case of Hassan Ghul, an alleged al-Qaeda operative who was captured in Iraq, tortured at the black site in Romania, turned over to Pakistani authorities and eventually released, before being killed by a CIA drone strike in 2012.
Other prisoners had buckets of ice water poured into their noses and mouths and over their bodies until they felt they were suffocating, and until they were close to dying of hypothermia.
CIA-employed “doctors” would monitor vital signs so as to ensure that prisoners did not die and thereby prevent further interrogation.
So heinous were some torture methods that in at least one case lower-level CIA officials walked off the job when forced by their superiors to inflict pain in a manner that even they saw as unconscionable. According to the Post, “The report also cites cases in which officials at CIA headquarters demanded the continued use of harsh interrogation techniques even after analysts were convinced that prisoners had no more information to give.”
The material leaked to the Post also makes clear that the inhumane treatment of prisoners did not lead to a significant increase in the amount of “intelligence information” gathered by the CIA. Such a revelation contradicts the chorus of lies used by the Bush administrations to justify the programs, and by the Obama administration to cover up for their blatant unconstitutionality.
Current CIA Director John Brennan (then in the private sector after a stint in the Bush administration) told CBS News in 2007, “There have been a lot of information [sic] that has come out from these interrogation procedures that the [Central Intelligence] Agency has in fact used against the real hard-core terrorists who have been responsible for 9/11, who have shown no remorse at all for the deaths of 3,000 innocents.”
The Post cites one US official who said, “The CIA described [its program] repeatedly both to the Department of Justice and eventually to Congress as getting unique, otherwise unobtainable intelligence that helped disrupt terrorist plots and save thousands of lives. Was that actually true? The answer is no.” Criticism of the efficacy of torture has been raised by sections of the political establishment, as well as officials in the FBI.
The report details how the CIA lied about statements made by a suspected al-Qaeda operative named Abu Zubaydah, who was waterboarded 83 times by the CIA after his capture in 2002. Videotapes of these and other torture interrogations were later destroyed by the agency. Though the CIA has claimed that Zubaydah gave-up valuable information upon being waterboarded, the Senate report contains evidence that “almost all of the critical threat-related information from Abu Zubaida was obtained during the period when he was questioned… at a hospital in Pakistan, well before he was interrogated by the CIA.”
On top of this, the CIA inflated the importance of many prisoners in order to justify their torture. The Senate report reveals that several “masterminds” and “senior al-Qaeda operatives” were only recruiters or foot soldiers.
The appearance of the Post article and the possibility that some or part of the Senate report will be declassified, or leaked by whistleblowers, sharpens the crisis that has emerged within the state over the program itself and the unconstitutional efforts of the CIA and the Obama administration to spy on Senate investigators, to suppress the report and to intimidate Congress and Congressional staff into halting their investigation.
The dispute began three weeks ago, when Senator Dianne Feinstein delivered a speech in which she charged the CIA with violating the separation of powers doctrine in the Constitution and of breaking laws by spying on Senate staff carrying out an investigation of the CIA torture program.
A week later, Senator Harry Reid issued a letter to CIA Director Brennan, informing Brennan that he had instructed the Senate Sergeant at Arms to perform a “forensic examination” of the computer network used by Senate staff for their investigations.
The CIA and the Obama administration have ignored Senate requests for an assurance that such illegal surveillance and intimidation will not occur again. The Obama administration has given its full support to the CIA, with White House Press Secretary Jay Carney explaining that President Obama has “great confidence in John Brennan and confidence in our intelligence community and in our professionals at the CIA.”
The administration has itself withheld over 9,000 top-secret documents from the Senate investigators.
Whatever may come of the developing crisis within the state apparatus, no genuine support for the democratic rights of the population will come from the likes of Feinstein and Reid, whose proclivities for state surveillance are made clear by their avid support for the spying programs of the National Security Agency. In line with this approach, the Senate has kept the chilling content of the report secret and has proceeded with closed-door appeals to the CIA, made entirely behind the backs of the American public.
Moreover, according to the Post, “U.S. officials said the committee refrained from assigning motives to CIA officials whose actions or statements were scrutinized. The report also does not recommend new administrative punishment or further criminal inquiry into a program that the Justice Department has investigated repeatedly.” The recent Senate report even keeps secret the locations of hitherto unknown black sites and the names of those guilty of committing torture.
The Senate Intelligence Committee is due to vote on Thursday to send the Obama administration an executive summary of the report. If it is declassified at all, that process will take many months and will be subjected to redaction and censorship.
But the recent revelations raise another question: If torture does not lead to intelligence gathering, as the CIA previously claimed, then what purpose does the program serve and why did it continue? The reality that is beginning to emerge is that the barbaric torture regime initiated and legitimized by the state under the auspices of the events of September 11 is aimed not simply or even primarily at perceived challenges from “terrorists” abroad, but at developing methods of fear and state oppression that will be directed at all opposition to the policies of the ruling class, abroad and at home.

9 Of The Top 10 Occupations In America Pay An Average Wage Of Less Than $35,000 A Year

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By Michael Snyder, on April 2nd, 2014

 

According to stunning new numbers just released by the federal government, nine of the top ten most commonly held jobs in the United States pay an average wage of less than $35,000 a year.  When you break that down, that means that most of these workers are making less than $3,000 a month before taxes.  And once you consider how we are being taxed into oblivion, things become even more frightening.  Can you pay a mortgage and support a family on just a couple grand a month?  Of course not.  In the old days, a single income would enable a family to live a very comfortable middle class lifestyle in most cases.  But now those days are long gone.  In 2014, both parents are expected to work, and in many cases both of them have to get multiple jobs just in order to break even at the end of the month.  The decline in the quality of our jobs is a huge reason for the implosion of the middle class in this country.  You can't have a middle class without middle class jobs, and we have witnessed a multi-decade decline in middle class jobs in the United States.  As long as this trend continues, the middle class is going to continue to shrink.

The following is a list of the most commonly held jobs in America according to the federal government.  As you can see, 9 of the top 10 most commonly held occupations pay an average wage of less than $35,000 a year...

1. Retail salespersons, 4.48 million workers earning  $25,370
2. Cashiers  3.34 million workers earning $20,420
3. Food prep and serving staff, 3.02 million workers earning $18,880
4. General office clerk, 2.83 million working earning $29,990
5. Registered nurses, 2.66 million workers earning $68,910
6. Waiters and waitresses, 2.40 million workers earning $20,880
7. Customer service representatives, 2.39 million workers earning $33,370
8. Laborers, and freight and material movers, 2.28 million workers earning $26,690
9. Secretaries and admins (not legal or medical),  2.16 million workers earning $34,000
10. Janitors and cleaners (not maids),  2.10 million workers earning, $25,140

Overall, an astounding 59 percent of all American workers bring home less than $35,000 a year in wages.
So if you are going to make more than $35,000 this year, you are solidly in the upper half.
But that doesn't mean that you will always be there.
More Americans are falling out of the middle class with each passing day.
Just consider the case of a 47-year-old woman named Kristina Feldotte.  Together with her husband, they used to make about $80,000 a year.  But since she lost her job three years ago, their combined income has fallen to about $36,000 a year...

Three years ago, Kristina Feldotte, 47, and her husband earned a combined $80,000. She considered herself solidly middle class. The couple and their four children regularly vacationed at a lake near their home in Saginaw, Michigan.

But in August 2012, Feldotte was laid off from her job as a special education teacher. She's since managed to find only part-time teaching work. Though her husband still works as a truck salesman, their income has sunk by more than half to $36,000.

"Now we're on the upper end of lower class," Feldotte said.

There is a common assumption out there that if you "have a job" that you must be doing "okay".
But that is not even close to the truth.
The reality of the matter is that you can even have two or three jobs and still be living in poverty.  In fact, you can even be working for the government or the military and still need food stamps...

Since the start of the Recession, the dollar amount of food stamps used at military commissaries, special stores that can be used by active-duty, retired, and some veterans of the armed forces has quadrupled, hitting $103 million last year. Food banks around the country have also reported a rise in the number of military families they serve, numbers that swelled during the Recession and haven’t, or have barely, abated.

There are so many people that are really hurting out there.
Today, someone wrote to me about one of my recent articles about food price increases and told me about how produce prices were going through the roof in that particular area.  This individual wondered how ordinary families were going to be able to survive in this environment.
That is a very good question.
I don't know how they are going to survive.
In some cases, the suffering that is going on behind closed doors is far greater than any of us would ever imagine.
And often, it is children that suffer the most...

A Texas couple kept their bruised, malnourished 5-year-old son in a diaper and locked in a closet of their Spring home, police said in a horrifying case of abuse.
The tiny, blond-haired boy was severely underweight, his shoulder blades, ribs and vertebrae showing through his skin, when officers found him late last week.

You can see some photos of that poor little boy right here.
I hope that those abusive parents are put away for a very long time.
Sadly, there are lots of kids that are really suffering right now.  There are more than a million homeless schoolchildren in America, and there are countless numbers that will go to bed hungry tonight.
But if you live in wealthy enclaves on the east or west coasts, all of this may sound truly bizarre to you.  Where you live, you may look around and not see any poverty at all.  That is because America has become increasingly segregated by wealth.  Some are even calling this the "skyboxification of America"...

The richest Americans—the much-talked about 1 percent—are a cloistered class. As the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz scathingly put it, they “have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live.” The Harvard political philosopher Michael Sandel has similarly lamented the “skyboxification” of American life, in which “people of affluence and people of modest means lead increasingly separate lives.”
The substantial and growing gap between the rich and everyone else is increasingly inscribed on our geography. There have always been affluent neighborhoods, gated enclaves, and fabled bastions of wealth like Greenwich, Connecticut; Grosse Pointe, Michigan; Potomac, Maryland; and Beverly Hills, California. But America’s bankers, lawyers, and doctors didn’t always live so far apart from teachers, accountants, and small business owners, who themselves weren’t always so segregated from the poorest, most struggling Americans.

Nobody should talk about an "economic recovery" until the middle class starts growing again.
Even as the stock market has soared to unprecedented heights over the past year, the decline of middle class America has continued unabated.
And most Americans know deep inside that something is deeply broken.  For example, a recent CNBC All-America Economic Survey found that over 80 percent of all Americans consider the economy to be "fair" or "poor".
Yes, for the moment things are going quite well for the top 10 percent of the nation, but that won't last long either.  None of the problems that caused the last great financial crisis have been fixed.  In fact, they have gotten even worse.  We are steamrolling toward another great financial crisis and our leaders are absolutely clueless.
When the next crisis strikes, the economic suffering in this nation is going to get even worse.
As bad as things are now, they are not even worth comparing to what is coming.
So I hope that you are getting prepared.  Time is running out.

Mind-controlled robotic suit to debut at World Cup 2014

April 2, 2014 – Shortly before 5pm local time on 12 June at Arena Corinthians in São Paulo, a young paraplegic Brazilian will stand up from a wheelchair, walk over to midfield, and take a kick in the opening ceremony of the 2014World Cup.
For those hoping for miracles at football’s greatest tournament, the scene may be the closest they get to witnessing one. For Miguel Nicolelis, a neuroengineer based at Duke University in North Carolina, the moment demands faith of another kind. As hundreds of millions tune in for the opening match, they will see the first public demonstration of technology he claims will turn wheelchairs into museum pieces.
The technology in question is a mind-controlled robotic exoskeleton. The complex and conspicuous robotic suit, built from lightweight alloys and powered by hydraulics, has a simple enough function. When a paraplegic person straps themselves in, the machine does the job that their leg muscles no longer can.
The exoskeleton is the culmination of years of work by an international team of scientists and engineers on the Walk Again project. The robotics work was coordinated by Gordon Cheng at the Technical University in Munich, and French researchers built the exoskeleton. Nicolelis’s team focused on ways to read people’s brain waves, and use those signals to control robotic limbs.
On Tuesday, the team launches a Facebook page that will document the project in the days leading up to the World Cup. A dedicated website is due to go live later this week.
Nicolelis is training nine paraplegic men and women, aged 20 to 40, to use the exoskeleton at a neurorobotics rehabilitation lab in São Paulo. Three will be chosen to attend the opening ceremony, before the opening game between Brazil and Croatia, with one heading on to the pitch to perform the demonstration.
To operate the exoskeleton, the person is helped into the suit and given a cap to wear that is fitted with electrodes to pick up their brain waves. These signals are passed to a computer worn in a backpack, where they are decoded and used to move hydraulic drivers on the suit.
The exoskeleton is powered by a battery – also carried in the backpack – that allows for two hours of continuous use.
“The movements are very smooth,” Nicolelis told the Guardian. “They are human movements, not robotic movements.”
Nicolelis says that in trials so far, his patients seem have taken to the exoskeleton. “This thing was made for me,” one patient told him after being strapped into the suit.
The operator’s feet rest on plates which have sensors to detect when contact is made with the ground. With each footfall, a signal shoots up to a vibrating device sewn into the forearm of the wearer’s shirt. The device seems to fool the brain into thinking that the sensation came from their foot. In virtual reality simulations, patients felt that their legs were moving and touching something.

One patient, whose spinal injury meant he could not feel or move his legs, told Nicolelis: “I feel like I’m walking on the beach, that I’m touching the sand.”
Nicolelis likens the effect to the rubber hand illusion, where the mind is tricked into thinking that an inanimate object is part of the person. “It confirms our prediction that we are going to elicit a sensation that the exoskeleton is an extension of their body,” Nicolelis said.
In other trials, patients have used the mind-control system to walk on a treadmill.
Nicolelis said he believed the technology was ripe for turning into everyday devices to help paraplegics and could ultimately replace wheelchairs.
“All of the innovations we’re putting together for this exoskeleton have in mind the goal of transforming it into something that can be used by patients who suffer from a variety of diseases and injuries that cause paralysis,” he said.
The system has been through numerous safety tests. The exoskeleton is fitted with multiple gyros to stop it falling over during the balancing act of bipedal walking. As an extra safety measure, it was fitted with multiple airbags.
Last month, Nicolelis and his colleagues went to football matches in São Paulo to check whether mobile phone radiation from the crowds might interfere with the suit. Electromagnetic waves could make the exoskeleton misbehave, but the tests were encouraging. The chances of the exoskeleton malfunctioning, and stomping off into the distance, are apparently slim.
Sethu Vijayakkumar, a roboticist at Edinburgh University, said exoskeletons were a natural progression for rehabilitation and made the most of robotic and human abilities.
“This is something that will happen, and needs to happen. Humans are very good at high-level decisions and making sense of ambiguous situations, but robots are very good at very precise, repetitive, accurate movements,” he said. “Exoskeletons are the way to marry these two together.”
• This article was amended on 2 April 2014 to make it clear that the exoskeleton will debut at the opening ceremony of the World Cup rather than the first match.
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/01/mind-controlled-robotic-suit-exoskeleton-world-cup-2014

DARPA’s New Biotech Unit Will Try to Create New Life Formsjust what we need, the nazi fucking cousins ..creating ...shit !

April 2, 2014 – Yes, sci-fi writers hard up for new material should spend an hour or so perusing the Defense Department’s 2015 budget proposal, especially the section covering the far-out research projects underway at DARPA, where the agency’s mad scientists are working to develop brain-controlled drones, biowarfare, engineer new life forms, and possibly attempt immortality.
If last year was the year of battlefield robots, cyborg soldiers, andweaponized drones, it looks like the next couple years will see the Pentagon gearing up for a deep dive into biotech. DARPA announced today it now has an unit devoted to studying the intersection of biology and engineering, the Biological Technologies Office.
The agency is betting that the next generation of defense tech will be take a cue from natural life, and as such one of the major focuses of the new unit will be on synthetic biology. It’ll ramp up research into manufacturing biomaterials, turning living cells, proteins, and DNA into a sort of genetic factory. 
The goal is to create man-made, living supermaterials that can be used for next-gen mechanical and electrical products, self-repairing materials, renewable fuels, solar cells, and so on. It’s not a new initiative; DARPA announced its Living Foundriessynthetic biology program three years ago to transform modern-day manufacturing. Now the 2015 budget will bump the program’s funding up from $18 to $28 million.
The even more WTF future potential of synthetic biology is engineering synthetic life—eventually creating entirely new, artificially made life forms. It’s not totally far-fetched. Just last week researchers manipulated DNA to engineer the first synthetic, custom ”designer” chromosome, “designed on a computer and made from scratch in a laboratory,” as the Economist explained it. It’s being heralded as the first step toward a man-made artificial organism.
Naturally, this is something DARPA’s interested in exploring. In 2010, the agency announced its “BioDesign” program would study how to create synthetic beings genetically engineered to be immortal and programmed with a kill switch that can be flicked at any moment to turn the future-beings “off.” 
It makes you think: Why bother with mechanical robots when you can engineer fake humans replicants to fight your battles? We haven’t heard much about the Pentagon’s would-be synthetic soldiers since then, but the BioDesign program got a bump from $11.4 to $19.3 million in next year’s budget. It described the research like so:

BioDesign will employ system engineering methods in combination with biotechnology and synthetic chemical technology to create novel beneficial attributes. BioDesign mitigates the unpredictability of natural evolutionary advancement primarily by advanced genetic engineering and molecular biology technologies to produce the intended biological effect. This thrust area includes designed molecular responses that increase resistance to cellular death signals and improved computational methods for prediction of function based solely on sequence and structure of proteins produced by synthetic biological systems.

Beyond engineering new living materials and living organisms, the biotech unit will bring the agency’s longstanding research into neuroscience, epidemiology, disease, prosthetics, and other life sciences under one roof, to start pushing for results. “We are ready to start turning the resulting knowledge into practical tools and capabilities,’” Geoff Ling, the office’s first director said in a press release today.
They’ll be working on some seriously futuristic stuff, even by DARPA’s standards.

Genetics, prosthetics, and outbreaks—oh my. Image: DARPA Biological Technologies Office

The unit will continue research into mind-controlled limbs, and better merging the human brain with cybernetic body parts. Already prosthetics directly connected to the nervous system can be controlled by brain waves signaling nearby healthy muscles. Connecting robotic limbs directly to the brain is next on the list.
The agency tested this out in human trails about a year ago—quadriplegic volunteers had chips implanted in the skull that could pick up on neural signals that control motor functions and harness them to control top-notch robotic arms. “In a sense we’ve opened a door—a connection between the human brain and the rest of the world,” DARPA director Arati Prabhakar told NPR’s Marketplace in an interview today. “You can let your imagination go wild about were that’s going to take us.”
Next, researchers are working on making the signal go both ways, so patients can not only control the prosthetic with their mind, but when the device moves it sends signals back to the nervous system to trigger the sensation of physical touch.
Further into the future, these “neurally enabled human-machine interface technologies,” to use the technical parlance, could eventually be applied to developing brain-controlled robots and UAVs. Scientists are currently working oncontrolling small consumer robots and commercial quadcopters with thoughts, why not a military drone someday?
According to today’s announcement, the Biological Technologies Office will also tackle better artificial intelligence for machines on the battlefield, better therapies for memory loss and other brain functions, and biological warfare defense like disease detectors, vaccines for viruses, and understanding the spread of outbreaks.
Sci-fi writers, eat your hearts out.
Source: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/darpas-new-biotech-unit-will-try-to-create-artificial-life-forms

Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: Did jetliner fly into area controlled by Taliban?

April 2, 2014 – The Russian media outlet MK.ru is reporting today that Malaysia Airlines flight MH-370 made a hard landing on a rural road southeast of Kandahar, Afghanistan, near the Pakistan Border.  According to the report, the passengers and crew are alive.
While the Google translation from the original Russian language is not precise, the MK story says that the Pilots of Flight MH370 did not steal the plane; it was hijacked by unknown persons.  This information came from a confidential source inside the Russian security services.
Flight MH370 went missing on March 8 with 227 passengers and 12 crew on board.
The MK story claims that the passengers and crew have been “captured” and that the airplane is on a rural road, southeast of Kandahar, Afghanistan, with a broken wing from a hard landing.  The plane is said to be located very near the border of Pakistan. The story even contains a map as follows:
The story goes on to report that all the passengers are alive; that they’ve been divided into seven groups living hand-to-mouth in mud huts nearby.
The story also says that “20 Asian Professionals were captured” and bluntly accuses that the hijacking was done “presumably by the Americans” on “someone’s order.”
Member of the Flight Safety Foundation Sergey Melnichenko, pointed out that on “March 21 Thailand, India and Pakistan said that the aircraft was not tracked by air defenses; not that it did not fly over their countries, just that it was not tracked.
This past Sunday, the head of the Intelligence Committee of the U.S. Senate Diane Feinstein, responding to a question from CNN on the probability of a  terrorist component in the case of the missing plane, said “At the moment nothing has been found”.
The story goes on to point out that there are two areas in Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban, with two air corridors where MH370 could fly after disappearing from radar. Rather than admit this, Malaysian authorities are merely relying on the Afghan and Pakistan governments saying military radar never tracked the plane.
The story goes on to say that trust may be misplaced  since the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan is semi-abandoned.
Source: http://www.turnerradionetwork.com/news/394-pat

Why The Financial “Industry” Is A Sham – And How To See Through The Maze

---

After my mother died, I inherited a nest egg that was the result of my father’s hard work over 30 years, which put me in the position of being approached by a series of “financial advisors.” They invariably promised to help me “invest” this money wisely. Fortunately my father had been both an economist and treasurer of a large travel agency, so he had provided me with a sound financial philosophy, solid practices and a healthy distrust for both Wall Street and investment “experts.” He had also retired successfully in saner economic times.

When he stopped working full-time banks were paying above 6% interest on savings. When I inherited his life savings, a return like this would have enabled me to live quite comfortably, especially since I was able to earn money as a tech and business writer. But many of my friends were “day trading” and the stock market was hot so I began to get visions of the high life.  Since I was in the high tech arena I tried to leverage what I thought was my insight into some quick gains, with very mixed results.

So I sought out the help of some “experts,” bearing in my mind many of my father’s principles:  minimize risk, save money, and don’t buy in “installments” (credit).
So – only one of the following men was a “brilliant economist” (the one on the right, my father)
– the other was the Fed Chief that deregulated the markets.
Getting involved in the “financial world,” what I found was an “industry” that had more confusing jargon than even the technology world in which I worked —and an agreed upon set of rules and agreements. One of these was that over the “long term” stocks would outperform bonds, real estate and simple savings (which were seen as sucker accounts) and that this was a “proven fact.”

The problem was, of course, that no one knew exactly what the long term was; if you were 30 years old you could be realistically expectant that you might have a long term perspective until you were maybe 60 –but of course even this wasn’t guaranteed –you could drop dead at anytime.

After buying a few stocks and losing my ass, I soon discovered that “the long term” was really a euphemism for “hoping the shit would recover.”

Still financial advisors pleaded me with “truths” like:

• The need to set financial goals
• The need to diversify
• The wonders of asset allocation

They did not appreciate that my father had impressed upon me the need to see the stock market as a giant craps table –and the longer you risked your money,  the more likely you were to lose.

There was only one goal for me which I expressed thusly:  “My goal is to make the most money in the shortest time with no loss of principal.” But financial experts were not particularly impressed with this concept. They tried to explain that “financial goals” were dependent on “time horizons,” “risk tolerance” and similar terms that I thought were pure bullshit.

Finally I bought into some of this when a friend recommended a seasoned broker at Smith-Barney in Boston, who shifted me over to her assistant who promised to make money for me with “solid companies” and he put together a portfolio of blue chips. One of these was Microsoft, which soon faced a very serious anti-trust judgment in European courts.  I mentioned this to my expert who told me not to worry because I had a financial profile that kept me in my stocks for “the long term.” I tried to argue that Microsoft might lose quite a bit of its value the following week, and I wanted to sell my shares and maybe buy them back cheaper, but he assured me that this went against my profile.

I listened to his malarkey for about an hour, tried to use common sense, and finally hung up with the idea that maybe, just maybe, the nonsense he had spewed was right and I was wrong. Sure enough Microsoft went from $80 a share to $30 over the next month, and it just recovered slightly recently (20 years later).  I lost enough in value that I quit that expert and left Smith-Barney.

In comparison with this brilliant approach, my father was a believer in something called “compound interest.”  This means actually putting away money you earned  and letting it grow according to the following system:

He also believed in another principle:  “Don’t Buy Shit You Can’t Afford.” This meant that I was the last kid I knew to have a color television in the living room, but I also never knew a day when my family was ever in debt.

After college I could not believe how my friends recklessly ran up credit card bills and later got involved in complicated real estate deals that put them in hot water. I never got rich but I always made the rent and lived well. Then when I inherited my father’s hard earned savings, and got burned a few more times in the “financial markets,” I bought a condo and kept working. I didn’t pay much attention when Congress passed “financial deregulation” or the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, until I witnessed the real estate bubble, and near financial collapse of 2008, and the credit default swaps and massive debts and bailouts of “financial institutions.”

While many people suffered terribly, my main clue to what had actually happened was that banks suddenly didn’t need to pay any interest to savers.  Where my father had earned 6% compound interest on his savings, I suddenly could earn nothing in the bank. The reason for this was the “financial stimulus” – or the printing of completely worthless currency. This was the inevitable result of decades of fraudulent activity, and a transition from using “capital” as a way to create real wealth and value to simply a way of multiplying phone electronic “currency” on a computer screen.

And of course through such “deregulation,” the banks had effectively become casinos –now merged and partnered with investment brokers and insurance companies – they traded complex and risky “instruments” like derivatives and were “too big to fail.”  But of course they did fail –and were bailed out again and again with more funny money.

And now, suddenly when I again tried to avail myself of the wisdom of financial experts, I was “advised” that I had to take “reasonable risk” to earn a return and not deplete my savings. But I was approaching “retirement” – mainly because no one wanted to hire an old fart like me anymore -so now I was anxiously looking for passive income.

At this point, when I was asked for my goals I simply said, “to not end up on the street when my money runs out.”  Another way to put this was that I no longer had a “long term” time horizon. A friend of mine, in his 80’s had bought into the “long term” myth as well.  Unfortunately his “long term” ended in 2008 and he lost all of the gains his “expert advisors” had accumulated. He had to sell at major losses, terrified and to avoid losing more, and of course his holdings would have recovered eventually, but he needed safety and was screwed.

The question for me was a bit more palatable.  Having finally gotten through the acute anxiety of thinking the entire financial system would surely collapse, after amassing $3 trillion in debt that could never be paid back (and it was still printing worthless money), I decided to concentrate on the present moment, rather than the long term.

I listened to Eckhart Tolle, and my friend Michael Jeffreys, and realized that in “the present moment” I was fine.

But I wanted to understand how this “financial system” really operated so that I would not be victimized and sought out by other “advisors.”  I figured maybe someone had an answer for my situation that I had failed to discover. One my own age admitted that I was screwed if I wanted a safe return that I could actually live on; “reasonable risk” even in bonds meant that I had to accept the potential loss of as much as 20% of my principal at any time in the future.

My alternative was inflation and running out of money when I was drooling in a nursing home. And as I explained to women who wanted me to take them to Paris or Hawaii, I was not rich but I was solvent. I could take them to Paris or Hawaii if I died in 10 years, but if I lived another 20 (I’m 65) I needed to save a bit more, and if I lived as long as my dad (86) they were out of luck –I needed my cash.

I went back into the stock market, looked at bonds, options, ETFs and other strategies, and took what I called limited and prudent risk. My discussions with financial “advisors” became a bit more heated. When I had “misunderstandings,” meaning that they didn’t tell me the truth about how bonds or options worked, I got very angry and moved my money to other institutions. More often than not they could not understand my displeasure and unwillingness to play their game –which again was like a giant craps table where the longer you keep the money on the numbers the more likely you are to get wiped. Just as a “7” will inevitably occur in craps, so too will a “correction” occur in the stock market.

The other obvious truth is that the market is completely rigged. 60 minutes just did another piece about how electronic traders “front load” transactions, seeing what retail investors are looking to buy and purchasing shares ahead of them, thereby raising the price, and then selling them back to the investors at a profit. WATCH IT HERE

These “professionals” are called “market makers.”  Seriously?  They are criminals. This does not take into account the other criminals called “insider traders” or as another 60 minutes piece referred to them, “researchers.”

So I have a new strategy.  I go at it alone and I believe in guerilla economics. I follow the momentum of the herd, buy and sell quickly, take my profits and then when I have enough I wait. I try not to get caught in the “undertow” of a “correction” or panic, which happens regularly. I read rumors about earnings and cautiously take advantage of any edge that I can get, knowing that most market commentary is false and misleading, I then just act accordingly.

China Takes the Plunge in Getting Power From the Sea

Source: WSJ

HONG KONG—A race is under way to unlock one of the world’s biggest untapped sources of clean energy—the ocean—with China emerging as an important testing ground.
That could heighten competition with Western companies down the line, especially if Chinese businesses begin using technologies developed with joint-venture partners to expand rapidly.
The European Union so far has led efforts to harness the sea to make electricity, for which there are three principal techniques: underwater turbines that draw power from the ebb and flow of tides, surface-based floats that rely on wave motion and systems that exploit differences in water temperature.
The world’s first commercial, grid-connected tidal-flow generator was installed in Northern Ireland in 2008. Germany’s Siemens AG, a big investor in wave and tidal power, predicts that tidal currents alone could someday power 250 million households world-wide. France’s Alstom SA also is developing the technology.
But with 11,000 miles of coastline rich with energy potential and pollution that is getting worse, China is seen by many experts as an ideal location to pioneer and commercialize ocean-energy technologies.
China is stepping up spending in the sector, and foreign companies including U.S.-based Lockheed Martin Corp. are testing equipment and entering joint ventures in the country.
Among the projects under study with Chinese backing: the dynamic tidal-power wall, with turbines using curved blades that are designed to allow eels and fish to pass through safely. If approved, the wall could supply as much electricity as 2½ large nuclear reactors—and cost as much as $30 billion. Investors include the Netherlands government and a consortium of eight Dutch companies, including engineering firms Arcadis NV and Strukton Groep NV.
The venture dwarfs other sea-power projects and could produce electricity more cheaply than offshore wind farms, says Dimiti de Boer, a senior adviser for environment and climate change at the United Nations Industrial Development Organization.
The project involves building a wall running perpendicular from the coast and then branching off into a T, extending around 20 miles and studded with turbines that would channel and concentrate the power of tidal water. Beijing provided $3.3 million for feasibility studies that are under way in China. Construction is at least a decade away, though initial findings suggest that shallow waters on the Chinese, Korean and European coasts could be suitable.
“China is at the cutting edge” in sea-energy technology development, says Mr. de Boer, who is based in Beijing.
Read More @ Source

THE BACKLASH OF (AND HOLES IN) THE NSA SPYING

Posted on April 1, 2014 by Joseph P. Farrell • Filed Under: News •http://gizadeathstar.com/2014/04/backlash-holes-nsa-spying/

Ever since Edward Snowden “revealed” what everyone already knew, namely, that America’s Reichsicherheithauptamt… er… National Security Agency, was spying on everyone, and with the more recent realization that this was as much about the “ultimate insider trading mechanism” and monitoring international finances as it was about “terrorism,” there has been a growing economic, and now as we shall see, security backlash.
For example, a few weeks ago I blogged at different times about the growing economic backlash against the USA as a result of these “revelations.” Brazil, for example, which had contracts with the US firm of Boeing for fighter jets, cancelled these contracts, and placed an order with Sweden’s Saab company for similar fighters with similar capabilities. Their reason was obvious: national security. Brazil simply no longer trusted the USA to provide them “backdoor free” fighters. Given that arms are about the only major American export any more (besides poisonous GMO seeds), this is not welcome news, and if the trend continues, other countries will seek their armaments from other countries. Brazil’s President Rouseff additionally joined France’s Hollande and Germany’s Merkel in the call for the development of their own “US-free internet”.
But there’s more blowback on the way:
How Much Is NSA Spying Costing In Lost Productivity?
The article already hints at yet another looming economic problem:

“Remember, American and British spy agencies have intentionally weakened security for many decades. And it’s getting worse and worse. For example, they plan to use automated programs to infect millions of computers.
“How much time and productivity have we lost in battling viruses let in because of the spies tinkering? How much have we lost because “their” computer programs conflict with “our” programs?
“Indeed, Microsoft’s general counsel labels government snooping an “advanced persistent threat,” a term generally used to describe teams of hackers that coordinate cyberattacks for foreign governments.  It is well-known  among IT and security professionals  that hacking decreases employee productivity.    While they’re usually referring to hacking by private parties, the same is likely true for hacking by government agencies, as well.”:

In other words, it may not be long before US manufacturers and software corporations are faced with foreign competition both in hardware and software, given growing fears of US snooping. While it is unthinkable to imagine such competition for Apple or Microsoft now, it will inevitably occur if the US and American suppliers are unable to restore trust and confidence in their products.
But there’s another looming problem, and one far more serious. For all their efforts, it appears that Russia has not been merely sitting on its gas pipelines twiddling its fingers and doing nothing. Indeed, I also blogged on this site about Russian purchases of typewriters, to avoid the possibility of domestic interception of classified documents and communications, and many individuals are now once again resorting to snail mail for personal communications. Remember that typewriter thing, and check this out:
Military & Defense More: NSA The White House Is ‘Very Nervous’ About Russia’s New Ability To Evade NSA Spying
I rather suspect that more than just the White House is nervous about Russia’s apparent ability to avoid the NSA’s ever-sniffing nose, for such a capability is bound to have the financial oligarchs worried as well, for the lack of ability to monitor Russian military communications implies a similar lack of ability concerning its domestic electronic clearing. Of course, the Russian military is anything but incompetent, and while it could have accomplished its recent maneuvers “the old fashioned way” with radio silence, typewritten messages, and motorcycle couriers, it is doubtful that it did so. The crux of the difficulty is aptly summarized here:

“Russian leaders either ‘deliberately avoided communicating about the invasion or simply found a way to do so without detection by the U.S.,’ the Journal writes.

One does not coordinate the vast special forces and military resources of Russia without communications of some sort, and given the speed and precision with which Russia responded to the situation in the Crimean peninsula and the threat against its Black Sea Fleet bases posed by the USA-sponsored coup d’etat in the Ukraine, this author has difficulty believing that Moscow pulled off this feat “the old fashioned way,” and whether they did or not does not, as far as US policy-makers are concerned, really matter, for the worst case scenario implied by the NSA’s apparent inability to penetrate Russian communications is that Russia has developed a fairly sophisticated means to avoid such electronic snooping, a kind of cyber-updated counter-intelligence version of SMERSH if you will. (And given the current US track record in the region, they might be considering a revival of the old fashioned SMERSH in Moscow as well. As I’ve said many times, two can play the covert warfare, psyops, and drones game).

It’s not just that possibility that may have them burning the midnight oil in the Washington and London snake pits either, for imagine if Russia decides, as a component of its international geopolitics, to sell or share that capability with, say, India, China, or (in a real counter-coup of its own), Germany, or France, or Brazil.  Such agreements would not, of course, ever be announced, or if they were, would only be in the form of a generalized statement: … oh, by the way, we sold license agreements on System X technology to…” Or, nothing might be said at all, and it would only become apparent when there was sudden silence where before there was regular noise.

Though the Russian action and capability were demonstrated – quietly of course – a few weeks ahead of schedule, the message to the cesspools in Washington and London seems rather clear:

“April fools, boys!”

AND THAT WOULD MATCH A FREAKING IPHONE, IF IT DOES NOT, WHY DID YOU SWITCH THE IMAGE?

BLOCKBUSTER: HIJACKED IBM ENGINEER PHILIP WOOD SUCCESSFULLY DIALED OUT OF DIEGO GARCIA

PERMALINK

UPDATE: The original image has been destroyed by hackers, including what is posted here. The GPS format is now different. I am attempting to retrieve the original. To the people who did this, you should be dragged through the streets and LYNCHED. UPDATE: ORIGINAL EXIF FORMAT NOW RECOVERED VIA PICTURE TAKEN WITH DIGITAL CAMERA. GLITCH, IF YOU HAVE THE ORIGINAL PHOTO, PROTECT IT AND GET IT TO FARGANNE. PHOTO FORENSICS DOES NOT HAVE THE REAL PHOTO. UPDATE: ALL CORRESPONDENCE REGARDING THIS HAS BEEN HACKED AND WIPED OUT.

I could not save the original, I only transferred it to the site which subsequently got hacked to destroy the photo. This is because I am forced to work with only cyber cafe computers because mine got permanently bios hacked.

When I first confirmed the coordinates for Diego Garcia, I took a photograph of the last portion of the Exif that was in the original photo to help me easily compare it to what was online to confirm this legit. The coordinates in the original were recorded three different ways, and I only photographed the last portion of the coordinates because I did not need it three different ways. The online postings of the exif, supposedly from this photo, are fraudulent. The actual format looked like this:
===> 7 18 58.30891" ==7316197
===72 25 35.55908 ==72426544
The fact that there is no way to get the image to show this way anymore proves that someone hacked the site and destroyed the exif, so this story could be discredited. However, I have the original photo of how the exif displayed and I will NOT plug that card into this machine online, I am going home, ripping the wifi out of the laptop and preserving this. I will post it when I am done.

IMPORTANT UPDATE:

Shills are now using the approach "the message is too perfect" because they can't answer to what is here. But the message is exactly what I would expect from an intelligent person who has been captured, FAKE would be: My plane was hijacked by American and British military people. I am on Diego Garcia. I have been tortured. Please help. In Philips message, he does not know where he is or who is holding him. Anyone faking the message would certainly say Diego Garcia and American/British forces. The fact that Philip does not know anything about his captors FITS TOTALLY with the message being authentic. Right now the American intelligence front is frantic on the blogs, attempting to find any way to slam this. They are testing any possible way to convince people this is not true, and will run with whatever works. Don't let that fool you, use your brain with what is here and think for yourself.

ORIGINAL POST:

The blindfold: Philip claimed to be blindfolded when he sent the message. When the American military blindfolds someone, it is accomplished by putting a bag over the head that is locked so you can't get it off. This left the engineers hands free. This would have made it possible for him to pull his Iphone 5 (a fact confirmed by the Exif data) out of his butt as stated, and use the voice command ability of the Iphone to just talk to it to log in and post the message. This explains why he sent a black photo, he could not see what he was sending, he just knew he snapped a photo and sent whatever got taken.
The coordinates:When the coordinates are added to the fact that the photo's exif data does not match the Google coordinates or any other coordinates for Diego Garcia that are posted online, but is still within the boundaries of Diego Garcia, it proves that no one just pulled those coordinates off the web. It helps confirm that this was not just a hoax because the coordinates are exact to wherever on Diego Garcia the Iphone was when it took the photo.

ORIGINAL POST FOLLOWS:

IBM ENGINEER TAKEN FROM HIJACKED FLIGHT 370 GOT A SELFIE OUT TO THE INTERNET.

UPDATE: THE SITE GOT HACKED AND THE IMAGE HAS BEEN MODIFIED. I AM WORKING ON A WAY TO RECOVER THIS. This image, which appears black was posted as taken in a dark cell by IBM engineer Philip Wood. SAVE IT TO YOUR DESKTOP. RIGHT CLICK IT. SELECT PROPERTIES. CLICK DETAILS, THAT REVEALS THE EXIF. Shills are saying I did not post the Exif. Shills pray for people to be stupid. NOTHING PROVES IT BETTER THAN THE ACTUAL IMAGE. THAT IS WHY I POSTED THE ACTUAL IMAGE. The picture is black because the cell was too dark, but a critical piece of information was embedded in the Exif data, the coordinates to Diego Garcia, where the picture was taken. And it's real, this is NOT a hoax. The coordinates in the picture indicate that the photo was taken within 3 miles of what Google officially gives for Diego Garcia. It is NOT EXACTLY what comes up on Google. It is off a couple miles, so NO ONE GOOGLED THIS, thus helping to confirm it's authenticity. I don't know how big the island is, but if it has a runway, that certainly fits. The picture posted with the following text: "I have been held hostage by unknown military personal after my flight was hijacked (blindfolded). I work for IBM and I have managed to hide my cellphone in my ass during the hijack. I have been separated from the rest of the passengers and I am in a cell. My name is Philip Wood. I think I have been drugged as well and cannot think clearly."
.

UPDATE: I put my best computer online today (serious security violation) BUT WAS ABLE TO RETINEX THE IMAGE AS A RESULT, AND YOU CAN SEE ENOUGH DETAIL TO SUPPORT PHILIP BEING DETAINED WITH A BLACK BAG OVER HIS HEAD, THE SAME WAY THE ARMY DOES IT.

The retinex photo cannot be used for verification of Exif, if you check this one it will clearly say in the software tab "Gimp 2.6.12" and NOT the Iphone O.S. version, which ALL SOFTWARE DOES when it handles and saves an image. This is why I know the original is legit. Do this yourself for FREE. Download the Gimp image editor. Open the image with the Gimp. Click the colors tab. At the bottom of the list of options, you will see retinex. Set retinex to Scale: 133, Scale division 1, and dynamic to 0.0. Retinex squeezes everything out of an image that can possibly be seen, and it is my opinion that it does reveal enough.
Normally, a lens will vignette the corners, and put the least amount of light in the corners. But Retinex shows clearly that the corners of the image are brighter, and the center is dark. THAT would be caused by a black bag over Philip's head.

ASTEROID IMPACT LEVEL UPDATE: SCAMMERS ARE SAYING THERE NEVER WAS A PHILIP WOOD WORKING FOR IBM. BUT HIS LINKDIN DESTROYS THAT LIE AND CONFIRMS THE STORY:

UPDATE: If Philip Wood´s linkdin is not embedded below exactly as stated, HERE IS THE LINK UPDATE: Jpeg now substituted due to regionally served hacks on the Linkdin account.

Image Exif data: THE SMOKING GUN

The Exif is intact. Exif data gets embedded in every image by every camera and includes the circumstances under which the photo was taken. It can be viewed by saving the image to your desktop, and then right clicking it and selecting image properties. Hit the details tab. You can see that the image was taken on March 18 with an Iphone 5, with the ISO at 3200 and a shutter of 1/15. The coordinates are included in the exif data because the Iphone knows where it is, and the coordinates are for Diego Garcia. THE FIRST TIME A BLANK PHOTO SAID IT ALL. Exif can't be rewritten with common software without a trace, ALL software leaves a note in the application tag that says the picture was modified by an application. Exif can be erased as well but NOT CHANGED WITHOUT A TRACE. Photos with the exif intact AND UNCHANGED will hold up in court. If the Exif is hacked and this is not real, the CIA or a really good hacker did this, which I doubt, I'd say it's probably real.

Another smoking gun is that the voice recognition software put the word personal instead of personnel. This is completely consistent with a blind software assisted dial out.

Surrounding this story is the fact that the man who managed to get this information to Farganne (forum member Glitch) was harassed and received many threatening voice mails over it, that is another piece of evidence pointing to this as being real. One thing is certain, once it's posted here on this site the genie is OUT OF THE BOTTLE. I cannot stress how important it is that the GPS coordinates in the photo do not perfectly match what Google says and are not posted anywhere on the web, because it proves that the source of those coordinates did not come from google or Wikipedia, they really did come from the imaging device and it HAD TO be at Diego Garcia when it took the photo.

DEAR U.S. ARMED FORCES: THE GAME IS OVER. RETURN FLIGHT 370 TO MALAYSIA AIRLINES, RETURN THE PEOPLE TO THEIR FAMILIES, AND SEND PHILLIP WOOD HOME. You have been BUSTED!!!

DEBUNK ATTEMPTS AND UPDATES I did not want to post, but now have to because of the way certain people took this. Iphone won't fit? That is SILLY. From an E.R. doctor who pulled a 12 inch long 8 inch wide salami out of an idiot´s butt

OTHER DEBUNK ATTEMPTS: If anything was used to re-tag this image, it would say so in the software tag of the image. Any time software modifies any aspect of the image, the last thing to touch the image gets put in the software tag. The Iphone's standard software is in the image tag and nothing else. That means this image has NOT been re-tagged and that is the FIRST THING I checked before posting this story. And NO, YOU CANNOT MODIFY IT WITH A PROGRAMMING EDITOR UNLESS YOU ARE A MACHINE LANGUAGE GENIUS. Open notepad (which is a basic programming editor). Drag the photo into notepad. it will open as code. The Exif is all machine code. This is the NSA type hack I talked about, unless the NSA or a serious hacker wanted to do this, the photo is legit. And the surrounding circumstances also show this story to be legit. A non shill question: Diego Garcia is a military installation. Are there civilians on the island? ANSWER: YES, 1,600 of them. And they have cell phones no doubt. Civilian cell service would be there. And what about all the military spouses? They would be there too, and NOT in the military but (possibly) listed as military. They have phones as well, Diego Garcia would not be a black hole.
Non shill comment: Geosetter can modify exif. I did it, I changed the location in the picture. My comment: Did Geosetter erase the Iphone O.S. version? It should have, and that would prove the photo fake. Above, all that data is perfectly intact. All software I have seen will say it modified a photo. Since Geosetter is public domain it should say it had the image and produced it with the Iphone O.S. data either added to or removed entirely. Absent this, Geosetter would be a hacker app.
Sorcha Faal wrote: Why did he not post the Exif data. My comment: NOTHING IS BETTER THAN THE ORIGINAL PHOTO, WHICH CONTAINS THE EXIF. DONT YOU KNOW HOW TO VIEW IT? THE INSTRUCTIONS WERE CLEAR.
BLOCKBUSTER UPDATE AGAIN: This got posted to 4chan and was pulled immediately, but 4plebs, an independently run backup of 4chan which is NOT controlled has the original on archive, and the date of posting matches the photo. BINGO! read itHERE. This answers the question why the photo only surfaced recently. Someone surfing archives found it. 4chan would be absolutely a PRIME choice for someone in trouble.

More Debunks answered

There was no Philip wood working for IBM - this one was really poor. This was the very first debunk posted anywhere, and it's so thin and transparent well, if you get fooled by that one let's just say I am not going to help you by linking out AGAIN. Re read the article please The exif data was hacked - That would debunk the whole story, but it is not the case. Actually untraceably changing exif is not that easy. ALL LEGITIMATE SOFTWARE, EVERY LAST BIT OF IT OUT THERE, WILL SAY IT HAD THE PICTURE AND PRODUCED IT IF IT IS SAVED WITH THAT SOFTWARE. THERE ARE NO SUCH FINGERPRINTS ON PHILIP'S IMAGE. Most people do not even know what exif data is. From my experience I would say that fewer 9 out of 10 people have heard of it. Of the fewer than 10 percent who have, most will be photographers.
I have been doing photography and known about exif since the beginning of digital photography. And there have been times, for the sake of sending messages secretly embedded in Jpegs or claiming ownership of images, I have wanted to hack exif at least enough to pull entire Jpegs into programming editors to see if there was anything I could tweak. Except for a few notes in the Jpeg, the exif is machine language. That's pretty tough to work with and even most who work as professional programmers can't do it which makes that scenario highly implausible. And software like photoshop ALWAYS changes the software tag and claims full ownership of the image. So even though there are applications that can edit exif, they always leave a trace in the software tag. The photo posted by Philip had no such changes to the software tag.
If the image posted by Philip is NOT legit, it would have taken someone with an ability to write machine language to modify it without a trace, or a hacker with an obscure app to do it, and I call bunk on that because those types of people are small in number and have better things to do than hatch b.s. on the web. This was NOT done by a teenager for a week end prank. It would be a very small number of people that actually managed to do it, as I said all along - CIA/NSA types or really good hackers. And I seriously doubt that prospect.

The only thing I have a question for with regard to how this got done is WHY 10 days?

This posted on the 18th, and that's quite a while after the event. There is no doubt the Iphone was NOT up philip's butt the entire time. So now we get into guessing games about why it took 10 days. My guess? Somehow for a period of time Philip was tied up under close supervision but not having his butt watched at the toilet. After the initial search he put the phone in a more comfortable position in his pants but did not call. And it took 10 days for him to finally get separated from the other people as stated in the message and have enough privacy to send a message out.

Why post to 4chan rather than call home?

That's pretty easy to explain. The NSA would have blocked that particular number from reaching anyone of importance in Philip's life. They do it to my phones all the time, to such an extent I gave up on cell phones, they are useless for me. And even Claudia's phones have been cut off from receiving calls from family members, the NSA does that just to isolate people who are dissenters. Flight 370 would have been handled. E-mails? Ditto. Facebook and others that require log in? DITTO. That left only totally public blogs that did not require log in to get a message out, and 4chan is one of those. Those are the TWO legitimate questions I can think of that people could actually ask about how and why, the rest - such as you could never get a phone up your ass when you are a really smart guy who would have noticed the plane turned around and the pilot on the intercom saying the plane has been hijacked and now you have FIVE FULL HOURS TO THINK OF SOMETHING BEFORE THE PLANE LANDS, come on now, ONE guy out of 230 figured something out. The whole argument about how the phone made it is in my opinion silly.
The bottom line is that the arguments against the story are a whole lot weaker than the arguments supporting it, and when you add to that the fact that the web site got hacked repeatedly and someone even managed to get a back ground image of a bloody body strewn all the way through it for a few hours Saturday night, well, hackers don't have my log ins, only the NSA or other high level gov types would because I am too good with passwords (they are typically un hackable ones like N532r689$^// and with hackers they won't fix it right when they think I am going to log on, they will leave it up. It got fixed without me doing anything, I never knew about it until someone told me. That would be a back stab by an intelligence agency, WHY WOULD THIS STORY BE THAT IMPORTANT IF IT WAS B.S.? They don't just pull that type of stunt out of the blue.
And the shillage was MASSIVE on this one, with outright lies that were very weak early on, evolving into other lies that were harder to dismiss, and now they are focusing on the exif and whether or not it can be changed without a trace. Well, my answer is above and was always in the original post, and it is the RIGHT ANSWER, YES, BY HACKERS AND INTELLIGENCE AGENCY TYPES, BUT NOT BY WEEKEND JOE AND THAT MAKES THAT ARGUMENT WEAK. Ultimately I guess anyone who worked in the right places could do anything, including walking up to you cloaked by the latest technology and hitting you in the head with a bean bag. But the preponderance of evidence weighs heavily in favor of this all being legit, and that is what I am sticking with.
Exif not reliable?
Ultimately you could say it is not reliable because yes, a really good programmer could hack it, and that is ABSOLUTELY TRUE, but that DOES NOT mean that the photo is automatically fake.
And look at what a Retinax filter pulled out of the darkness - Hard to see, but sure looks like it could be like THIS image from Abu Ghraib:
On 2014-03-31 11:52, Mary wrote:
Jim, I am a longtime reader and supporter. Philip Wood was my husband Todd's client - my husband is a realtor in Keller, TX and we sold Philip's home on Lazy Lane in Keller several years ago. When he and his wife divorced, we also sold Elaine a new home just a couple of years ago. We kept in touch with him from time to time.
I have had trouble sleeping since the info came out about him being held in a cell with a bag over his head. Philip is a very nice guy, a man who lived a simple life, and he was just doing his job for IBM. He was involved with "data storage" for IBM - at least that's what he told us, and he was so excited to get over there to Beijing and the surrounding areas to see the world and help IBM.
Thank you for the work you are doing, my God - our world is so evil it's unimaginable.
Best Regards,
Mary
My response:
I am stunned. And doing data storage for IBM would be a great reason to have him kidnapped - the large companies are moving to protect themselves from the NSA, and Philip would have been right in the middle of the NSA's attempts to breach IBM's security. There is no way to confirm whether or not Philip would have been important to them, but it is a curiosity.
Thanks for writing,
James

The best possible debunk yet:

Hello James, I read your article with an open mind in the possibility that Philip Wood sent the message out of Diego Garcia. I had to do a little research to see how easy it was to change the location of the photo in the exif data, and I find a few simple ways to change the location without the program name being adopted into the modified exif language. Download the app mappr on iphone, you can take a picture or an old one, then change the location of it and save it down. It does not show the adopted program name mappr on the exif after. Go to www.findexif.com to test the data yourself. I tried it myself and can put any of my photos anywhere in the world matching the same data as the alleged Philip Wood photo.
Hope this helps,
Ty
My response:
That one was good. Best one yet. That means that it is possible to fake this. But it does not mean that it is faked. I said all along that it would be possible to fake this with a hacker app but that it was not likely. And the Retinex sure looks like it confirms the story - it's still not clear but sure looks like the same contrast distribution of a black bag over the head in a selfie.
Ultimately people will have to see what is here and decide for themselves. Since I now know about this, it should go up. But I believe Philip is in Diego garcia with a bag over his head. Where else is the plane?