Why Is The Federal Government Installing Mysterious Boxes On Utility Poles?   ~Oops

Posted by Derrick Brozehttp://www.dcclothesline.com/2016/04/23/why-is-the-federal-government-installing-mysterious-boxes-on-utility-poles/#more-59348

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives has claimed ownership of a mysterious box that was removed from a utility pole in Phoenix, Arizona.
Phoenix resident Brian Clegg was concerned about a box he witnessed being installed on a power pole. Clegg said the box was facing his house and he believed it may have had cameras inside. The pole was owned by Arizona’s largest power provider, SRP, who claimed no one had permission to put the box on their pole. Brian Clegg says shortly afterwards SRP sent a crew to remove the box.
Shortly after ABC15 investigated the matter, the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives (ATF), a branch of the U.S. Department of Justice, acknowledged installing the box as part of an ongoing investigation. Officials with the ATF would not provide details about their alleged investigation and would not confirm if they were conducting surveillance in the area.
“I don’t feel safer,” said Brian Clegg. “I feel that my privacy has been violated.”
SRP told ABC15 they were unaware the box had been installed and that the ATF has to notify them if they are going install something on their property. The ATF told ABC15 they can put security measures in place without asking for permission. Obviously the federal government feels comfortable doing whatever it wants to do, whenever it wants to, law be damned.
One other interesting aspect of Clegg’s story is the fact that he claims the crew who installed the box came in a truck marked “Field Pros.” The thought of undercover government agents installing surveillance equipment while masquerading as utility workers is highly disturbing and sounds like a scene right out of a Hollywood film. Unfortunately, Phoenix is not the only city to have surveillance equipment installed by an agency of the federal government.

In November 2013, Seattle residents pushed back against the installation of several mesh network nodes attached to utility poles around the downtown area. The nodes were purchased by the Seattle Police Department via a $2.7 million grant from the Department of Homeland Security. The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington and privacy advocates were immediately concerned about the ability of the nodes to gather user information via the Wi-Fi connection.
“How accurately can it geo-locate and track the movements of your phone, laptop, or any other wireless device by its MAC address? Can the network send that information to a database, allowing the SPD to reconstruct who was where at any given time, on any given day, without a warrant? Can the network see you now?” asked Seattle newspaper The Stranger.
Initially the Seattle PD was reluctant to speak about the network. However, the police ultimately yielded to public opinion and decided, “the wireless mesh network will be deactivated until city council approves a draft policy and until there’s an opportunity for vigorous public debate.”
Although the situation in Seattle played out in favor of the people, we must recognize that there is a growing partnership between the surveillance agencies of the federal government and the increasingly militarized local police forces in the United States. As Activist Post previously reported, a new policy from the Obama administration will make it easier for the NSA to share information between law enforcement agencies with very little oversight.
According to the New York Times:

The Obama administration is on the verge of permitting the National Security Agency to share more of the private communications it intercepts with other American intelligence agencies without first applying any privacy protections to them, according to officials familiar with the deliberations.

The new rule changes would allow federal agencies such as the FBI to access streams of information gathered by the spy agency, “including emails, phone calls and location data.” These federal agencies would then have the ability to pass the data to state and local law enforcement. As theTimes points out, “all of this can happen without any congressional or judicial oversight under a Reagan era executive order known as EO 12333.”
The rule change by the Obama administration is only one of several tools that both local police and federal agencies have at their disposal. From drones to stingrays, gunshot detectors and automatic license plate readers – the State has an arsenal of spy equipment. How can the free hearts and minds of the world live free, happy, and abundant lives with the ever-present eyes and ears of Big Brother? We must educate ourselves about the tools used for surveillance and oppression and begin working to redirect the technology at the tyrants. We must persevere, be courageous, and shine a light on the darkness.
Derrick Broze is an investigative journalist and liberty activist. He is the Lead Investigative Reporter forActivistPost.com and the founder of the TheConsciousResistance.com. Follow him on Twitter.
Derrick is available for interviews.
Courtesy of Activist Post

Massive food deception: Genetically engineered crops soon to be marketed as 'Non-GMO'

by Isabelle Z.
http://www.naturalnews.com/053779_Cibus_RTDS_genetic_engineering.html
(NaturalNews) Food companies continue to find ways to deceive their customers – the food-buying public – as they aim to maximize their profits. In the latest example, one company has found a way to pass off genetically engineered crops as "non-GMO."
How can they get away with such deception? It all comes down to semantics. A San Diego company called Cibus is marketing a genome-edited, herbicide-resistant oilseed rape as non-genetically modified, on the grounds that only a few nucleotides in the existing genes of the plant were changed. They argue that because genes have not been inserted from other plants or other types of organisms, the classification is appropriate.

American regulators have allowed this to happen, designating the oilseed rape from Cibus as mutagenesis rather than genetic modification. This eliminates the need for the tremendous costs in time and money that the company would need to invest in order to get regulatory approval if it actually were to be labeled a GM organism. It can take more than five years and tens of millions of dollars to gain GM organism approval in the U.S.

The European Commission, meanwhile, has not yet taken an official stance on genome-edited crops, but a number of political groups in Europe are pushing for a hard line. Right now, an organism is usually considered to be GM in Europe if its genes have been changed in ways that could not have occurred naturally. By this definition, edited crops could fall under the GM classification.

Rothamsted Research scientist Huw Jones said: "If Europe regulates genome-edited organisms in the same way it does GM organisms, it will kill the technology here for all except the biotech companies working with profitable traits in the major crops."

Cibus uses a process known as RTDS

The gene-editing technology Cibus uses is known as Rapid Trait Development System (RTDS), which is a type of mutagenesis technology.

Cibus claims that RTDS is an "all natural" method that does not pose any of the environmental or health risks that are associated with transgenic breeding. Nevertheless, RTDS alters a genome in a way that simply wouldn't occur naturally in the course of breeding or genetic recombination. Studies are still needed to show the extent and frequency of any off-target effects that the process could have.

Genome editing enables scientists to quickly and precisely change or delete certain genes and bring in useful traits. Predictably, however, in the case of Cibus, it's all about the bottom line. While they could have made edits that make the plant's oil more nutritious, for example, they have instead opted for edits that enable farmers to spray more weedkiller over the crops.

Jones said: "I don't think it's too extreme to say that the way that the technology will be used for plant breeding in the future will hinge on how is regulated."

Another benefit of escaping the GM classification is avoiding the stigma that is rightfully attached to GM foods. Consumer backlash is growing, as the dangers of GM food are gaining publicity, and many areas are starting to institute labeling requirements so that consumers know which products to avoid.

Food deception is a common practice

This is far from the only example of companies using misleading practices when it comes to the content of their foods. Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, has written an entire book about the topic after testing a number of common foods, spices and supplements in his cutting-edge lab for the presence of heavy metals and other toxins. The book, Food Forensics, is a must-read for health-conscious consumers. In addition, the Food Revolution Summit provides information and research about food and pesticides.

We simply cannot trust what companies want us to believe about the contents of their food. Growing your own food is one way to know for sure what you are eating, and taking the time to research the foods you buy from independent sources can help give you that extra peace of mind that you're not ingesting any harmful substances.

Sources include:

Nature.com

ENSIA.com

GMWatch.org

EarthOpenSource.org

FoodRevolutionSummit.org

FoodForensics.com

Science.NaturalNews.com

New ‘Artificial Intelligence Software’ Capable of ‘Near Human-Level’ Image-Recognition

Mikael Thalen November 19, 2014 http://www.storyleak.com/new-artificial-intelligence-software-capable-of-near-human-level-image-recognition/

August 12, 2014

Scientists with Stanford University and Google have developed two new artificially intelligent software programs capable of describing images with near human-level accuracy.

Stanford software analyzing individual items

Stanford’s research paper, entitled “Deep Visual-Semantic Alignments for Generating Image Descriptions,” explains how specific details found in photographs and videos can be translated into written text.
“We present a model that generates free-form natural language descriptions of image regions,” the paper’s abstract states. “Our model leverages datasets of images and their sentence descriptions to learn about the inter-modal correspondences between text and visual data.”
When comparing the software’s descriptions to that of humans, researchers found that both often expressed similar comprehension.

Artificial intelligence software creating picture captions

Google’s version of the technology, presented in the “Show and Tell: A Neural Image Caption Generator” research paper, was able to produce comparable results.
Although the program struggled when presented with an entirely new set of images, Google scientists noted the software’s ability to “learn” from each new interaction.

Google software learning from its mistakes

“I was amazed that even with the small amount of training data that we were able to do so well,” Google computer scientist Oriol Vinyals told the New York Times.
Billions of videos and images posted online will likely be analyzed and tabulated by Google once the technology is perfected, allowing real-time cataloging as media is uploaded to the Internet.
“The field is just starting, and we will see a lot of increases,” Vinyals added.
Although Google scientists noted the possible uses for the visually impaired, the company’s deep ties with the U.S. surveillance state will likely dictate the software’s final application.
As Google quickly becomes one of the most powerful lobbyist groups in Washington D.C., many note the technology’s potential for censoring data even before it has a chance to be uploaded to the web.
Google’s history of censoring political content has been long documented, with infamous videos such as the WikiLeaks helicopter gunship footage being removed from the Alex Jones’ YouTube channel in 2010.
In fact, Google has complied with thousands of requests from governments across the globe to censor and remove content despite no clear violations in many of the cases.
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, a campaign advisor and major Barack Obama donor, has publicly stated his disdain for human privacy on multiple occasions as well.
“We don’t need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about,” Schmidt said in 2010. “We know everything you’re doing and the government can track you. We will know your position down to the foot and down to the inch over time.”
Whether it’s pushing customers to put microphones in their ceilings, participating in the NSA’s PRISM program, or scanning every private Gmail account, the tech giant will undoubtedly continue to wield its state-backed power over millions of web users worldwide.

MUDDLE EARTH

• Posted on March 28, 2016
• by Ron Patton
• in Articles

MUDDLE EARTH

In February 1947, Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd was in charge of a massive operation in the Arctic that was called Operation Highjump. Operation Highjump has become a topic among UFO conspiracy theorists, who claim it was a covert US military operation to conquer alleged secret underground Nazi facilities in Antarctica and capture the German Vril flying discs, or, Thule mercury-powered spaceship prototypes.
Operation “Highjump”, consisted of three Naval battle groups, which were led by Admiral Richard E. Byrd’s command ship, the ice-breaker, “Northwind,” and consisted of the catapult ship, “Pine Island,” the destroyer, “Brownsen,” the aircraft-carrier, “Phillipines Sea,” the U.S. submarine, “Sennet,” two support vessels, “Yankee” and “Merrick,” and two tankers, “Canisted” and “Capacan,” the destroyer, “Henderson” and a floatplane ship, “Currituck.”

Some 13 ships and 4,700 men, which included an aircraft carrier, a submarine, two destroyers, more than two-dozen aircraft and some 3,500 Marines in full battle gear were sent by the United States to Antarctica on what was officially described as a “training” mission, departing from Norfolk, VA, on December 2, 1946.
Thus, Operation Highjump, began. The expedition was filmed by the Navy and brought to Hollywood to be made into a commercial film called, The Secret Land. It was narrated by Hollywood actor Robert Montgomery, father of Bewitched star, Elizabeth Montgomery, who was, himself, an officer in the Naval Reserve.
It seems incredible that so shortly after a war that had decimated most of Europe and crippled global economies, an expedition to Antarctica was undertaken with so much haste (it took advantage of the first available Antarctic summer after the war), at such cost, and with so much military hardware – unless the operation was absolutely essential to the security of the United States.
Tensions across the globe were mounting as Russia and America edged into a Cold War, possibly a Third World War that the US would have to fight with “tragically few ships and tragically half-trained men.” This made the sending of nearly 5,000 residual Navy personnel to a remote part of the planet where so much danger lurked in the form of icebergs, blizzards and sub-zero temperatures even more of a puzzle. The operation was also launched with incredible speed, “a matter of weeks.” Perhaps it would not be uncharitable to conclude that the Americans had some unfinished business connected with the war in the polar region. Indeed, this was later confirmed by other events and the operation’s leader, Admiral Richard Byrd, himself.

The official instructions issued by the then Chief of Naval Operations, Chester W. Nimitz were: to (a) train personnel and test material in the frigid zones; (b) consolidate and extend American sovereignty over the largest practical area of the Antarctic continent; (c) to determine the feasibility of establishing and maintaining bases in the Antarctic and to investigate possible base sites; (d) to develop techniques for establishing and maintaining air bases on the ice, (with particular attention to the later applicability of such techniques to Greenland) and (e) amplify existing knowledge of hydro graphic, geographic, geological, meteorological and electromagnetic conditions in the area.
Very little information was released to the media about the mission, although most journalists were suspicious of its true purpose given the huge amount of military hardware involved. The US Navy also strongly emphasized that Operation Highjump was going to be a Navy show; Admiral Ramsey’s preliminary orders of 26th August 1946 stated that “the Chief of Naval Operations only will deal with other governmental agencies” and that “no diplomatic negotiations are required. No foreign observers will be accepted.” Not exactly an invitation to scrutiny, even from other arms of the government.
Yet persistent rumors insisted the actual purpose of Highjump was to find, and if occupied, engage the Nazis in their fortress determine the location and purpose of the Nazi saucers or alleged “wunderweapons” and also determine if the Nazis had an underground base or a base that was established on the Moon.
The very idea that the Nazis had technology that advanced sounds outrageous to many people because it just doesn’t make the cut in the history books. It was even more outrageous to think the advanced technology of the Nazis could have found an opening into the hollow Earth, or even allow for the Nazis to slip the binds of Earth and establish colonies on the moon.
The mission of Admiral Byrd was very serious and extensive.
About a dozen of ships in Byrd’s flotilla arrived at three different rendezvous points in the Southern Ocean inside the Antarctic Circle, spread out over more than a month, with the first to arrive dropping anchor on December 30, 1946.
The plan was for the main body of men and equipment, the Central Group, to go to Byrd’s Antarctic “home,” Little America on the Ross Ice Shelf, where they would set up a base camp. There would be two other groups of ships, each group composed of a seaplane tender, a destroyer and a tanker. One group would begin to the east of the central group, the other to the west.
The Central Group consisted of the Mount Olympus, a communications vessel; two supply ships, the Yancey and the Merrick; two icebreakers, the Burton Island and the Northwind; and a submarine, the Sennet.
There was also an East Group and a West Group.
The East Group, under the command of Captain George J. Dufek, would start on the opposite side of the continent from the base camp at Little America. It would be East Group’s task to begin their mission by reconnoitering Dronning Maud Land, the Norwegian name for the area called Neuschwabenland by the Germans. They began to the east of Neuschwabenland and swung around west, photographing all of the former Deutsch Antarctica in the process. The East Group consisted of the seaplane tender Pine Island, the destroyer Brownson and their refueling ship, the Canisteo.
The West Group, under Captain Charles A. Bond, was made up of the Currituck, a seaplane tender, the Henderson, a destroyer, and the Cacapon, a tanker. They in turn began in the center and ended their voyage half-way around the Antarctic continent at Dronning Maud Land, completing the circle.
Captain George Dufek was believed to be the first American to set foot on the South Pole and planted the American flag there.

Now, I will admit there is still no conclusive evidence of a German/Alien base on Antarctica, It is beyond doubt that something highly unusual was happening on, or around, the frozen continent. Again, there is no evidence that Nazis were able to use their advanced saucer technology to establish bases on the moon.
However, there are some interesting things that need to be pointed out that may lead us to speculate about the reality of such bases.
Hundreds of thousands of Germans and a minimum of forty (40) U-boats were missing at the end of the war. Documentation and eyewitness accounts prove that at least a portion of these craft made it as far as South America, in some cases, several months after the end of the war in Europe.
The Germans explored and claimed part of Antarctica on the very eve of the war when the vast majority of their activity was geared towards the rebuilding of the German economy and military infrastructure. This activity began shortly before the recovery of the Bavarian “flying disc”, in 1938, but picked up pace immediately afterward.
There was ongoing ship and submarine activity in the South Atlantic and polar regions throughout and after the war had apparently ended. This activity continued well into the 1950s, and if some accounts are to be believed, continues to this day, with what can only be considered U-Boat sightings, and a very high incidence of Unidentified Flying Object sightings in the South Atlantic and South Polar regions, including the southern portions of South America.
South America has always been a “hotbed” of Unidentified Flying Object activity. Many of the reports coming out of the area are unverified, and unverifiable, however, many have credence.
In 1959, three large newspapers in Chile reported front-page articles about Unidentified Flying Object encounters in which the crew members appeared to be German soldiers. In the early 1960s, there were reports in New York, and New Jersey, of flying saucer ‘aliens’ who spoke German, or English with a German accent.
Nor, can it be neglected to mention that in one of the most spectacular legal cases of the Twentieth Century… the “atomic espionage” trials… Julius and Ethel Rosenberg spoke of “warships of space.” Since they had access to top secret information, and, at that point, no reason to lie, what was it, exactly, that they meant?
The US literally invaded the continent of Antarctica, itself, with considerable naval resources leaving mainland America exposed and vulnerable as the world edged into the Cold War. The task force limped home as if defeated only weeks later, and the local South American press wrote of such a defeat. This coincided with a substantial increase in Unidentified Flying Object activity… generally attributed to the first major “wave” of such activity in modern times, with an inordinate amount of this activity taking place in the Southern Hemisphere, particularly in South America.
Admiral Byrd spoke of objects that could fly from pole to pole at incredible speeds being based on the continent of Antarctica.
The claims that something extremely unusual was taking place around the foreboding reaches of the frozen continent took a major leap forward in the 1960s when the Argentine Navy was charged with the official investigation into strange sightings in the sky.
A 1965 official report prepared by Captain Sanchez Moreno of the Naval Air Station Comandante Espora in Bahia Blanca stated that between 1950 and 1965, personnel of Argentina’s Navy alone made 22 sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects that were not airplanes, satellites, weather balloons or any type of known (aerial) vehicles. These 22 cases served as precedents for intensifying that investigation of the subject by the Navy.
Following a series of sightings at Argentine and Chilean meteorological stations on Deception Island, Antarctica, in June and July 1965, Captain Engineer Omar Pagani disclosed at a press conference that “Unidentified Flying Objects do exist. Their presence in Argentine airspace is proven”. The report went on to state, however, “their nature and origin are unknown and no judgment is made about them.”

More details of these UFO sightings were given in a report in the Brazilian newspaper, O Estado de Sao Paulo, in its 8th July 1965 edition:
“For the first time in history, an official communiqué has been published by a government about the flying saucers. It is a document from the Argentine Navy, based on the statements of a large number of Argentine, Chilean and British sailors stationed in the naval base in Antarctica.”
The communiqué declared that the personnel of Deception Island (left) naval base saw, at nineteen hours forty minutes on 3 July, a flying object of lenticular shape, with a solid appearance and a coloring in which red and green prevailed and, for a few moments, yellow. The machine was flying in a zig-zag fashion, and in a generally western direction, but it changed course several times and changed speed, having an inclination of about forty-five degrees above the horizon.
The craft also remained stationary for about twenty minutes at a height of approximately 5,000 meters, producing no sound. The communiqué states moreover that the prevailing meteorological conditions when the phenomenon was observed can be considered excellent for the region in question and the time of year. The sky was clear and quite a lot of stars were visible. The Secretariat of the Argentine Navy also states in its communiqué that the occurrence was witnessed by scientists of the three naval bases and the facts described by these people agree completely.
Barack Obama recently was in Argentina to rekindle business ties with a country that has been marred with a dark history of CIA black ops, creating death squads during what has been called the Dirty War.
However, it was announced before his visit that rumors are swirling about a secretive Chinese space station built deep in Argentina’s Patagonia region.
In 2012, leaders in Beijing and Buenos Aires inked a deal to build the so-called “Deep Space Station,” and the facility is expected to be completed by the end of 2016.
While Argentina and China have said that “the ground station in the Southern Hemisphere to support the program for moon exploration and other space activities,” there is a concern among some that the Chinese facility may have a more military purpose. During the recent presidential election, the winner, Mauricio Macri, claimed that he would make public the “secret clauses” that have been rumored to have been added to the agreement.
Unlike the other space station in the South American country – an antenna in Argentina’s central-west Mendoza province built by the European Space Agency – the Chinese facility will be operated by the country’s military, political analyst Rosendo Fraga, director of the consulting firm, New Majority.
Officials in China have said that while military personnel would be running it, the facility would be “totally civilian, and it is not operated by military personnel.”
The intended use of the giant antennae at the station is supposed to monitor the moon – as China has ambitions of sending people there – but some speculate that it could serve a dual purpose of watching celestial bodies and also intercepting signals from other nation’s satellites.
Despite the speculation, China has not given out much information to the public about the remote facility and its operations.

There are some conspiracy theories that are saying that the station located in the Patagonia region and another rumored to be in Mendoza have been used to communicate with possible bases on the moon.
Argentina’s Patagonia region seems like an ideal location for a space facility as the area is relatively flat and remote, but can still be accessed by roads. Have secret space stations or communication stations been around since the 1940’s or the 1950’s?
When I lived in Argentina in the 1980’s, I heard from a reliable source that there were many space station bases in the Falkland Islands.
This lends itself to speculation that even after Operation Highjump ended, there were other interested parties that knew of the UFO activity in South America and the possible Nazi space programs in Antarctica.
Furthermore, Ground Zero reported of an e-mail received showing documents that allegedly, the Boeing Aerospace company along with the U.S, government had military plans to build a space station on the moon in 1964 and have it ready by 1969. The proposal was drafted in 1963 and its consultant was none other than Admiral George Dufek, the very same man who with Admiral Byrd was part of Operation Highjump; the mission that allegedly sought after Nazi space technology, underground and possible moon bases in the 1940’s.
In 1961, US President John F. Kennedy pledged that America’s space program would “place a man on the moon before the decade’s close.”

However, it was just a cover in order to hide that the space program had been planned since Project Horizon in the 1950’s and the military had already arrived looking for other possible alien and familiar enemies.
NASA’s growing power, its protection by the Kennedy administration, and the rise of the Right Stuff astronaut as celebrity hid the steady growth of the Military-Industrial Complex that Eisenhower had warned about. Perhaps he wanted to warn that the growth of the military industrial complex was not only confined to earth, but extending to the moon and beyond.

Western Media’s ‘Anti-Russia’ Program is Starting the Crack

APRIL 23, 2016 BY 21WIRE 

21st Century Wire says…

Certainly, Russia has withstood over two years of sustained PR and diplomatic attacks from the US, Britain and Brussels. Every step, every move has been scrutinized, and attacked.

It has been nothing short of relentless – the endless demonization and character assassinations against its president Vladimir Putin – in order to isolate Russia in the eyes of the ‘international community.’

Now the same western media who dutifully worked to undermine ‘Everything Russia’ is now starting to buckle under the pressure of facts and reality…

Thinking the Unthinkable: Russia Has Re-Emerged As a Great Power

Jonathan Adelman
Huff Post

The Western image of Russia and Putin in recent years has been very negative. President Obama has publicly called Vladimir Putin a “schoolboy who slouches in his chair in the back of the room“ and derided his country as a mere “regional power.”

This begs the question: how Russia could again become a major power after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991? How could Putin do this without an agrarian or consumer revolution and with the massive drop in the price of oil? If Putin is a terrible leader, then how can you explain successful interventions in Georgia (2008), Crimea (2014), Ukraine (2014-2016) and Syria (2015-2016)?

Putin, however, is actually a very shrewd leader with a brilliant Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, who relies on a capable Foreign Ministry. Putin has rebuilt Russia’s military capability byspending $49B a year on security. Russia retains 1,790 strategic nuclear weapons. With over 140 million people and 13 million college graduates, Russia has nearly a million first-class scientists, engineers and technicians, most of whom work for the military.

Many former great powers are now no longer major powers. Japan, which smashed the Russian army in the 1904 Sino-Japanese War, occupied much of China from 1937-1945 and has a four trillion dollar economy is no longer a great power. After its defeat in World War II capped by the American dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and American post-war occupation, Japan has sworn off further intervention in the world and refused to acquire nuclear weapons…

Europe, which once teemed with great powers such as Germany, France, England and Austro-Hungary, now has gone in another direction. Germany soundly beat the Russians in every World War I battle and came close to doing the same in 1941 and 1942. Today with weak power projection the three main powers have less than 1,000 mainline battle tanks and few aircraft carriers. Weak economic growth (1.5%/year), disputes among its 28 members, migration from the Middle East, serious problems with weaker members such as Greece, promote domestic over international issues.

China, with its ten trillion dollar GDP, over two trillion dollars of exports, over three trillion dollars in its reserve fund, 1.35 billion people and 3.7 million square miles of territory, is a future great power. It has made huge economic progress since Deng Xiaopong launched the Four Modernizations in 1978.

Yet, its remaining problems are staggering: enormous air pollution, 675 million peasants, huge governmental corruption, authoritarian one party dictatorship, lack of rule of law, rapidly aging population, hundreds of thousands of children raising themselves and only $7,500 GDP/capita. Its military, while boosted by 150 billion dollars of spending, still needs another decade to become a truly modern force.

India has 20 percent illiteracy, 300 million people without electricity and a $1,300 GDP/capita that is less than three percent of the United States. It faces Pakistan soon with 200 atomic bombs. India, with over a billion people, will be a major power but not for several decades.

Then there is the United States, the sole global superpower since victory in the Cold War and one of two superpowers in the world since 1945. Its 18 trillion dollar economy, 17 of the world’s top 20 universities, world leadership in high technology, over 550 billion dollars in military spending and 330 million people give it serious advantages over Russia. But, with the rise of popular neo-isolationist Presidential candidates, the slowest economic recovery since the Great Depression, decline in its manufacturing sector, administration talk of reducing the size of the American military to the 1940 level, and the Obama semi-withdrawal from the Middle East, the door that had been shut to Russia has been open.

The unthinkable has become a reality. Russia, seemingly finished after its defeat in the Cold War, now is emerging as a prospective great power challenging the West. Russia has done the unthinkable—become a great power filling the void left by other former great powers that have now shrunk in size, power and influence.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-adelman/thinking-the-unthinkable-_2_b_9720304.html

How The US Government Legally Stole Millions From Kim Dotcom

from the the-fun-of-asset-forfeiture dept

About a month ago we covered the basics of the lawsuit by which the US government was seeking to keep pretty much all of Kim Dotcom's assets, despite the fact that Dotcom himself hasn't been tried -- and, in fact, it hasn't even been determined if he can be extradited to the United States (a country he's never visited). This week, that case took another step, with the judge, Liam O'Grady, who had already ruled that Kim Dotcom could be considered a "fugitive," more or less finalizing the theft of Dotcom's assets by declaring a default judgment in favor of the US. This isn't the end of the process (not by a longshot), but it highlights just how the US government can use some ridiculous procedures to steal millions in assets from someone who hasn't been shown to be guilty of anything.

As we discussed last time, the story of the raid on Kim Dotcom's rented home in New Zealand, the seizure of all of his cars, money, bank accounts, computers, servers, etc. is well known. That was part of a case for which Kim Dotcom was indicted (under what appears to be questionable legal reasoning -- but that's a separate issue). As has been widely reported, that case is still on hold while Dotcom fights extradition from New Zealand. The extradition fight will finally go to a New Zealand court later this summer. Once that's done, if Dotcom loses, he'll be sent to the US, where he'll face a criminal trial based on the indictment.

But this is actually separate from all of that. You see, when the US government grabbed or froze all of Dotcom's assets, they did so using an asset seizure procedure. Asset seizure is allowed in such cases, but the government then has to give that property back. What the government really wanted to do is keep all of Dotcom's tens of millions of dollars worth of assets -- and in order to do that it has to go through a separate process, known as civil asset forfeiture. It's technically a civil (not criminal) case, but (and here's the part that people find most confusing), it's not actually filed against Kim Dotcom at all, but rather against his stuff that the government already seized. Yes, it's technically an entirely separate lawsuit, that was only filed last summer (two and a half years after the government seized all of his stuff and shut down his company), entitled United States Of America v. All Assets Listed In Attachment A, And All Interest, Benefits, And Assets Traceable Thereto. And, as we noted last time, Attachment A is basically all of Kim Dotcom's stuff.

This whole process is known as an "in rem" proceeding -- meaning a lawsuit "against a thing" rather than against a person. And the "case" basically says all this stuff should be "forfeited" to the US government because it's the proceeds of some criminal activity. You would think that in order for such civil asset forfeiture to go forward, you'd then have to show something like a criminal conviction proving that the assets in question were, in fact, tied to criminal activity. You'd be wrong -- as is clear from what happened in this very case. Once the Justice Department effectively filed a lawsuit against "all of Kim Dotcom's money and stuff," Dotcom did what you're supposed to do in that situation and filed a challenge to such a ridiculous situation. And here the DOJ used the fact that Dotcom was fighting extradition to argue that he was a "fugitive." Judge O'Grady agreed with that last month, and that resulted in the decision earlier this week to then declare a "default judgment" in favor of the DOJ, and giving the US government all of Kim Dotcom's stuff.

A "default judgment?" As you know if you regularly read Techdirt, that's usually what happens when a defendant simply ignores a court case filed against him. As the court notes in this ruling, for that to happen in a civil asset forfeiture case, it means no one tried to block the claim:

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 55 permits the court to grant a motion for default judgment when the well-pled allegations of the complaint establish plaintiff's entitlement to relief, and where a defendant has failed to plead or defend as provided by the rules.... In the civil forfeiture context, default judgment is permitted where no potential claimant has filed a response to the complaint...

A defendant in default, and a claimant who fails to assert a claim in rem, is deemed to have admitted all of the plaintiff's well-pled allegations of fact, which then form the basis for the judgment in the plaintiff's favor.

But, wait, you say: Kim Dotcom did file a complaint about the asset forfeiture, so how could a default judgment happen here? That's where the whole "fugitive" bit comes in. Because Dotcom won't come to the US, he's been deemed a fugitive, and thus the Judge simply hands over all of his stuff to the US government. And thus, without any sort of criminal conviction at all, the US gets to steal millions of dollars from Dotcom.

If that sounds insane, you're absolutely right. And, again, it is entirely possible that when all of this is over, Kim Dotcom will be found guilty of "criminal conspiracy." If that's the case, then at that point it's reasonable to discuss whether the government should get to keep all of his stuff. But it seems an absolute travesty of concepts like due process for the government to be able to take all of his money and stuff based on purely procedural reasons having to do with a separate criminal case that hasn't even been tried yet.

The process isn't over yet. Dotcom can still appeal this ruling, though the real problem is with the civil asset forfeiture process, rather than how it was applied in this particular case. Dotcom also has other options for the assets that are in New Zealand and Hong Kong, in using the local courts in those places to try to block the transfer of those assets to the US government. Not knowing enough about the law in either place, it's difficult to say what the chances of success of such a strategy would be. Either way, this seems like a classic case demonstrating how the civil asset forfeiture process appears to be little more than legalized theft by the US government.https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150326/18041530458/how-us-government-legally-stole-millions-kim-dotcom.shtml