Tuesday, September 24, 2013
The Banksters:
Egberto Willies: Watch this ex-congressman leave everyone speechless on Meet The Press
"If anyone doubts the complicity between the mainstream media and the titans of finance, one simply needed to watch Meet The Press with David Gregory yesterday. The seven plus minute segment started with David Gregory stating the obvious: An economy five years ago that was on the brink of collapse is now a high flying economy for the 1 percent and on the brink of collapse for the working middle class. His guests were then-Secretary of Treasury and past CEO of Goldman Sachs Henry Paulson, CNBC mouthpiece and apologist Maria Bartiromo, and ex-Congressman Barney Frank. Most of the segment was the standard blabber of nonsensical statements on the economy... ...The zinger of the segment however came from Barney Frank’s comment about the bankers. He said:
Global Surveillance:
Der Spiegel: 'Follow the Money': NSA Spies on International Payments
"The United States' NSA intelligence agency is interested in international payments processed by companies including Visa, SPIEGEL has learned. It has even set up its own financial database to track money flows through a 'tailored access operations' division..."
Energy vs The Environment:
Chris Tackett: Oil pipeline regulation is broken, admits US top oil pipeline regulator
"In a shocking exclusive report, Marcus Stern and Sebastian Jones at InsideClimate News write that the top official of the agency that regulates oil and gas pipelines recently admitted that he's essentially powerless as a regulator..."
Chris Tackett: Experts say dilbit could have caused Mayflower, Arkansas oil spill
"According to experts in the failure of oil and gas pipelines, there are a handful of factors that can contribute to a pipeline rupture, like the one on Exxon Mobil's Pegasus pipeline that spilled toxic diluted bitumen or dilbit from the Canadian tar sands into a Mayflower, Arkansas lake and subdivision. Those factors include pressure swings within the pipe, reversing the direction of the flow of oil, the quality of the original pipe construction and a build-up of hydrogen atoms inside tiny cracks in the pipe. Elizabeth Douglass reports at The Arkansas Times that all of these factors were in play in the Pegasus pipeline rupture..."
Cancer Research:
Greta McClain: Compound found in marijuana shown to 'turn off' cancer
"Researchers at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco found that a marijuana compound known as cannabidiol can stop metastasis in many types of aggressive cancers..."
Egberto Willies: Watch this ex-congressman leave everyone speechless on Meet The Press
"If anyone doubts the complicity between the mainstream media and the titans of finance, one simply needed to watch Meet The Press with David Gregory yesterday. The seven plus minute segment started with David Gregory stating the obvious: An economy five years ago that was on the brink of collapse is now a high flying economy for the 1 percent and on the brink of collapse for the working middle class. His guests were then-Secretary of Treasury and past CEO of Goldman Sachs Henry Paulson, CNBC mouthpiece and apologist Maria Bartiromo, and ex-Congressman Barney Frank. Most of the segment was the standard blabber of nonsensical statements on the economy... ...The zinger of the segment however came from Barney Frank’s comment about the bankers. He said:
I do want to add one thing though to your question about those poor beleaguered bankers who have been forced to do so much to keep from not being able to pay their debts, that they can’t lend money. If they really are running businesses that are so stressed that they can’t do their basic work, why are they paying themselves so much money?That statement left Bartiromo, Paulson and Gregory temporarily speechless with facial expressions that said it all. They were trapped and unable to speak to acknowledge the fact laid out by Frank. Their enslavement to the plutocracy was evident. Gregory had a nervous laugh as Bartiromo again deflected. This is what America has become. The mainstream media and our politicians are nothing but wards of the plutocracy."
Global Surveillance:
Der Spiegel: 'Follow the Money': NSA Spies on International Payments
"The United States' NSA intelligence agency is interested in international payments processed by companies including Visa, SPIEGEL has learned. It has even set up its own financial database to track money flows through a 'tailored access operations' division..."
Energy vs The Environment:
Chris Tackett: Oil pipeline regulation is broken, admits US top oil pipeline regulator
"In a shocking exclusive report, Marcus Stern and Sebastian Jones at InsideClimate News write that the top official of the agency that regulates oil and gas pipelines recently admitted that he's essentially powerless as a regulator..."
Chris Tackett: Experts say dilbit could have caused Mayflower, Arkansas oil spill
"According to experts in the failure of oil and gas pipelines, there are a handful of factors that can contribute to a pipeline rupture, like the one on Exxon Mobil's Pegasus pipeline that spilled toxic diluted bitumen or dilbit from the Canadian tar sands into a Mayflower, Arkansas lake and subdivision. Those factors include pressure swings within the pipe, reversing the direction of the flow of oil, the quality of the original pipe construction and a build-up of hydrogen atoms inside tiny cracks in the pipe. Elizabeth Douglass reports at The Arkansas Times that all of these factors were in play in the Pegasus pipeline rupture..."
Cancer Research:
Greta McClain: Compound found in marijuana shown to 'turn off' cancer
"Researchers at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco found that a marijuana compound known as cannabidiol can stop metastasis in many types of aggressive cancers..."
Monday, September 23, 2013
The Banksters:
Ellen Brown: Not Too Big to Jail: Eliot Spitzer Is Wall Street’s Worst Nightmare
"Before Eliot Spitzer’s infamous resignation as governor of New York in March 2008, he was one of our fiercest champions against Wall Street corruption, in a state that had some of the toughest legislation for controlling the banks. It may not be a coincidence that the revelation of his indiscretions with a high-priced call girl came less than a month after he published a bold editorial in the Washington Post titled “Predatory Lenders’ Partner in Crime: How the Bush Administration Stopped the States from Stepping in to Help Consumers.” The editorial exposed the collusion between the Treasury, the Federal Reserve and Wall Street in deregulating the banks in the guise of regulating them, by taking regulatory power away from the states. It was an issue of the federal government versus the states, with the Feds representing the banks and the states representing consumers. Five years later, Spitzer has set out to take some of that local regulatory power back, in his run for New York City comptroller. Mounting the attack against him, however, are not just Wall Street banks but women’s groups opposed to this apparent endorsement of the exploitation of women. On August 17th, the New York Post endorsed Spitzer’s opponent and ran a scathing cover story attempting to embarrass Spitzer based on the single issue of his personal life..."
Domestic State:
Jane Mayer: The Secret Sharer
This 2011 story covers the transformation of the NSAs surveillance programs after 9/11.
Ellen Brown: Not Too Big to Jail: Eliot Spitzer Is Wall Street’s Worst Nightmare
"Before Eliot Spitzer’s infamous resignation as governor of New York in March 2008, he was one of our fiercest champions against Wall Street corruption, in a state that had some of the toughest legislation for controlling the banks. It may not be a coincidence that the revelation of his indiscretions with a high-priced call girl came less than a month after he published a bold editorial in the Washington Post titled “Predatory Lenders’ Partner in Crime: How the Bush Administration Stopped the States from Stepping in to Help Consumers.” The editorial exposed the collusion between the Treasury, the Federal Reserve and Wall Street in deregulating the banks in the guise of regulating them, by taking regulatory power away from the states. It was an issue of the federal government versus the states, with the Feds representing the banks and the states representing consumers. Five years later, Spitzer has set out to take some of that local regulatory power back, in his run for New York City comptroller. Mounting the attack against him, however, are not just Wall Street banks but women’s groups opposed to this apparent endorsement of the exploitation of women. On August 17th, the New York Post endorsed Spitzer’s opponent and ran a scathing cover story attempting to embarrass Spitzer based on the single issue of his personal life..."
Domestic State:
Jane Mayer: The Secret Sharer
This 2011 story covers the transformation of the NSAs surveillance programs after 9/11.
Monday, September 16, 2013
Boulder Flood
Images of the Boulder Flood from the Daily Camera.
Just days ago, we had stories like this in the local paper, lamenting the amount of precipitation in Boulder.
And then we get a weather event that breaks all records (for any single 24-hour period, any three-day period, and single month) since 1897.
Thursday evening's conditions were a sight to behold. I stood, in the n-th downpour of the day, at a spot on our property where I could look right to see Bear Creek, purpose-built (ca. 1997) as flood control channel & multi-use path, SUPER full (2 feet of water on the bike path, so many, many times the usual flow), and look left to see our street, Inca Parkway, FULL of water (5 in. covering the crown of the road, so over sidewalks and almost in driveways), much of it draining from Baseline Road. A truly (I normally avoid this overused word) awesome amount of water. When the water has somewhere erosion-proof to go, as in our neighborhood, things are somewhat less severe. Some neighbors and people elsewhere in town have water & mud, sometimes measured in feet, in their basements. Left Hand Canyon & Jamestown are a wreck, as are Coal Creek Canyon, Estes Park & Lyons. The plains communities downstream have been getting worse for days.
Images of the Boulder Flood from the Daily Camera.
Just days ago, we had stories like this in the local paper, lamenting the amount of precipitation in Boulder.
And then we get a weather event that breaks all records (for any single 24-hour period, any three-day period, and single month) since 1897.
Thursday evening's conditions were a sight to behold. I stood, in the n-th downpour of the day, at a spot on our property where I could look right to see Bear Creek, purpose-built (ca. 1997) as flood control channel & multi-use path, SUPER full (2 feet of water on the bike path, so many, many times the usual flow), and look left to see our street, Inca Parkway, FULL of water (5 in. covering the crown of the road, so over sidewalks and almost in driveways), much of it draining from Baseline Road. A truly (I normally avoid this overused word) awesome amount of water. When the water has somewhere erosion-proof to go, as in our neighborhood, things are somewhat less severe. Some neighbors and people elsewhere in town have water & mud, sometimes measured in feet, in their basements. Left Hand Canyon & Jamestown are a wreck, as are Coal Creek Canyon, Estes Park & Lyons. The plains communities downstream have been getting worse for days.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
The Environment & Human Health:
Kate Sheppard: EPA Quietly Withdraws Two Proposed Chemical Safety Rules
"The Environmental Protection Agency this week quietly withdrew two draft rules dealing with the regulation of chemicals. The potential rules were in limbo at the Office of Management for several years. One of the rules was a proposal to add Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical included in many water bottles and other plastic products that has been linked to a number of potential health concerns, to the list of 'chemicals of concern' that would be subject to more scrutiny. The EPA also proposed listing eight different types of phthalates, another group of chemicals often used in plastic products, and several types of flame retardants known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs). The EPA first submitted the proposal to OMB in May 2010, stating that the agency was 'concerned that the hazards of these substances and the magnitude of human and/or environmental exposure indicates that they may present an unreasonable risk to human health and/or the environment.' The Toxic Substances Control Act allows the EPA to flag chemicals of concern for further analysis. That rule had been at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), the division of OMB that is supposed to review agency rules, for more than three years. OIRA is supposed to take a maximum of 90 days to review agency rules. A second rule that EPA withdrew would have forced companies to disclose to the public the chemicals used in products and the health and safety studies the companies have conducted on those chemicals -- much of which companies have been allowed to protect as 'confidential business information.' That rule had been at OMB since 2011..."
Domestic Surveillance:
Arturo Garcia: Worse than PRISM: the NSA’s war against Internet encryption
"The National Security Agency (NSA) has compromised encryption software needed to ensure the privacy of Americans’ day-to-day Internet activity, in part through a 'breakthrough' in 2010 allowing for the mining of data through Internet cable taps, as well as secret backdoor access into commercial encryption programs, according to joint reports by The Guardian, ProPublica and the New York Times on Thursday. The reports, based on thousands of documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, prompted immediate criticism from privacy advocate groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). 'Backdoors make all of us less safe and make US companies less secure, which come at a great expense of the reliability of American companies — companies which have been at the forefront of the tech sector,' EFF policy analyst Mark M. Jaycox told The Raw Story via email on Thursday. 'When programs are less safe, customers will leave.' According to the reports, the program was highlighted in a 2010 memo by the NSA’s British counterpart, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), praising its 'aggressive, multipronged effort' since 2000, when the NSA regrouped after losing the fight to openly install 'clipper chips' in regular computers. 'Cryptanalytic capabilities are now coming online,' the GCHQ memo stated. 'Vast amounts of encrypted Internet data which have up till now been discarded are now exploitable.' The documents leaked by Snowden also revealed that the NSA has devoted around $250 million per year to a program designed to 'covertly influence' tech companies’ products, more than 20 times the budget alloted for the PRISM program that was the subject of numerous reports by the Guardian earlier in 2013."
David Kravets & Robert McMillan: NSA Revelations Cast Doubt on the Entire Tech Industry
"Six years ago, two Microsoft cryptography researchers discovered some weirdness in an obscure cryptography standard authored by the National Security Agency. There was a bug in a government-standard random number generator that could be used to encrypt data. The researchers, Dan Shumow and Niels Ferguson, found that the number generator appeared to have been built with a backdoor — it came with a secret numeric key that could allow a third party to decrypt code that it helped generate. According to Thursday’s reports by the ProPublica, the Guardian, and The New York Times, classified documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden appear to confirm what everyone suspected: that the backdoor was engineered by the NSA. Worse still, a top-secret NSA document published with the reports says that the NSA has worked with industry partners to 'covertly influence' technology products. That sounds bad, but so far, there’s not much hard evidence about what exactly has been compromised. No company is named in the new allegations. The details of the reported modifications are murky. So while much of the internet’s security systems appear to be broken, it’s unclear where the problems lie. The result is that the trustworthiness of the systems we used to communicate on the internet is in doubt. 'I think all companies have a little bit of taint after this,' says Christopher Soghoian, a technologist with the American Civil Liberties Union. The latest documents show that the NSA has vast crypto-cracking resources, a database of secretly held encryption keys used to decrypt private communications, and an ability to crack cryptography in certain VPN encryption chips. Its goal: to crack in a widespread way the internet’s security tools and protocols..."
Scott Shane & Nicole Perlroth: Legislation Seeks to Bar N.S.A. Tactic in Encryption
"After disclosures about the National Security Agency’s stealth campaign to counter Internet privacy protections, a congressman has proposed legislation that would prohibit the agency from installing 'back doors' into encryption, the electronic scrambling that protects e-mail, online transactions and other communications. Representative Rush D. Holt, a New Jersey Democrat who is also a physicist, said Friday that he believed the N.S.A. was overreaching and could hurt American interests, including the reputations of American companies whose products the agency may have altered or influenced. 'We pay them to spy,' Mr. Holt said. 'But if in the process they degrade the security of the encryption we all use, it’s a net national disservice.' Mr. Holt, whose Surveillance State Repeal Act would eliminate much of the escalation in the government’s spying powers undertaken after the 2001 terrorist attacks, was responding to news reports about N.S.A. documents showing that the agency has spent billions of dollars over the last decade in an effort to defeat or bypass encryption... ...But if intelligence officials felt a sense of betrayal by the disclosures, Internet security experts felt a similar letdown — at the N.S.A. actions. 'There’s widespread disappointment,' said Dan Kaminsky, a prominent security researcher. 'This has been the stuff of wild-eyed accusations for years. A lot of people are heartbroken to find out it’s not just wild-eyed accusations.' Sascha Meinrath, the director of the Open Technology Institute, a research group in Washington, said the reports were 'a startling indication that the U.S. has been a remarkably irresponsible steward of the Internet,' which he said the N.S.A. was trying to turn into 'a massive platform for detailed, intrusive and unrestrained surveillance.' Companies like Google and Facebook have been moving to new systems that, in principle, would make government eavesdropping more difficult. Google is in the process of encrypting all data that travels via fiber-optic lines between its data centers. The company speeded up the process in June after the initial N.S.A. disclosures, according to two people who were briefed on Google’s plans but were not authorized to speak publicly about them. The acceleration of the process was first reported Friday by The Washington Post..."
Kate Sheppard: EPA Quietly Withdraws Two Proposed Chemical Safety Rules
"The Environmental Protection Agency this week quietly withdrew two draft rules dealing with the regulation of chemicals. The potential rules were in limbo at the Office of Management for several years. One of the rules was a proposal to add Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical included in many water bottles and other plastic products that has been linked to a number of potential health concerns, to the list of 'chemicals of concern' that would be subject to more scrutiny. The EPA also proposed listing eight different types of phthalates, another group of chemicals often used in plastic products, and several types of flame retardants known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs). The EPA first submitted the proposal to OMB in May 2010, stating that the agency was 'concerned that the hazards of these substances and the magnitude of human and/or environmental exposure indicates that they may present an unreasonable risk to human health and/or the environment.' The Toxic Substances Control Act allows the EPA to flag chemicals of concern for further analysis. That rule had been at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), the division of OMB that is supposed to review agency rules, for more than three years. OIRA is supposed to take a maximum of 90 days to review agency rules. A second rule that EPA withdrew would have forced companies to disclose to the public the chemicals used in products and the health and safety studies the companies have conducted on those chemicals -- much of which companies have been allowed to protect as 'confidential business information.' That rule had been at OMB since 2011..."
Domestic Surveillance:
Arturo Garcia: Worse than PRISM: the NSA’s war against Internet encryption
"The National Security Agency (NSA) has compromised encryption software needed to ensure the privacy of Americans’ day-to-day Internet activity, in part through a 'breakthrough' in 2010 allowing for the mining of data through Internet cable taps, as well as secret backdoor access into commercial encryption programs, according to joint reports by The Guardian, ProPublica and the New York Times on Thursday. The reports, based on thousands of documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, prompted immediate criticism from privacy advocate groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). 'Backdoors make all of us less safe and make US companies less secure, which come at a great expense of the reliability of American companies — companies which have been at the forefront of the tech sector,' EFF policy analyst Mark M. Jaycox told The Raw Story via email on Thursday. 'When programs are less safe, customers will leave.' According to the reports, the program was highlighted in a 2010 memo by the NSA’s British counterpart, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), praising its 'aggressive, multipronged effort' since 2000, when the NSA regrouped after losing the fight to openly install 'clipper chips' in regular computers. 'Cryptanalytic capabilities are now coming online,' the GCHQ memo stated. 'Vast amounts of encrypted Internet data which have up till now been discarded are now exploitable.' The documents leaked by Snowden also revealed that the NSA has devoted around $250 million per year to a program designed to 'covertly influence' tech companies’ products, more than 20 times the budget alloted for the PRISM program that was the subject of numerous reports by the Guardian earlier in 2013."
David Kravets & Robert McMillan: NSA Revelations Cast Doubt on the Entire Tech Industry
"Six years ago, two Microsoft cryptography researchers discovered some weirdness in an obscure cryptography standard authored by the National Security Agency. There was a bug in a government-standard random number generator that could be used to encrypt data. The researchers, Dan Shumow and Niels Ferguson, found that the number generator appeared to have been built with a backdoor — it came with a secret numeric key that could allow a third party to decrypt code that it helped generate. According to Thursday’s reports by the ProPublica, the Guardian, and The New York Times, classified documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden appear to confirm what everyone suspected: that the backdoor was engineered by the NSA. Worse still, a top-secret NSA document published with the reports says that the NSA has worked with industry partners to 'covertly influence' technology products. That sounds bad, but so far, there’s not much hard evidence about what exactly has been compromised. No company is named in the new allegations. The details of the reported modifications are murky. So while much of the internet’s security systems appear to be broken, it’s unclear where the problems lie. The result is that the trustworthiness of the systems we used to communicate on the internet is in doubt. 'I think all companies have a little bit of taint after this,' says Christopher Soghoian, a technologist with the American Civil Liberties Union. The latest documents show that the NSA has vast crypto-cracking resources, a database of secretly held encryption keys used to decrypt private communications, and an ability to crack cryptography in certain VPN encryption chips. Its goal: to crack in a widespread way the internet’s security tools and protocols..."
Scott Shane & Nicole Perlroth: Legislation Seeks to Bar N.S.A. Tactic in Encryption
"After disclosures about the National Security Agency’s stealth campaign to counter Internet privacy protections, a congressman has proposed legislation that would prohibit the agency from installing 'back doors' into encryption, the electronic scrambling that protects e-mail, online transactions and other communications. Representative Rush D. Holt, a New Jersey Democrat who is also a physicist, said Friday that he believed the N.S.A. was overreaching and could hurt American interests, including the reputations of American companies whose products the agency may have altered or influenced. 'We pay them to spy,' Mr. Holt said. 'But if in the process they degrade the security of the encryption we all use, it’s a net national disservice.' Mr. Holt, whose Surveillance State Repeal Act would eliminate much of the escalation in the government’s spying powers undertaken after the 2001 terrorist attacks, was responding to news reports about N.S.A. documents showing that the agency has spent billions of dollars over the last decade in an effort to defeat or bypass encryption... ...But if intelligence officials felt a sense of betrayal by the disclosures, Internet security experts felt a similar letdown — at the N.S.A. actions. 'There’s widespread disappointment,' said Dan Kaminsky, a prominent security researcher. 'This has been the stuff of wild-eyed accusations for years. A lot of people are heartbroken to find out it’s not just wild-eyed accusations.' Sascha Meinrath, the director of the Open Technology Institute, a research group in Washington, said the reports were 'a startling indication that the U.S. has been a remarkably irresponsible steward of the Internet,' which he said the N.S.A. was trying to turn into 'a massive platform for detailed, intrusive and unrestrained surveillance.' Companies like Google and Facebook have been moving to new systems that, in principle, would make government eavesdropping more difficult. Google is in the process of encrypting all data that travels via fiber-optic lines between its data centers. The company speeded up the process in June after the initial N.S.A. disclosures, according to two people who were briefed on Google’s plans but were not authorized to speak publicly about them. The acceleration of the process was first reported Friday by The Washington Post..."
Monday, September 02, 2013
Nukes:
BBC News: Fukushima radiation levels '18 times higher' than thought
"Radiation levels around Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant are 18 times higher than previously thought, Japanese authorities have warned. Last week the plant's operator reported radioactive water had leaked from a storage tank into the ground. It now says readings taken near the leaking tank on Saturday showed radiation was high enough to prove lethal within four hours of exposure. The plant was crippled by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) had originally said the radiation emitted by the leaking water was around 100 millisieverts an hour. However, the company said the equipment used to make that recording could only read measurements of up to 100 millisieverts. The new recording, using a more sensitive device, showed a level of 1,800 millisieverts an hour. The new reading will have direct implications for radiation doses received by workers who spent several days trying to stop the leak last week, the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports from Tokyo...."
Money & Politics:
Our government, less and less, of, by, and for the People...
Michael Winship, Moyers & Co.: In Washington ‘The game becomes more important than those for whom government should exist to help’ "...the biggest difference between then and now, as the great Washington journalist Bob Kaiser titled a book not too long ago, is that there’s “So Damn Much Money,” with lobbyists spending almost three times what they did a dozen years ago and an ever-increasing number of ex-members of Congress, staffers and regulators running full tilt through the revolving door and joining the ranks of the extravagantly paid. 'People talk about the size of the federal government,' my brother noted, 'and yet that hasn’t changed enormously. Instead, it’s the emergence of all the ancillaries to government — law firms, lobbyists, communications companies, government service providers — that have flooded the city with people and money.' What’s more, there’s 'the explosion of the permanent military-industrial complex, which Eisenhower warned about and the Cold War made real. The post 9/11 world has just mushroomed this corporate impact, aided and abetted by the penchant for outsourcing that has essentially created contractor-led defense and security establishments that parallel/shadow (and profit from) their government counterparts,'..."
Privacy:
NBC News: Your phone is blabbing your location to anyone who will listen
"Everywhere you go, your phone is sending out signals that can be assembled to form a picture of your movements. You can't turn them off, and companies have begun to pick them up, often without any indication that they're doing so. As this trend develops, smartphones could spell the end of real-world privacy..."
BBC News: Fukushima radiation levels '18 times higher' than thought
"Radiation levels around Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant are 18 times higher than previously thought, Japanese authorities have warned. Last week the plant's operator reported radioactive water had leaked from a storage tank into the ground. It now says readings taken near the leaking tank on Saturday showed radiation was high enough to prove lethal within four hours of exposure. The plant was crippled by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) had originally said the radiation emitted by the leaking water was around 100 millisieverts an hour. However, the company said the equipment used to make that recording could only read measurements of up to 100 millisieverts. The new recording, using a more sensitive device, showed a level of 1,800 millisieverts an hour. The new reading will have direct implications for radiation doses received by workers who spent several days trying to stop the leak last week, the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports from Tokyo...."
Money & Politics:
Our government, less and less, of, by, and for the People...
Michael Winship, Moyers & Co.: In Washington ‘The game becomes more important than those for whom government should exist to help’ "...the biggest difference between then and now, as the great Washington journalist Bob Kaiser titled a book not too long ago, is that there’s “So Damn Much Money,” with lobbyists spending almost three times what they did a dozen years ago and an ever-increasing number of ex-members of Congress, staffers and regulators running full tilt through the revolving door and joining the ranks of the extravagantly paid. 'People talk about the size of the federal government,' my brother noted, 'and yet that hasn’t changed enormously. Instead, it’s the emergence of all the ancillaries to government — law firms, lobbyists, communications companies, government service providers — that have flooded the city with people and money.' What’s more, there’s 'the explosion of the permanent military-industrial complex, which Eisenhower warned about and the Cold War made real. The post 9/11 world has just mushroomed this corporate impact, aided and abetted by the penchant for outsourcing that has essentially created contractor-led defense and security establishments that parallel/shadow (and profit from) their government counterparts,'..."
Privacy:
NBC News: Your phone is blabbing your location to anyone who will listen
"Everywhere you go, your phone is sending out signals that can be assembled to form a picture of your movements. You can't turn them off, and companies have begun to pick them up, often without any indication that they're doing so. As this trend develops, smartphones could spell the end of real-world privacy..."
