Earth is fighting to stay alive. Mass dieoffs, triggered by anthropogenic assault and fallout of planetary defense systems offsetting the impact, could begin anytime!
Emergency Bulletins are now available via FIRE-EARTH PULSARS.
-------------------------------
We do NOT use Twitter or Facebook accounts. Our user names including "FEWW" have been hijacked by trolls.
-------------------------------
WARNING: WordPress Digitally Tracking Visitors!
Injury Claims Against Google: Fire-Earth posts important news & unique analysis that could help save you from harm, but Google [Alphabet Inc] filters the blog to protect their vast business interest. If you incur any injury or loss due to the denial of information, you may sue the Internet Mafia for damages.
STOP CENSORING THE REAL NEWS
WordPress is HACKING this blog!
WordPress continues to hack FIRE-EARTH & affiliated blogs at the behest of its corporate clients.
Blog Moderators condemn in the strongest terms the blatant removal and manipulation of content.
Starting January 29, 2013, Google & WordPress have restricted access to FIRE-EARTH reducing blog traffic by up to 95 percent, enabling their affiliated sites and commercial partners to hijack (and twist) the news, analysis and core ideas presented here.
Blocking information, hacking websites and twisting the facts concerning harm inflicted to Earth by humans are major crimes against nature, punishable by drought, famine, disease...
Caution
Technical information and scientific data from the US Government agencies (NASA, EPA…) are subject to variation due to political expediency.
This caution also extends to the UN organizations (e.g., FAO, WHO…).
As of August 2011, FIRE-EARTH will no longer reprint photos from NASA, due to the agency's wanton crimes against nature.
May 2023
M
T
W
T
F
S
S
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
ORIGINAL CONTENT POSTED ON THIS BLOG ARE COPYRIGHTS OF THE BLOG AUTHORS.
Content MAY BE REPRODUCED FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES BY PRIOR PERMISSION ONLY.
REPRINTING FOR COMMERCIAL PURPOSES OR POSTING ON BLOGS THAT CARRY COMMERCIAL ADS IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
YOU may NOT copy, re-blog or otherwise reproduce any part of this blog on Facebook or Twitter.
WikiLeaks issues $10,000 reward for info related to reporter who exposed NSA whistleblower
Low-level intelligence contractor, Reality Winner, may have risked prison for leaking allegedly “top-secret,” but clearly planted, no proof, no data intelligence; however, that’s hardly the issue.
“WikiLeaks issues a US$10,000 reward for information leading to the public exposure & termination of this ‘reporter,'” WikiLeaks announced on Twitter.
WikiLeaks issues a US$10,000 reward for information leading to the public exposure & termination of this 'reporter': https://t.co/W9wijCk5d3
Finally, more questions are being raised about the real identity of INTERCEPT/ First Look Media and their CIA-MI6-Guardian-style double-psychology games.
Search engines’ license to censor Internet, protecting vast commercial interests and political influence, makes NSA snooping look like Candy Crush
“The First Amendment protects Baidu’s right to advocate for systems of government other than democracy [in China or the U.S.] just as surely as it protects plaintiffs’ rights to advocate for democracy.”
U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman sitting in Manhattan (!) has dismissed a lawsuit against Baidu, the Chinese Internet Goliath, which the plaintiff, a group of pro-democracy activists, argued suppresses political speech on China’s most widely used search engine.
The plaintiff, eight New York writers and video producers, had argued that Baidu search engine algorithms, created at the behest of Chinese government, blocks users in the United States from viewing articles, videos and other information critical of China’s suppression of democracy.
What the judge conveniently ignores in his judgment is the monopoly power of a major search engine over the flow of information.
Add this license for Internet censorship to Google’s near monopoly over the flow of information in the U.S. and much of the world, and multiply the result by their efforts to protect their vast commercial interests and political influence …
Google and a handful of other Internet Goliaths bend the truth like black holes do light.
[Baidu is the fifth-most trafficked site in the world with more than 500 million regular users in China and a growing following in the US, topped only by Yahoo, Google’s YouTube, Facebook and Google, according to an Internet traffic monitor. Editor.]
“And that’s something the public ought to know about”
“The interpretation of the Constitution had been changed in secret from ‘No unreasonable searches and seizures’ to, ‘Hey, any seizure is fine; just don’t search it,” said Edward Snowden, former National Security Agency contractor. “And that’s something the public ought to know about.”
So far we’ve been listening patiently to Mr Snowden, but some of the things he’s now saying make little or no sense.
The Government has been violating the Constitution on a massive scale long before Mr Snowden worked for the NSA. Take the massive violation of the U.S. Constitution in the December 1998 bombardment of Iraq (code-named Operation Desert Fox), which was a prelude to occupying the country illegally, for example. And when the U.S. forces began their illegal occupation of Iraq in 2003, Mr Snowden was 20 years old. [He joined the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as a systems administrator and telecommunications systems officer three years later, in 2006. Editor]
Speaking from Russia on Monday, Mr Snowden told attendees at the SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, Texas that encryption was still a powerful deterrent against NSA mass electronic surveillance. [No doubt Google, Microsoft, Oracle and the likes, the knights in shining armor, would come to our rescue. Editor]
“There is a policy response that needs to occur, but there is also a technical response that needs to occur,” said Snowden. “It’s the development community that can really craft those solutions and make sure we’re safe.”
However, most people with the average knowledge of using emails and Internet have little or NO idea how to use encryption. Besides, whatever can be encrypted can just as easily be decrypted.
Cocooning Effect
Where Mr Snowden fails big time to convince us of his mission to inform the uniformed is his interpretation of the U.S. Government. He wants us to believe that the government exists in a vacuum; they are the bad guys who violate the Constitution.
Where was Mr Snowden all this time? Was he living in a cocoon, or does he believe his audiences are?
Who exactly is the Government? What exactly is it made up of? Can the government exist in the absence of corporation? Is it the 4-year-at-a-time government that runs the country, or the “permanent” establishment?
Mr Snowden has previously touched on the commercial nature of the NSA data gathering, but has failed to enlighten us on the connection between the “corporation,” “establishment” and NSA.
“We recommend that legislation should be enacted that terminates the storage of bulk telephony meta-data by the government under section 215, and transitions as soon as reasonably possible to a system in which such meta-data is held instead either by private providers or by a private third party,” the panel reported.
The Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies has made 46 recommendations to “improve” accountability of the intelligence community in its 308-page report.
Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act
Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act commonly referred to as the “library records” provision was passed by the United States Congress in 2001 as a response to the September 11, 2001 attacks.
It modified FISA [Access to records and other items under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] to allow the Director of the FBI (or an official designated by the Director) to apply for an order to produce “tangible things” [it includes “books, records, papers, documents, and other items,”] that assist in an investigation undertaken to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence operations. The section currently is interpreted to include all aspects of the NSA’s mass surveillance programs.
“We recommend that, as a general rule and without senior policy review, the government should not be permitted to collect and store all mass, undigested, non-public personal information about individuals to enable future queries and data-mining for foreign intelligence purposes,” the fourth of 46 suggestions made by the panel reads. “Any program involving government collection or storage of such data must be narrowly tailored to serve an important government interest.”
The Panel
The 5-memebr panel was comprised of Richard Clarke, a former White House counter-terrorism adviser; Michael Morell, a former deputy director of the CIA; Geoffrey Stone a law professor at University of Chicago; Cass Sunstein a former White House technical adviser and Peter Swire, an expert in privacy law.
Unsurprisingly, the Panel’s recommendation came after [NOT before] a Federal District Judge ruled NSA activities “likely unconstitutional.”
Furthermore, the panel did NOT recommend a federal investigation into the 911 attacks that were used as a pretext for the PATRIOT Act.
Fourth Amendment
Federal District Judge Richard Leon has ruled that the electronic spy agency’s practice was an “arbitrary invasion,” in his ruling in a Washington DC federal court on Monday.
Judge Leon called the NSA’s surveillance program “indiscriminate” and an “almost Orwellian” technology that enables the government to store and analyze the phone meta-data of every telephone user in the United States. He suggested that James Madison would be “aghast” to learn that the government was encroaching on liberty of Citizens to such an extent.
However, the Judge, appointed to the bench by George W. Bush in 2002, stayed his injunction “in light of the significant national security interests at stake in this case and the novelty of the constitutional issues,” allowing the government time to appeal the ruling.
“I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval,” Judge Leon wrote in his 68-page ruling. “Surely, such a program infringes on ‘that degree of privacy’ that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment,” which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.
NSA data collection has a commercial format
NSA mass electronic surveillance programs have a two-prong purpose: To appease the the Security-Industrial Complex and to enrich the IT industry. They have literally nothing to do with preventing terrorism, as the Boston Marathon bombings showed.
Google has denied any link to the U.S. electronic mass surveillance [sic,] mainly conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA). But, the NSA data collection has a commercial format; the U.S. government and its officials have no direct use whatever for the data other than to hand it over to the U.S. corporations in return for financial favors including lucrative post-retirement positions in the “private” sector.
Google is shaken but not stirred, so to speak, because the maximum fine for failure to comply with the court order [in Brazil] is just $500,000.
Google has denied any link to the mass surveillance programs conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA), which is done on behalf of corporate America(!)
NSA targets for cyber-surveillance in Brazil included President Dilma Rousseff, and the state-run energy giant Petrobras, as well as tens of millions of ordinary Brazilians.
Whereas NSA is on record for admitting to large scale collection of metadata, Google’s surveillance programs include contents, physical addresses and just about every bit and byte of information transmitted through Wi-Fi and cable networks.
Google’s data collection programs run directly in at least 72 countries, and indirectly in dozens of other countries through the NSA and others.
The US military contractor Boston Dynamics was acquired by Google for an undisclosed sum last week. It’s the 8th robotics company bought by Google this year.
Google has confirmed it would continue the existing military contracts with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technologies for use by the military.
Excerpts from NBC News
Google is on a robot shopping spree, and its recent purchase of a military robot maker has some wondering what exactly the company intends to do with its own zoo of electronic creatures that creep, crawl, and climb.
It may seem odd for the Internet search giant to purchase a Boston Dynamics, a company that makes rugged machines that can run up to 29 mph, traverse rocky terrain and hurl cinder blocks up to 17 feet. The company is the eighth robot maker Google has snatched up. But the deals also indicate that the Internet giant and pioneer of self-driving cars is serious about a robot-filled future.
Note: The above image incorporates the Google logo, which is a trade mark of that evil corporation.
UNSURPRISINGLY, Google’s master plan remains a secret
So far, Google isn’t sharing much about the purchases augmenting it’s newly-launched robotics division. “It is still very early days for this, but I can’t wait to see the progress,” Larry Page wrote in a Google+ post, when the New York Times revealed news of the robotics operation.
Google seems to be piecing the ultimate walking, dexterous robot that can sense its surroundings — Boston Dynamics joins an assortment of newly acquired robot makers with a variety of strengths.
Worcester Polytechnic Institute students received ATLAS, a 330-lb. humanoid robot, that they will use to compete in a DARPA robot competition. Boston Globe / Boston Globe via Getty Images
“Transformation of our society” [from what to what?]
“I think it will be the transformation of our society — how we work, how we learn, take care of our sick, conduct our commerce, explore, handle disasters, fight wars… everything,” Peter Diamandis, big-thinker and founder of the X-Prize Foundation, wrote in a Google+ post on Friday.
Started by Marc Raibert, a roboticist who taught at MIT and Carnegie Mellon University, and author of “Legged Robots That Balance,” the company channels funding from DARPA and various arms of the military into a steadily expanding family of robots that can tackle almost any terrain.
Boston Dynamics about to switch into stealth mode
With Google at the helm, will Raibert and BigDog be muzzled? So far, Boston Dynamics has been open, even brazen, about showing off the latest in its lineup of awe-inspiring yet fearsome machines via regularly posted YouTube videos. Founder Raibert told a gathering of roboticists at the International Robotics and Intelligent Systems conference in Tokyo in November that he tracked Boston Dynamics’ YouTube view counts, and was proud of how BigDog had become an Internet sensation. Meanwhile, earlier acquisitions Meka and Redwood Robotics, have closed down their websites and retreated into stealth mode.
Google’s Partner in Crime Mass Electronic Surveillance “unconstitutional”
Federal District Judge Richard Leon has ruled that the electronic spy agency’s practice was an “arbitrary invasion,” in his ruling in a Washington DC federal court on Monday.
Judge Leon called the NSA’s surveillance program “indiscriminate” and an “almost Orwellian technology that enables the government to store and analyze the phone metadata of every telephone user in the United States. He suggested that James Madison would be “aghast” to learn that the government was encroaching on liberty of Citizens to such extent.
However, the Judge, appointed to the bench by George W. Bush in 2002, stayed his injunction “in light of the significant national security interests at stake in this case and the novelty of the constitutional issues,” allowing the government time to appeal the ruling.
“I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval,” Judge Leon wrote in his 68-page ruling. “Surely, such a program infringes on ‘that degree of privacy’ that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment,” which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.
Google has denied any link to the U.S. electronic mass surveillance [sic,] mainly conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA). But, the NSA data collection has a commercial format; the U.S. government and its officials have no direct use whatever for the data other than to hand it over to the U.S. corporations in return for financial favors including lucrative post-retirement positions in the “private” sector.
Quotes on Google
Google poses an existential threat to humanity! —Fire-Earth
Google has committed “the biggest known data protection violations in history.” —Johannes Caspar, chief of data protection office in Hamburg, Germany.
Google’s Corporate Practices are a Major Threat to Freedom and Democracy! —MSRB
No single corporation in the U.S. poses as much threat to democracy, individual freedoms and therefore the security of the country as does Google! —EDRO
Ten beached whales die in Florida Everglades, dozens stranded
At least ten beached whales have died as rescuers tried to save dozens more that were stranded in shallow waters in Florida’s Everglades National Park, said wildlife officials.
The whales, believed to be short-finned pilot whales, were first spotted on Tuesday pm near the Gulf of Mexico, according to the park officials.
Adult short-finned pilot whales weigh 1,000 to 3,000kg with females and males averaging 12 and 18 feet long receptively. They typically travel in pods of about 30 animals.
Wildlife officials said the rescue efforts to save the whales by pushing them into deeper waters would resume Thursday morning.
Video footage showed at least one carcass reduced to a bare skeleton and large chunks of flesh missing from others, possibly bitten by sharks.
NSA collects and anal-yzes 5 billion cellphone records each day
The US National Security Agency collects and analyzes about 5 billion cellphone records each day indicating location data around the world, according to a new report by Washington Post based on the records leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
FOUR Canadian soldiers commit suicide in one week
At least four Canadian soldiers have committed suicide in just one week, probably overcome by pangs of conscience.
At least three of the soldiers had “served” in Afghanistan, according to Canadian Defense officials.
In the latest incident, a married 46-year-old soldier apparently committed suicide on Monday. His body was found near his base in Quebec. Sylvain Lelievre had served in Bosnia and Afghanistan, according to reports.
Last week, the bodies of three other soldiers were discovered. They were Michael McNeil, William Elliott and Travis Halmrast. They were based in Ontario, Manitoba and Alberta respectively.
30,000 Eritreans “abducted to Sinai desert for ransom”
Up to 30,000 Eritreans have been abducted since 2007 and taken to Egypt’s Sinai desert to suffer torture and ransom demands, according to a new research.
Victims are kidnapped in Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan and taken to Sinai where they are held captive in the mostly lawless desert.
The abductors have extorted at least $600m from families in ransom payments, says the study.
“The study, presented to the European parliament, says Eritrean and Sudanese security officers are colluding with the kidnap gangs,” according to a report.
Ferocious storm cuts power to 25,000 homes in Scotland, shuts rail network
>Winds of up to 116 mph (187 km/h) battered parts of Scottish highlands cutting power to at least 25,000 customers and forcing the authorities to shut down the entire rail network due to debris on the tracks.
Scottish Environment Protection Agency has warned of flooding risks in coastal areas and Traffic Scotland advised drivers to avoid traveling in multiple areas due to “extremely dangerous” conditions, reports said.
Fast-food workers in 100 US cities will walk off the job
The strike is part of a nationwide movement, which began a year ago to increase federal minimum wage, unchanged since 2009, from $7.25 an hour to $15 an hour. The workers also want the right to unionize.
“We have people going to work every day and coming home to no utilities or having to make tough decisions on whether to eat or pay rent. But they go to work and work hard every day and they’re good at their jobs and these companies should take care of their employees and do better. We know that they have the profit,” said a worker.
“Dramatic increases in a starting wage such as those called for in these rallies will challenge that job growth history, increase prices for restaurant meals, especially in the value segments and lead to fewer jobs created,” said the National Restaurant Association.
Google has committed “the biggest known data protection violations in history.” —Johannes Caspar, chief of data protection office in Hamburg, Germany.
Google’s Street View Program enables the company access to private Wi-Fi networks, intercepting personal data.
Street View Program is a KNOWN method for spying on the public. Given their record of mass deception, Google must be harvesting data via other means in addition to the NSA route.
Brazilian judges have given the U.S. Internet Goliath until Saturday to hand over private data collected through its Street View program, according to reports.
The decision by a court in Brasilia follows a complaint lodged by the Brazilian Institute of Computer Policy and Rights, said reports.
Google has photographed Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte and other major Brazilian cities.
Google is shaken but not stirred, so to speak, because the maximum fine for failure to comply with the court order is just $500,000.
Google has denied any link to the mass surveillance programs conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA), which is done on behalf of corporate America(!)
NSA targets for cyber-surveillance in Brazil included President Dilma Rousseff, and the state-run energy giant Petrobras, as well as tens of millions of ordinary Brazilians.
Whereas NSA is on record for admitting to large scale collection of metadata, Google’s surveillance programs include contents, physical addresses and just about every bit and byte of information transmitted through Wi-Fi and cable networks.
Google’s data collection programs run directly in at least 72 countries, and indirectly in dozens of other countries through the NSA and others.
“Google and other leading tech companies have expressed opposition to the creation of Brazil-based databases of local customer information, as proposed by Brasilia in a bid to combat foreign spying,” said a report.
Google was fined $7.0m for collecting people’s personal data without permission in 38 US states, earlier this year,
As a part of its settlement, Google also agreed to destroy emails, passwords, and web histories collected by Street View cars between 2008 and 2010, however, there is no way to enforce or verify compliance. In fact all of the stolen data may have already been integrated and plugged into untraceable programs.
Germany also fined Google for illegally recording information. Caspar, chief of data protection office in Hamburg, called the data theft “one of the biggest known data protection violations in history.”
In fact, Hamburg prosecutors had originally attempted to prosecute Google under criminal law, however they were forced to drop the case, prompting the data protection office to pursue it as an “administrative offense.”
Google has denied any link to the U.S. electronic mass surveillance[sic,] mainly conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA). But, the NSA data collection has a commercial format; the U.S. government and its officials have no direct use whatever for the data other than to hand it over to the U.S. corporations in return for financial favors including lucrative post-retirement positions in the “private” sector.
Typhoon KROSA: Google continues filtering information posted on FIRE-EARTH
PHAILIN Becomes a Super Cyclonic Storm: Google is not listing most of the images posted on FIRE-EARTH, or delay listing them for several days until they’ve lost their immediate relevance.
WIRED UK: Big tech companies plan to track you even more aggressively Biggest tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and a dozen others “are assembling new forms of online tracking that would follow users more aggressively… Microsoft is developing such a system, following, apparently, in the footsteps of Google.” October 15, 2013
Radiation levels near Fukushima hit 2-year high: [Google is not listing most of the images posted on FIRE-EARTH, or delay listing them for several days until they’ve lost their immediate relevance. Editor]
[Search the blog for dozens more posts and pages that make reference to Google’s criminal, unethical, and antisocial activities on and off the Internet. Editor]
DON’T BLAME GOOGLE’S COMMERCIALLY MOTIVATED CENSORSHIP AND CORPORATE THEFT ON NSA.
Search term “Super Typhoon HAIYAN” does not list FIRE-EARTH on Google (we tried the first 12 pages), even though FEWW was the first source in the world to forecast Super Typhoon status for HAIYAN.
.
“Extraterrestrial” Typhoon HAIYAN, the most powerful storm of 2013, continues to intensify
At 5:30UTC on November 7, 2013 Super Typhoon HAIYAN was located about 690km ESE (106 degrees) of Homonhon Island (Eastern Samar, Philippines), moving WNW (285 degrees) at an average speed of about 30 km/hr.
Super Typhoon HAIYAN could cause large-scale destruction along its path, according to FIRE-EARTH Models.
HAIYAN is forecast to dump up to 500mm of rain on some parts of the Philippines.
Super Typhoon HAIYAN (TY 1330)
Time: 05:30UTC – November 7, 2013
Movement: WNW (285 degrees) at 30 km/hr
Position: Near 8.9ºN, 132.0ºE
Location: About 690km ESE (106 degrees) of Homonhon Island (Eastern Samar, Philippines)
Max Sustained Winds: 290km/hr [increasing to about 300 km/hr —FIRE-EARTH Forecast]
Max Wind Gusts: 340km/hr [increasing to about 350 km/hr —FIRE-EARTH Forecast]
Significant Wave Height: 16m [Expected to rise —FIRE-EARTH Forecast]
Source: FIRE-EARTH and others
Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated in the Philippines ahead of the Super Typhoon’s arrival. The typhoon, locally named “YOLANDA,” is expected to make landfall as a Cat. 4C storm force in eastern Visayas, Philippines on Friday.
Super Typhoon HAIYAN Special Message.
VISIBLE/INFRARED [FIRE-EARTH Enhancement] satellite image – recorded at 04:30UTC on November 7, 2013. Original image sourced from: CIMSS/SSEC/WISC.
Since 2011, several typhoons including WASHI, BOPHA and KROSA have affected millions of people in the Philippines, flattening coastal towns, killing more than 3,000 people, destroying crops, razing tens of thousands of homes, and causing up to $2billion worth of damage to public infrastructure.
Details of the most destructive typhoons to strike the Philippines can be found on this blog.
More details to follow…
Typhoon List 2013 – Stats for NW Pacific Basin
The 60 year average (1951-2010) No of Typhoons by 4 November: 23
No of typhoons so far this year: 30
Percent Increase: 30.4 [Calculated by FIRE-EARTH blog]
Venezuela’s president Maduro claims Twitter hacked his account, removing 6,000 followers – We believe him!
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said on Thursday that Twitter had attacked his account, as well as the accounts of other government officials, removing their followers.
“We must achieve independence, and we have to think about deep and radical ways we can free ourselves from these multinational corporations that have monopolized social networks,” Maduro told the ministers on Saturday, referencing Twitter, Inc.
Maduro says his Twitter account was attacked to spark unrest and suspend the upcoming December 8 elections.
Meantime, Venezuelan government officials confirmed more than 6,000 of the president’s twitter followers were suspiciously removed.
Communications Minister Rodriguez told reporters that about 6,600 of the President’s Twitter followers had disappeared from his account within 10 minutes.
There has been no response from Twitter’s press office in San Francisco, as of posting.
Twitter Account of FIRE-EARTH
In July 2011, we privately asked some of our colleagues and organization members to participate in test cases concerning the tweet counts on a number of specific entries posted on the blog.
Our suspicions were confirmed when the twitter counts stayed at zero in all of the cases, despite numerous tweets that had been entered by different account holders.
FIRE-EARTH abandoned its twitter account thereafter.
The NSA is spying on everyone, and they are NOT doing so in the interest of “national security”
The rally organizers and attendees should demand to know on whose behalf NSA is spying.
-oOo-
About the Rally
The NSA is spying on everyone’s personal communications. It’s operating without any meaningful oversight.
On October 26th, the 12th anniversary of the signing of the USA Patriot Act, we’re holding the largest rally yet against NSA surveillance. We’ll be handing more than a half-million petitions to Congress to remind them that they work for us — and we won’t tolerate mass surveillance any longer.
A stellar group of whistleblowers, activists, researchers and others from both sides of the political spectrum will be speaking at this historic event.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has demanded that Canada, US and allies must stop spying on Brazil “once and for all” thus ending a blatant violation of her country’s sovereignty.
HERE’s An open note to Ms. Rousseff to let her know what Canadian-trained spies do when they are not indulging in “serious and unacceptable violation” of Brazil’s sovereignty.
Dear President Rousseff…
How “Canadian-Trained” Spies Nearly Assassinated Human Right Campaigner and His Family in New Zealand
Another Open Letter to New Zealand PM
PM Helen Clark:
[updated and resent in January 2007]
Creating A Sustainable Future (CASF) proposed to establish a sustainable village, “Solar Clusters,” in New Zealand.
An innovative project, Solar Clusters would have attracted tremendous talent and investment to help create an economically and ecologically sustainable future for New Zealand.
New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE), and Economic Development Agency (EDA) discriminated against [the author] on grounds of [his] political and ethical beliefs violating [his] human rights (Human Rights Act Section 21; subsection 1D and 1J).
By withdrawing their support for the project, NZTE and EDA also violated the rights of many others including New Zealand and US citizens who wished to participate in the project.
NZTE and EDA acted unethically, immorally and illegally.
EDA withdrew their support for Solar Clusters because [the author] refused to work closely with their nominee whose military family is glorifying an object of war by renovating a WWII bomber plane.
NZTE withdrew their support for the project because of [the author’s involvement in the] human rights campaign, The Canadian Holocaust, against Canada’s continued genocide of her indigenous people.
A NZ secret intelligence service (SIS) agent who introduced himself as a “psychologist” (details available on request) and who was instructed by a senior SIS agent doubling as the local NZTE manager in Nelson, admonished [the author] for the Canadian Holocaust campaign and asked whether [he] were out of [his] mind for “making trouble” and didn’t [he] “know that Canada trained New Zealand’s secret service agents […] who control everything here [in New Zealand]?”
He asserted that NZTE had withdrawn their support for the project as retribution for the Canadian Holocaust human rights campaign on instructions from Ottawa.
This begs the question, prime minister, why are internal affairs of New Zealand dictated by Ottawa?
You owe the world a full explanation.
Creating A Sustainable Future
The Management School of Restorative Business
[updated and resent in January 2007]
NZ Dollar, ANZ Bank, Spies, Assassins, Phone Tapping, Attempted Murder and the Military Regime with a Civilian Face
[May 10, 2008]
In reply to a message by a NZ Journalist, TERRES, my colleague and co-moderator, posted the following comment this afternoon:
A colleague who lived in NZ […] believes a considerable number of “spies” [other than the obvious operatives from the US, UK, Canada and Australia] freely [with the full knowledge and consent of NZ govt.] operate in New Zealand. [He also informs me that he has inadvertently met a few of them in Nelson and in the Golden Bay area.] The operatives, he asserts, include Israeli, German, Italian, Danish … agents and former MI personnel from SA and Zimbabwe. [He has not disclosed the specific details.]
The worst culprits are by far New Zealand’s own “Canadian-trained” SS-like SIS agents [see links below,] my colleague contends, who occupy all the managerial and top positions within the government branches [e.g., NZ “Trade and Enterprise”] effectively transforming a civilian form of government into a “crypto-military fascist police state,” or an outright military regime with a civilian face like China or North Korea.
Restriction of Movement and “Forbidden” Currency Business
A day or so after my colleague had placed a currency order with ANZ Bank [complying with the immigration requirements,] to buy a large amount of NZ dollars at low rates, [because he was] anticipating a nosedive in the value of NZ dollar commensurate with New Zealand’s Enron-like economy, a spook, possibly a NZ SIS agent, followed him and his friends to the cafe in Riverside Community, a pacifist community situated in the Moutere valley near Nelson. The agent sat a few tables away from them reciting in the exact order names of all the places that my colleague had visited since he was eighteen, presumably to freak him out.
Notes:
1. Although the currency deal was perfectly legitimate and my colleague was entitled to place the order with the ANZ, the bank officer, whose emotions were aroused because he thought any news of the order may result in negative sentiment against his home currency, refused to accept the order and a heated argument ensued over the phone. [A senior ANZ Bank employee intervened later.]
2. The agent could only have known where my colleague was heading that morning by tapping my colleague’s phone and listening to his last conversation immediately before he left home.
A Failed Assassination and Murder Attempt
In another most probably related incident, an intense beam of light, which my colleague now believes was a beam of laser light [probably emitted by a non-commercial device, judging by its unusual color,] was shined into his eyes as he drove his family home along their usual route on Nelson’s Atawhai Drive. The laser light temporarily blinded him and could have resulted in a fatal road accident on the busy thoroughfare had he not immediately pulled off the road and stopped on an embankment, while his eyes recovered. The incident was a failed assassination attempt on his life, which could have also resulted in the murder of his family—his spouse and their two young children.
Ironically, the assassination attempt, had it not failed, would have looked just like a “routine” road fatality on New Zealand’s death roads.
If additional information comes into our possession, it’ll posted on this forum, or at one of the following blogs:
[UPDATE: Moderators have been advised that the individual referred to above received a thinly veiled threat from a senior official in Nelson, NZ, several days before the laser incident, soon after which his family abandoned their immigration application, which had already been approved in principle, and left New Zealand.]
NSA’s massive new data-storage facility in Utah has been plagued by electrical surges—dubbed arc fault failures—described as “a flash of lightning inside a 2-foot box.” These failures reportedly cause explosions, melt metal and cause circuit failures, said officials.
At least 10 meltdowns in the past 13 months have prevented NSA from using their supercomputers at the center located in Bluffdale, south of Salt Lake City.
The meltdowns have “destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of machinery and delayed the center’s opening for a year, according to project documents and current and former officials,” according to project documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
The new NSA data center located near Bluffdale, south of Salt Lake City, Utah. (Image credit: George Frey/AFP) Image may be subject to copyright.
“The Utah facility, one of the Pentagon’s biggest U.S. construction projects, has become a symbol of the spy agency’s surveillance prowess, which gained broad attention in the wake of leaks from NSA contractor Edward Snowden. It spans more than one-million square feet, with construction costs pegged at $1.4 billion—not counting the Cray supercomputers that will reside there,” said the report.
Experts believe the center’s storage capacity is in the order of exabytes (1,000^6) or even zettabytes (1,000^7) of data. An exabyte is about 100,000 times the size of all the printed material in the Library of Congress.
“Utah is the largest of several new NSA data centers, including a nearly $900 million facility at its Fort Meade, Md., headquarters and a smaller one in San Antonio. The first of four data facilities at the Utah center was originally scheduled to open in October 2012, according to project documents.” WSJ reported.
The Bluffdale facility will require 65 megawatts of electricity, enough to power more than 20,000 homes, costing $1million per month even at Utah’s preferential electricity rates.
The causes of eight of the failures haven’t been determined. “We did not find any indication that the proposed equipment modification measures [suggested by the Army Corps of Engineers] will be effective in preventing future incidents,” said a report last week by special investigators from the Army Corps of Engineers known as a Tiger Team.
Why is NSA Spying on EVERYONE?
It’s still unclear how the NSA will attempt to justify the collection of such an obscene amount of data on hundreds of millions of ordinary people.
“There is no question there is going to be increased scrutiny of these kinds of practices,” said Senator Ron Wyden, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, “because Americans understand this is a dangerous time, but the government, if it’s going to collect [this amount of information], ought to have to say here’s how it contributes to security of the American people. They have not made that case.”
Little did your school boy chums in Hawaii, watching you race up and down the basketball court, know how prescient they were when they nicknamed you “Barry O’Bomber”.
Little did your fellow Harvard Law Review editors, who elected you to lead that venerable journal, ever imagine that you could be a president who chronically violates the Constitution, federal statutes, international treaties and the separation of power at depths equal to or beyond the George W. Bush regime.
Nor would many of the voters who elected you in 2008 have conceived that your foreign policy would rely so much on brute military force at the expense of systemically waging peace. Certainly, voters who knew your background as a child of third world countries, a community organizer, a scholar of constitutional law and a critic of the Bush/Cheney years, never would have expected you to favor the giant warfare state so pleasing to the military industrial complex.
Now, as if having learned nothing from the devastating and costly aftermaths of the military invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, you’re beating the combustible drums to attack Syria – a country that is no threat to the U.S. and is embroiled in complex civil wars under a brutal regime.
This time, however, you may have pushed for too many acts of War. Public opinion and sizable numbers of members of both parties in Congress are opposed. These lawmakers oppose bombing Syria in spite of your corralling the cowardly leaders of both parties in the Congress.
Thus far, your chief achievement on the Syrian front has been support for your position from al-Qaeda affiliates fighting in Syria, the pro-Israeli government lobby, AIPAC, your chief nemesis in Congress, House Speaker John Boehner, and Dick Cheney. This is quite a gathering and a telling commentary on your ecumenical talents. Assuming the veracity of your declarations regarding the regime’s resort to chemical warfare (first introduced into the Middle East by Winston Churchill’s Royal Air Force’s plastering of Iraqi tribesmen in the nineteen twenties), your motley support group is oblivious to the uncontrollable consequences that might stem from bombing Syria. One domestic consequence may be that Speaker Boehner expects to exact concessions from you on domestic issues before Congress in return for giving you such high visibility bipartisan cover.
Your argument for shelling Syria is to maintain “international credibility” in drawing that “red line” regardless, it seems, of the loss of innocent Syrian civilian life, causalities to our foreign service and armed forces in that wider region, and retaliation against the fearful Christian population in Syria (one in seven Syrians are Christian). But the more fundamental credibilities are to our Constitution, to the neglected necessities of the American people, and to the red line of observing international law and the UN Charter (which prohibit unilateral bombing in this situation).
There is another burgeoning cost – that of the militarization of the State Department whose original charter invests it with the responsibility of diplomacy. Instead, Mr. Obama you have shaped the State Department into a belligerent “force projector” first under Generalissima Clinton and now under Generalissimo Kerry. The sidelined foreign service officers, who have knowledge and conflict avoidance experience, are left with reinforced fortress-like embassies as befits our Empire reputation abroad.
Secretary John Kerry descended to gibberish when, under questioning this week by a House Committee member, he asserted that your proposed attack was “not war” because there would be “no boots on the ground.” In Kerry’s view, bombing a country with missiles and air force bombers is not an act of war.
It is instructive to note how government autocracy feeds on itself. Start with unjustified government secrecy garnished by the words “national security.” That leads to secret laws, secret evidence, secret courts, secret prisons, secret prisoners, secret relationships with selected members of Congress, denial of standing for any citizen to file suit, secret drone strikes, secret incursions into other nations and all this directed by a President who alone decides when to be secret prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner. What a Republic, what a democracy, what a passive people we have become!
Voices of reason and experience have urged the proper path away from the metastasizing war that is plaguing Syria. As proposed by former president, Jimmy Carter, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and other seasoned diplomats and retired military, vigorous leadership by you is needed for an international peace conference with all parties at the table, including the countries supplying weapons to the various adversaries in Syria.
Mr. Obama, you may benefit from reading the writings of Colman McCarthy, a leading advocate of peace studies in our schools and universities. He gives numerous examples of how waging peace avoided war and civil strife over the past 100 years.
Crowding out attention to America’s serious domestic problems by yet another military adventure (opposed by many military officials) , yet another attack on another small, non-threatening Muslim country by the powerful Christian nation (as many Muslims see it) is aggression camouflaging sheer madness.
Please, before you recklessly flout Congress, absorb the wisdom of the World Peace Foundation’s Alex de Waal and Bridget Conley-Zilkic. Writing in the New York Times, they strongly condemn the use of nerve gas in Syria, brand the perpetrators as war criminals to be tried by an international war crimes tribunal and then declare:
“But it is folly to think that airstrikes can be limited: they are ill-conceived as punishment, fail to protect civilians and, most important, hinder peacemaking…. Punishment, protection and peace must be joined… An American assault on Syria would be an act of desperation with incalculable consequences. To borrow once more from Sir William Harcourt [the British parliamentarian who argued against British intervention in our Civil War (which cost 750,000 American lives)]: ‘We are asked to go we know not whither, in order to do we know not what.’”
If and when the people and Congress turn you down this month, there will be one silver lining. Only a Right/Left coalition can stop this warring. Such convergence is strengthening monthly in the House of Representatives to stop future war crimes and the injurious blowback against America of the wreckages from Empire.
History teaches that Empires always devour themselves.
Tall trees sinking into underwater cavern at Bayou Corne, Louisiana
Footage shows tall trees sinking into underwater cavern at Bayou Corne in Louisiana. The phenomenon is being caused by the gradual collapse of an underground salt cavern that has put the whole area on alert. It is being closely monitored by emergency authorities, who took the video while carrying out work to try and stop its spread (!!)
Typhoon Trami, the 12th typhoon to strike China this year, has affected 361,000 people in central China’s Hunan, leaving 30,900 were displaced. The typhoon brought rainstorms mainly to the southeastern and eastern parts of Hunan, with the largest rainfall of 281.6mm. The rains wreaked havoc in 14 counties, cities and districts, damaging 13,350 hectares of crops and toppling 150 houses, said the report.
Materials implicating the Syrian government forces in chemical weapons use near Damascus were prepared prior to the alleged incident on August 21, the Russian foreign ministry has said.
“Moscow continues to monitor closely the event surrounding the ‘alleged’ chemical attack near Damascus, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Aleksandr Lukashevich, said in a statement.”
“We’re getting more new evidence that this criminal act was of a provocative nature,” he stressed. “In particular, there are reports circulating on the Internet, in particular that the materials of the incident and accusations against government troops had been posted for several hours before the so-called attack. Thus, it was a pre-planned action.”
The following are excerpts from a note sent to a colleague by his former associate who challenged us to publish it:
[Name removed]
“Re: Edward Snowden and his former employer, The National Shame of America (NSA)”
“[…] you really make me laugh when you call your country land of the free and the home of the brave !!!”
“You chase your bravest out of the country and compel him to seek asylum from a quintessence of a ‘repressive’ country […] Land of the free and the home of the brave?”
“Bro, I hate to find out what you put in your apple pies […]”
Torrential rains by SOULIK forces hundreds of thousands to evacuate, 20,000 to relocate
Typhoon SOULIK, the seventh typhoon to hit China this year, has affected at least 2 million, forcing 500,000 to evacuate, and leaving at least 20,000 displaced in south China’s Guangdong Province.
SOULIK landed in Fujian province Saturday afternoon, and moved to Jiangxi province on Sunday.
The typhoon brought torrential to Guangdong province. Local weather stations reported precipitation of more than 250mm (10 in) in 20 hours to 4 p.m. Sunday.
SOULIK has affected at least 382,000 people in Guangdong province alone, destroying 1,076 houses in 80 townships in three cities of the province and leaving 3 dead, Xinhua reported.
Torrential rains have further raised water in local rivers to above warning levels, the report said.
Oil pipeline in NW China damaged by mudslide
Original Caption: Villagers help clean oil stains in the Zichang County, northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, July 15, 2013. The oil pipe from Ansai County to Yongping Town was damaged by mudslide following days of rainstorms. Rescue efforts for repairing the broken pipe are underway. (Xinhua). More images …
-oOo-
Other Global Disasters, Significant Events
Iraq Violence: Death Toll Continues to Mount
At least 400 people have been killed and thousands more injured amid escalating violence in Iraq, between July 1 and 14, 2013.
-oOo-
Brown Declares State of Emergency for Powerhouse Fire
California Gov. Brown has declared a state of emergency in Los Angeles County for the so-called Powerhouse Fire. The declaration comes a month after the wildfire destroyed 53 structures, including 24 residences, and more than 47 square miles of brush.
The fire began May 30 near a utility station and was contained on June 11.
“Kelly Huston, deputy director of the California Emergency Management Agency, says the move is required before LA County can qualify for federal emergency highway funds to repair roadways damaged by the fire,” said a report.
-oOo-
Communication companies help surveillance: Former CIA official
“According to UK newspaper, the Guardian, Snowden has only released part of the intelligence he has. During his revelations of the US surveillance program, Snowden says the US government and US communication companies are involved.
“Although related companies like Google and Microsoft are trying to exclude themselves from the scandal, a former CIA official says communication companies are accomplices in the surveillance.”
Ray McGovern, a former CIA official, told CNTV News:
“What’s happened here is the U.S. companies have become joined in a way with United States Government in such a way that you have the corporations, the government, the media and the congress and judiciary all pretty much joined in a complicit attempt to circumvent the constitution of the United States. There’s zero concern on the part of the communication companies to violate the law. They know that they’ll be protected, even if it’s ex post facto…”
‘PRISM’: Anything So Patently Evil, Applied on Such Grand Scales, WILL Backfire in Big Ways
For the past five years, FIRE-EARTH Moderators have protested about censorship of news and information and abuse of their intellectual property rights, posted on this as well as several affiliated blogs, by Google and their business partners.
Slide No 5 does NOT include companies that are protected by the NSA-FBI in their joint venture Internet spy program.
The following are the facts about data mining, information censorship and related issues based on professional and personal experiences of the Blog Moderators, their colleagues and friends.
PRISM cannot operate successfully without the collaboration of the so-called tech giants, which include Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Paltalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple according to the report.
The scope of data mining as it pertains to commercial participants goes all the way down to smaller companies and includes blog and micro-blog providers like Twitter [the surveillance world’s preferred weapon of choice because of the ease by which it’s data-mined] and WordPress, which host FIRE-EARTH.
The roots of large-scale data mining operations are sewn in industrial espionage and have very little to do with the so called “war-on-terror.” [The Benghazi planned murders, massive government monitoring of the AP, recent IRS shenanigans … provide ample proof.]
Note: Industrial espionage, or economic espionage, is the stealing of commercial data and secrets from its legitimate owners for use by other parties. This form of espionage is conducted solely for commercial purposes and has little to do with national security. Furthermore, this type of theft is NOT usually perpetrated by foreign governments, as the current case clearly shows.
While the tech giants have denied any knowledge of PRISM, or similar programs operating under other acronyms, the fact remains that the government programs do not have the ability to instantly remove, or bury unwanted materials posted on the Internet, as experienced by the blog moderators. Google does!
Note: Despite FIRE-EARTH’s unsurpassed record of accurate disaster forecasts, the blog traffic was cut down overnight by 80-90 percent on January 29, 2013.
“They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type,” said a career intelligence officer who [allegedly] leaked PowerPoint slides about PRISM and supporting materials to The Washington Post in order to expose what he believes to be a gross intrusion on privacy.
Despite any Psyop undertones that maybe hidden in the above statement, pointing to “self-censorship,” FIRE-EARTH moderators experience the real-time surveillance almost constantly.
Fire Earth 
