Archive for March, 2012

ORANGE, Conn. (CBSNewYork) — You could say he was stuck in a pretty embarrassing bind.

A man shopping at an adult novelty store in Orange apparently tried on a pair of “love cuffs,” but couldn’t get them off.

Orange Police told CBSNewYork.com that around 3 p.m. Thursday, they responded to the VIP (Very Intimate Pleasures) store on Boston Post Road following the “product malfunction.”

After store employees and police tried to remove the handcuffs to no avail, they eventually were able to free the unidentified man’s wrists with bolt cutters, police said.

Authorities said that no one was injured during the incident.

Critics say the “Today” show attempted to incite racial anger when it cut crucial seconds from audio of a phone call placed by George Zimmerman just before he killed the teenager.

NBC News is being excoriated in some circles – with competitor Fox News Channel leading the charge – for selectively editing audio of the 911 call placed by George Zimmerman just before he killed Trayvon Martin.

The NBC segment in question featured anchor Ron Allen and ran on the Today show on Tuesday. On Thursday, Sean Hannity and guest Brent Bozell played the NBC version of the 911 call and compared it with the unedited version.


In the NBC segment, Zimmerman says: “This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.”

The full version, though, unfolds like this:

Zimmerman: “This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.”

911 operator: “Okay. And this guy, is he white black or Hispanic?”

Zimmerman: “He looks black.”


After playing both versions, Hannity said: “They forgot the dispatcher’s question! How could NBC, in good conscience, do that?”

“This isn’t bias, this isn’t distortion, this is an all-out falsehood by NBC News,” answers Bozell, who runs a conservative watchdog group called the Media Research Center.

“When you hear him say, ‘he looks black,’ anyone watching that believes that there are racial overtones to what this man did,” Bozell says. “How could you not believe that? It goes with the narrative of the profiling. The only problem is, they edited out the dispatcher asking him, ‘what does he look like?’”

NBC News declined to comment.


Zimmerman, a volunteer community-watch participant shot and killed Martin on Feb. 26 in Florida, and some Democratic lawmakers and civil rights activists have called it a hate crime, accusing Zimmerman, who is Hispanic, of racially profiling Martin, who was a 17-year-old African American male.

“This is NBC News, Brent, and this is what they did at a time when emotions are running very high in this country,” Hannity said during his Thursday night TV show.

“Tom Brokaw, Matt Lauer, I wonder if they’re proud tonight?” Hannity asked.

enjoy pure clean water

http://preppingtosurvive.com

The following article has been contributed by Lucas Patriotus, a special services veteran with years of survival training. It has been published with permission of the author. It does not necessarily represent the views of PreppingToSurvive.com.

Water Is Life

I don’t need to tell you why your family needs safe potable water as well as long term food storage, first aid kits, and other survival gear to survive the aftermath of an emergency or disaster.

People can live for days or even weeks without food but no one survives past 4 or 5 days without water.  Living on very short rations an “average” person can survive on a minimum of one gallon of water for replacement of normal activities loss, per day.  At that drastically minimal rate a family of four will require 120 gallons of potable water to survive for 30 days.

“…Drinking, sanitation and hygiene constitute the basic human survival needs for water. These minimum needs total about 50 liters (13.2 gallons) per person per day. In comparison, the average American uses well over ten times that amount… (1)

Including drinking, sanitation and hygiene that same family of four would require 1560 gallons of potable water to survive for 30 days.  Storing 120 gallons of water to meet subsistence-level needs is easily done, if that’s how you visualize your family surviving.  Storing 1560 gallons, while making your family’s survival experience more pleasant, is problematic if you do not have the ability to replenish your water supply while off of the National Electric Power Grid.

Water Availability is not Guaranteed

What if one day after an emergency or disaster you turn on the tap and either nothing comes out, or what comes out is unsafe to drink?  Water distribution systems require energy and what comes out of your faucet is there because the fragile and vulnerable Grid energized a pump.

The National Electric Power Grid is obsolescent and vulnerable to blackouts due to equipment failure, unintentional human error or recently and most frighteningly, malicious foreign cyber attack.(2)   Water self sufficiency off the grid, and independent of the weather, will ensure that your family has enough water to survive no matter how bad the situation becomes.

 Rain Water Harvesting

The basic component of water self sufficiency is rain water harvesting and storage.  This component requires storage tanks of sufficient capacity with connections to your home’s rain gutter system.  This component is weather dependent but based upon annual rainfall amounts and seasonal rains distribution in your area, rain water harvesting may well satisfy your unpurified water requirements if you plan properly.

harvesting rainwater to make it potable

In most parts of continental USA, with the exception of the Southwest, rainfall is fairly regular, reliable and predictably sufficient to be the primary source for your family’s survival water self sufficiency.  You will have to make a judgment call and decide how much storage capacity you will need to bridge dry spells.

Because we have become so dependent on the grid and the water distribution systems it enables, houses no longer have cisterns to store water for dry spells.  Chances are your home doesn’t have a cistern either, so you will need to acquire water storage capacity.  Water can be stored in almost anything: one gallon water jugs you buy at the supermarket, hard-side metal or plastic tanks, or the much more convenient and less expensive collapsible “pillow” tanks.

We can safely discard the idea of buying, storing and then refilling 1500+ one gallon jugs as impractical.  Hard-side tanks are more practical but are always the same size, full or empty, are difficult to handle, expensive and require permanent installation above ground or below

A much better solution is collapsible “bladder” tanks which are constructed of very tough plastics which meet Food and Drug Administration requirements for potable water storage.  Bladder tanks are relatively inexpensive and can be stored folded within their shipping boxes until you decide to deploy them.

Purifying Stored Rainwater

The water stored in your tanks, while it may appear clear, is not safe to drink.  The rain which fell on your roof and ran down your gutters became contaminated with bird feces, insect waste, decayed organic matter, chemicals and other pollutants.  To make this water safe to drink it must first be treated or preferably purified.

Treatment involves adding proportionately large amounts of chlorine iodine.  This method should be reserved for emergency or occasional use only, because ingestion of too much iodine may be harmful.(3)

The optimum solution is the use of a water purifier which removes sediment and chemicals, kills pathogens and removes pathogenic detritus.  An efficient water purifier would utilize both pre and post-filters and a high-intensity ultraviolet germicidal lamp.  Such a device must be proven to have a bacterial kill rate up to 99.99+% including cysts (Giardia and Cryptosporidium), and microorganisms including viruses, bacteria, fungi, algae, and protozoa.(4)

This water purifier should be operable off the Electric Power Grid and capable of converting water from any available source into potable water.

Now You Need to Become Water Self Sufficient

You have acquired long term bulk food storage, first aid kits, tools, defensive weapons and other survival gear.  Now you need to become water self sufficient or all your other preparations are meaningless and your family will perish.  WATER IS LIFE.

About the Author

Lucas P. Atriotus is a veteran of U. S. Army Infantry, Ranger and Special Forces survival training. He is a defender of the U. S. Constitution, a historian and a philosopher warrior for the Bill of Rights. He has written numerous articles on events which had led to past societal breakdowns, and their correlation to current events and policies which are leading to an inevitable disruption of American civil society.

 

 

What do you do when an entire nation begins to lose the capacity to think rationally?  Many Americans spend a great deal of time criticizing the government, and there is certainly a lot to complain about, but it is not just the government that is the problem.  All over America, people appear to be going insane.  It is almost as if we have been cursed with stupidity.  Sadly, this applies from the very top of our society all the way down to the very bottom.  A lot of us find ourselves asking the following question much more frequently these days: “How could they be so stupid?”  Unfortunately, we are witnessing a complete collapse of common sense all over America.  Many people seem to believe that if we could just get Obama out of office or if we could just reform our economic system that our problems as a nation would be solved, but that is simply not true.  Our problems run much deeper than that.  The societal decay that is plaguing our country is very deep and it is everywhere.  We are a nation that is full of people that do not care about others and that just want to do what is right in their own eyes.  We hold ourselves out to the rest of the world as “the greatest nation on earth” and an example that everyone else should follow, and yet our own house is rotting all around us.  The words “crazy”, “insane” and “deluded” are not nearly strong enough to describe our frame of mind as a country.  America has become a sad, delusional old man that can’t even think straight anymore.  The evidence of our mental illness is everywhere.

The following are 20 signs that we are witnessing the complete collapse of common sense in America….

#1 According to Wired Magazine, FBI agents have been taught that they can “bend or suspend the law” as they pursue criminals and terrorists.  But when they break the law they become criminals themselves.

#2 A TSA manager (not just an agent) at Dulles International Airport was recently discovered to be running a prostitution ring out of a local hotel room.  TSA agents have been charged with crime after crime after crime and yet we continue to allow them to be in charge of airport security.

#3 CBS News is reporting that approximately 200 pieces of luggage a day are being stolen by employees at John F. Kennedy International Airport and authorities still have not been able to stop it.

#4 Visitors to the United States must now pay $14 to complete an online form that asks them a series of really bizarre questions.  For example, one of the questions asks visitors to the U.S. if they ever “collaborated with the Nazis”.

#5 The U.S. military is buying huge amounts of electronic parts from China (mistake number one) and a government investigation has uncovered the fact that a large percentage of these parts are counterfeit.  Yet the U.S.military continues to buy huge amounts of electronic parts from China (mistake number two).

#6 A high school senior in Indiana was recently expelled from school for cussing on Twitter.

#7 Police in Chicago apparently believe that our “First Amendment rights can be terminated” at their discretion.

#8 Americans are becoming very cruel to one another.  This is especially true when it comes to the weak and the elderly.  For example, two “caregivers” down in Georgia were recently charged with waterboarding an 89-year-old woman that had been entrusted to their care….

Police charge two caregivers at a Jonesboro facility with waterboarding an 89-year-old woman.

Clayton County police said Jermeller Steed and Cicely Reed held down Anna Foley after an argument that started over ice cream.

#9 An increasing number of American families are taking out student loans in order to pay for their children’s kindergarten tuition.

#10 One town in Massachusetts plans to distribute free condoms to children as young as 12 years of age.

#11 Children in America are exposed to enormous amounts of sexual material on television these days, but we are always so shocked when they try to act out on it.  The following is one very disturbing example that happened recently in Ohio….

Authorities in southwest Ohio have charged a 13-year-old boy with raping a 5-year-old girl at a McDonald’s play area.

The Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office said Monday that the alleged assault occurred Oct. 29 at a McDonald’s in the Cincinnati suburb of Anderson Township. Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Barnett says the girl’s grandmother was nearby in the restaurant at the time.

#12 The following is another example from Indiana of how our sexualized society is affecting our young children….

Fishers police said an 8-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy were caught in a sexual act on a school bus.

The girl’s parents are now trying to determine if the February incident was a rape or molestation.

In a statement, police said a bus aid caught the girl and the boy “trying to have intercourse,” and that the “bus aid immediately separated the juveniles and informed the bus driver.”

#13 According to Natural News, the Michigan state government intends to raid private farms and kill pigs that have “the wrong hair color” even though some of these farmers have been raising these pigs for decades.

#14 An executive order recently updated by the Obama administration would give the federal government complete control over all food, all energy, all health resources, all transportation resources and “all other materials, services, and facilities” at the discretion of Barack Obama.  The wording of the executive order has been changed so that this can now be done even in “non-emergency” situations.  Very few Americans seem concerned by this.

#15 These days many Americans are very hesitant to get involved with helping out anyone else.  For example, an 86-year-old World War II veteran living near Detroit was recently brutally carjacked in broad daylight at a gas station.  He could not walk after the attack because his leg was shattered so he began to crawl across the concrete pavement to get help.  Sadly, many people walked past and drove past as if he was not even there.

#16 At one airport in Hawaii, TSA agents recently required one new mother to go to a public restroom and fill up the empty baby bottles she was carrying with her own breast milk before they would allow her to get on to her flight.  The following is how one local news station described the incident….

She claims agents told her she couldn’t take the pump on the plane because the bottles in her carry-on were empty.

“I asked him if there was a private place I could pump and he said no, you can go in the women’s bathroom. I had to stand in front of the mirrors and the sinks and pump my breast in front of every tourist that walked into that bathroom. I was embarrassed and humiliated and then angry that I was treated this way.

When the bottles were full, she was allowed back on the plane.

#17 Massive brawls have been erupting at Chuck E. Cheese restaurants all over the nation.  Police responded to violence at one particular Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in Pennsylvania 17 times in just one recent 18 month time period.

#18 Thieves in New Jersey have become so desperate for scrap metal that they have started breaking into churches and ripping the copper piping right out of the walls.

#19 Tide detergent has become an alternative form of currency on the streets of America and there has been an epidemic of Tide thefts all over the nation.  The following is from a recent article in The Daily….

Theft of Tide detergent has become so rampant that authorities from New York to Oregon are keeping tabs on the soap spree, and some cities are setting up special task forces to stop it. And retailers like CVS are taking special security precautions to lock down the liquid. 

One Tide taker in West St. Paul, Minn., made off with $25,000 in the product over 15 months before he was busted last year.

“That was unique that he stole so much soap,” said West St. Paul Police Chief Bud Shaver. “The name brand is [all] Tide. Amazing, huh?”

Tide has become a form of currency on the streets. The retail price is steadily high — roughly $10 to $20 a bottle — and it’s a staple in households across socioeconomic classes.

#20 New federal rules will severely restrict the kind of work that children can do on farms in America.  Kids will be banned from doing many of the most basic kinds of farm chores under the new regulations.  Perhaps the children can just sit inside and watch television while the adults do all the work.

As mentioned earlier, what America is experiencing is not just an economic collapse.  The truth is that our entire society is collapsing.

For many years our great prosperity masked much of our decline, but now our great economic strength is rapidly fading and it is becoming very difficult to deny how far we have fallen as a nation.

You can find more examples of how American society is decaying right here and right here.  Anyone with half a brain can see what is happening to the United States.  It really is sad, because America was once a truly great nation.

So is there any hope of a recovery?

Not if we keep going down the same path.

In the end, the choice is up to you America.

Adverts could soon be tailored according to the background noise around you when using your smartphone, if a patent application by Google becomes reality.

The search engine giant has filed for a patent called ‘Advertising based on environmental conditions’.

As that title implies, it’s not just background sounds that could be used to determine what adverts you seen on your mobile phone. The patent also describes using ‘temperature, humidity, light and air composition’ to produced targeted adverts.

Ear we go: Adverts could soon be produced according to environmental conditions such as background noise, if Google's patent becomes reality
Ear we go: Adverts could soon be produced according to environmental conditions such as background noise, if Google’s patent becomes reality
Reaction to the Google patent has been mixed
Reaction to the Google patent has been mixed

The application said: ‘A web browser or search engine located at the user’s site may obtain information on the environment (e.g., temperature, humidity, light, sound, air composition) from sensors.

‘Advertisers may specify that the ads are shown to users whose environmental conditions meet certain criteria.

‘For example, advertisements for air conditioners can be sent to users located at regions having temperatures above a first threshold, while advertisements for winter overcoats can be sent to users located at regions having temperatures below a second threshold.’

Google has come under fire recently with users becoming increasingly concerned about its attitude to privacy and perceived obsession with making money.

Google’s controversial new ‘privacy policy’ allows the search giant to ‘pool’ information from 60 separate services including Gmail, Google Search and Android phones, to create ‘personalised’ advertising.

Google ignored an international outcry to launch its new privacy policy on March 1 this year, despite concerns it may be illegal in the EU, as well as countries such as Japan and South Korea.

European Union authorities said that the new privacy policy appears to violate European law, in an email to Google CEO Larry Page.

A coalition of 50 consumer groups in the UK and the U.S also wrote to Page to protest against the new policy.

Meanwhile, a former Google executive – James Whittaker – even lambasted his former employer in a 1328-word blog attack recently, saying ‘the Google I was passionate about was a technology company – the Google I left was an advertising company’.

For some, the environmental conditions patent reinforces his view.

Naga Saravan Golla wrote on thenextweb.com: ‘That will be really annoying!’ While Wayne Smallman said: ‘What desperation. Google, you’re losing it.’

However, not everyone was concerned.

David Williams wrote on the site: ‘I actually appreciate targeted ads. The point is that ads are always going to be there, so why not make them only things I’m interested in for myself or my company?’

A Google spokesperson said: ‘We file patent applications on a variety of ideas that our employees come up with. Some of those ideas later mature into real products or services, some don’t.

‘Prospective product announcements should not necessarily be inferred from our patent applications.’

CHICAGO (CBS) – A 5-year-old girl jumping on a bed was injured by a bullet early Saturday when a gun beneath the mattress went off, police said.

The incident occurred at about 12:22 a.m. Saturday at a Marquette Park residence in the 6400 block of South Artesian, police news affairs told CBS 2. The child was jumping on a bed when a weapon discharged, apparently from underneath the mattress.

The girl sustained a wound to the ankle, police said. She was taken to Comer Children’s Hospital, the Chicago Fire Department said. No condition report was available, but it was presumed the injury was of a non-life-threatening nature.

The Internet is rapidly being transformed into a Big Brother control grid where privacy rights are being systematically strangled to death.  The control freaks that run things have become absolutely obsessed with watching, tracking, monitoring and recording virtually everything that you do on the Internet.  One thing that you can count on is that nothing you do on the Internet will ever be private again.  In fact, if you are obsessed with privacy then the last place you want to be is on the Internet.  Most Americans have absolutely no idea how far Internet surveillance has advanced in the past few years.  At this point, it would be hard to imagine any place less private than the Internet.  Do not ever put anything on the Internet that you would not want the authorities or your employer to hold you accountable for.  Basically, the Internet is creating a permanent dossier on each one of us, and we contribute to this process by freely posting gigantic volumes of information about ourselves on social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter.  The Internet is the greatest tool for mass communication that the world has perhaps ever seen, and it gives average citizens the ability to communicate with each other like never before, but there is also a downside to using the Internet.  Everything that we do on the Internet is being watched, monitored and recorded and there is no longer any such thing as Internet privacy.  If you think that you still have any privacy on the Internet, then you are either ignorant of what is going on or you are being delusional.

The following are 10 reasons why nothing you do on the Internet will ever be private again….

#1 The Federal Government Can Now Retain Your Internet Activity For Five Years – Even If You Have No Links To Terrorism

In the past, the National Counterterrorism Center could only retain information about you for 180 days if you did not have any links to terrorism.

Well, that has now completely changed.

Attorney General Eric Holder has signed new guidelines which will now allow the National Counterterrorism Center to hold on to your private information (including your Internet activity) for five years.

But an extra four and a half extra years is no big deal, right?

#2 Potential Employers Are Demanding To See Your Internet Activity

In the past, potential employers would pull up the social media profiles of job candidates in order to get a better idea of who they might be hiring.

But now, many potential employers are actually demanding the passwords to the Facebook accounts of job applicants.

The following comes from a recent CBS News report….

The bad news is that employers are increasingly asking job seekers for their Facebook and other social-media passwords as part of the process of vetting them.

While it’s unclear how widespread that practice is, there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that it is happening with increasing frequency, as CBS MoneyWatch’s Suzanne Lucas details. You can, of course, refuse to give a job interviewer your passwords. But expect your employment application to hit the round file, or the trash, if you don’t cooperate.

#3 Law Enforcement Is Watching You

Do you remember the father that posted that “Facebook Parenting for the troubled teen” video that went wildly viral all over the Internet earlier this year?

That video was watched more than 31 million times, but it also resulted in both the police and Child Protective Services officials visiting his home.

So be careful what you post on YouTube.  If you post something that they don’t like, law enforcement personnel may come knocking on your door.

#4 Government Agencies Are Watching You

The FBI, the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. military and the Federal Reserve have all announced plans to systematically monitor social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter.

These agencies have lists of “keywords” that they use to search for posts that they want to look at.

For example, the words “attack”, “exercise” and “epidemic” are just three of the keywords that the Department of Homeland Security is known to use.

So keep that in mind the next time you post something on Facebook or Twitter.

The following is from a recent Salon article….

In 2010, the DHS National Operations Center established a Media Monitoring Capability (MMC).  According to an internal agency document, MMC is tasked with “leveraging news stories, media reports and postings on social media sites… for operationally relevant data, information, analysis, and imagery.”  The definition of operationally relevant data includes “media reports that reflect adversely on DHS and response activities,” “partisan or agenda-driven sites,” and a final category ambiguously labeled “research/studies, etc.”

#5 Barack Obama Is Watching You

The Obama campaign has launched “truth teams” which will be scouring the Internet for any rumors that are “not true” about Barack Obama during the 2012 presidential campaign.

So if you post something on the Internet about Barack Obama that the Obama campaign does not consider to be truthful, there is a good chance that a “truth team” will be examining what you have written.

#6 They Are Monitoring And Recording All Talk Radio (Including Internet Talk Radio)

As I have written about previously, the FBI has hired a company in Virginia to systematically record talk radio programs (including Internet talk radio programs) all over the United States.  The goal of this effort is to collect “potential evidence”, whatever that means.  The following comes from an article by Mark Weaver of WMAL.com….

If you call a radio talk show and get on the air, you might be recorded by the FBI.

The FBI has awarded a $524,927 contract to a Virginia company to record as much radio news and talk programming as it can find on the Internet.

The FBI says it is not playing big brother by policing the airwaves, but rather seeking access to what airs as potential evidence.

#7 Foreign Governments Are Watching You

It isn’t just the U.S. government that is watching you on the Internet.  The truth is that governments all over the world could be monitoring your Internet activity and you may never even know it.

In fact, the level of Internet surveillance in some countries is arguably even greater than it is in the United States.

For example, a new bill that has been introduced in Canada would give government authorities unprecedented power to monitor the Internet activities of Canadians….

The so-called “lawful access” legislation, tabled in the House of Commons Tuesday, will require Internet service providers and cellphone companies to hand over basic customer information — including name, address, phone number, email address, and ISP addresses — to authorities when requested, without the need for a warrant.

Dubbed “online spying” by critics, the bill is also expected to require ISPs and phone companies to install equipment for real-time surveillance and create new police powers designed to obtain access to the surveillance data.

The UK government is going even farther than that.  A recent UK government report calls for ISPs to remove “extremist material” from the Internet.  The following is an excerpt from that report….

The Counter-Terrorism Internet Referral Unit does limited but valuable work in challenging internet service providers to remove violent extremist material where it contravenes the law. We suggest that the Government work with internet service providers in the UK to develop a Code of Conduct committing them to removing violent extremist material, as defined for the purposes of section 3 of the Terrorism Act 2006. Many relevant websites are hosted abroad: the Government should also therefore strive towards greater international cooperation to tackle this issue.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is taking things even farther than that. He recently stated that anyone in France that is caught regularly visiting websites “preaching hatred” will be prosecuted.

So what constitutes “extremist material” and what constitutes “preaching hatred”?

Unfortunately, almost every government on earth has different definitions for those things.

#8 We Are All Being Encouraged To Spy On One Another On The Internet

For the U.S. government, it isn’t enough just to have bureaucrats and spooks spying on you.  Now they want us to spy on one another.

The Department of Homeland Security has been heavily promoting the “See Something, Say Something” campaign.  The idea is that if you see something “suspicious” that you should report it to the authorities.

Unfortunately, the definition of “suspicious activity” has expanded so dramatically in recent years that it could include just about anything.

The paranoia among our leaders has gotten completely out of control.  For example, a while back U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman requested that Google install a “terrorist button” on all Blogger.com blogs so that readers could easily flag “terrorist content” for authorities.

Thankfully nothing like that has been implemented yet, but that is the direction that we are heading as a nation.

#9 Your ISP Is Watching You

Most Americans have not even heard about this yet, but the truth is that starting later on this year your ISP will be spying on you to make sure that you are not downloading any copyrighted material.

SOPA and PIPA may have failed for now, but the Obama administration has brokered a deal between the entertainment industry and the major Internet providers that is absolutely unprecedented.  This deal will go into effect on July 12th.  The following is from a recent Raw Story article….

If you download potentially copyrighted software, videos or music, your Internet service provider (ISP) has been watching, and they’re coming for you.

Specifically, they’re coming for you on Thursday, July 12.

That’s the date when the nation’s largest ISPs will all voluntarily implement a new anti-piracy plan that will engage network operators in the largest digital spying scheme in history, and see some users’ bandwidth completely cut off until they sign an agreement saying they will not download copyrighted materials.

Word of the start date has been largely kept secret since ISPs announced their plans last June. The deal was brokered by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and coordinated by the Obama Administration.

So be careful what you download on the Internet.

Your ISP will be watching.

#10 The NSA Is Watching Everyone And Everything

It is safe to assume that any digital communication that you ever make will be intercepted and monitored by the NSA.

Of course this has been an open secret for years, but now the NSA is taking things to a whole new level.

The NSA has been constructing the largest spy center in the history of the world out in the Utah desert.  The following is how a recent Wired article described this new facility….

Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.”

So please do not assume that anything you do on the Internet will ever be private again.

The online world has now become a world where there is absolutely no privacy.

Some are responding to this new reality by running away from the Internet, but I think that is the wrong approach.

The Internet has broken the monopoly that the elite had on mass communication.  It has given average people the ability to communicate with one another like never before.  A YouTube video or a blog post that you put up today could be seen by tens of millions of people.  Information is power, and the Internet has put a tremendous amount of power into the hands of the general population.

Yes, there will be people watching every single thing you do on the Internet.  So it is important to be very careful.

But the Internet also gives us an opportunity to impact the world that is unlike anything previous generations have ever had.  Something that you post on the Internet today could end up completely changing a life on the other side of the globe tomorrow.  Those in power have begun to recognize how powerful the Internet is, and so they have begun to crack down on it.

It is also important to keep in mind that the Internet allows us to watch them as well.  The Internet is an incredible tool for exposing evil and corruption, and over the past decade we have seen many instances when average people on the Internet have broken major news stories that the mainstream media would not dare touch initially.

In the final analysis, the ability to wake people up and to literally change the world outweighs the risks of being watched.  If the world eventually descends into deep tyranny, you aren’t going to have anywhere to hide even if you are not on the Internet.

Don’t be afraid to stand up for the truth.  It is better to do what is right and to be persecuted for it than to stand aside and do nothing.

The Internet is an awesome tool.  It can be used for great good or for great evil.

If we sit on our hands, we will accomplish nothing.

But if we try, we might just end up changing the world.

Confiscation and Inflation…

Posted: March 25, 2012 in People, Politics, World

 

During the second half of 2011, a lot of people all over the planet started reporting hearing really strange noises coming from the sky.  In some instances the noises produced a loud rumbling such as a train, a thunderstorm or the slamming of a heavy door would make.  In other instances, the noises sounded more like “groaning”.  In yet other instances the noises sounded almost as if a trumpet was playing.  Dozens of videos went up on YouTube purporting to document this phenomenon, but the truth is that you can fake almost anything on a YouTube video and many dismissed these strange “strange sounds” as an Internet hoax.  However, now entire towns in the northern part of the United States are hearing strange noises in the sky and the mainstream media is reporting on it.  In fact, one U.S. town is planning to spend thousands of dollars to hire an engineering firm to investigate where these strange sounds are coming from.  At this point a lot of theories about these strange noises are being floated, but so far scientists have not been able to give us a definitive explanation for the source of these strange noises.  So exactly what in the world is going on?

This phenomenon made national news again this week because of what has been going on in Clintonville, Wisconsin.  Hundreds of residents of Clintonville reported hearing incredibly loud noises coming from the sky for several nights in a row.  Even CBS News is reporting on what is happening in Clintonville….

Since Sunday, the residents have been disturbed by “booming” noises loud enough to wake them from their sleep.

Last night, hundreds of people attended a public meeting to get to the bottom of booms. But they aren’t any closer to the truth.

One resident told CBS News, “The last few days we’ve been having (a) booming shaking noise.”

Another resident said, “(For) a lot of people the house is rattling, you can feel the ground rattling, and it’s booming all the time. It’s kind of like, what’s going on? You don’t know what’s happening.”

So what is causing these noises that are so loud that even the ground is shaking?

According to Fox News, the town has investigated every possible explanation that they can think of for these strange noises….

City officials say they have investigated every possible human cause. They checked water, sewer and gas lines, contacted the military about any exercises in the area, reviewed permits for mining explosives and inspected a dam next to City Hall. They even tested methane levels at the landfill in case the gas was spontaneously exploding.

So far no explanation has been found.  So Clintonville has decided to spend $7,000 to hire an engineering firm to investigate the cause of these strange noises.

According to geologists, the town does not sit on any fault lines and the ground beneath the town is very solid.  Some geologists are claiming that “micro-quakes” could have been responsible, but others find this explanation to be very unsatisfying.

For many town residents, solving the mystery is not as important as getting these strange noises to stop so that they can get some sleep.

The following comes from the recent Fox News article mentioned above….

“My husband thought it was cool, but I don’t think so. This is not a joke,” said Jolene Van Beek, who awoke early Sunday to a loud boom that shook her house. “I don’t know what it is, but I just want it to stop.”

But Clintonville is not the only town in Wisconsin where strange sounds are being reported.

Mysterious noises are also being reported in a town called Montello which is 80 miles away from Clintonville.

Posted below is a local news report that discusses the strange noises that are being reported in Clintonville and Montello….

These strange sounds have made the mainstream news up in Canada as well.

Recently, strange noises caused such a violent shaking that they actually brought down a barn on Vancouver Island in British Columbia.

Geologists say that no earthquake occurred at the time that the barn collapsed.

So what caused the barn to collapse?

That is a very good question.

And this is not just a North American phenomenon.

If you go on to YouTube and you do a search for “strange sounds” or “strange noises” you will find dozens of videos from all over the world.  Yes, there are definitely a few videos that appear to be hoaxes, but is that true with all of them?

The evidence for this phenomenon is mounting and it is getting really hard to deny that there really are large numbers people all over the globe that swear that they are hearing really strange sounds coming from the sky.

So exactly what in the world is going on?

Well, there are a lot of theories floating around on the Internet.  The following are some of the most prominent theories about what is causing these strange noises: electromagnetic noise, earthquakes, “fracking”, rock bursts, venting of high-pressure gas that has been trapped underground, meteor showers, HAARP or directed energy weapons, and some believe that all of this is just a giant publicity stunt.

Perhaps the biggest reason why these strange noises have so many people alarmed is because humans generally have a great fear of the unknown.

If the cause of these strange noises is revealed, the hysteria will die down.

But if these strange noises continue (or even become more intense) and there continues to be no scientific explanation for them, then the hysteria may turn into full-blown panic.

What is clear is that our planet is becoming increasingly unstable.  As I have documented previously, earthquakes are becoming more frequent and more powerful.  The “Ring of Fire” is becoming a lot more active and we have been seeing a disturbing amount of volcanic activity lately.

So could earth changes have anything to do with these strange noises?

We just don’t know at this point.

Most of the time when I write an article I like to have some answers.  But I do not know what is causing these strange sounds.

So what do you think about these strange noises?

Do you believe that you know why they are happening?

Have you heard strange sounds coming from the sky where you live?

Please feel free to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below….


Wired: NSAs New Data Collection Center and Details on Its Public Eavesdropping Capabilites

(Photo: Wired)

In the heart of Utah’s desert, the National Security Agency is well underway on a project that has been called the nation’s largest, most expensive cyber-security project. Naturally, almost all details about the building’s soon-to-be inner activities are highly classified and no one is talking — officials in Bluffdale where it is being built and the nearby Salt Lake City are kept in the dark. Still, Wired’s Threat Level has gotten some details on the building and provides analysis on some of its expected activity.

Wired describes that the building is ironically and “blandly” named the Utah Data Center. When completed in Sept. 2013 it will house four 25,000 square foot halls of servers, among other things. Wired states that the cost for the project is estimated at $2 billion.

Here‘s some of the data center’s purpose:

Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.”

Wired reports that the data center will store trillions of “words and thoughts and whispers” swirling on the Web. It states that “[to] those on the inside, the old adage that NSA stands for Never Say Anything applies more than ever.” In addition to public website data storage, Wired reports that it will seek out and house information on the “deep web:”

“The deep web contains government reports, databases, and other sources of information of high value to DOD and the intelligence community,” according to a 2010 Defense Science Board report. “Alternative tools are needed to find and index data in the deep web … Stealing the classified secrets of a potential adversary is where the [intelligence] community is most comfortable.”

Even with data storage as its publicized purpose, Wired reports that an official involved with the program has said “this is more than just a data center.” It hopes to be the ultimate code-cracking facility:

According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”

Wired reports that the facility’s security system — an antiterrorism protection program — alone costs $10 million. The fence surrounding the building will be able to stop a 15,000 pound vehicle driving at 50 miles per hour. What’s inside that requires protections such as this? Wired has some of the specifications:

Inside, the facility will consist of four 25,000-square-foot halls filled with servers, complete with raised floor space for cables and storage. In addition, there will be more than 900,000 square feet for technical support and administration. The entire site will be self-sustaining, with fuel tanks large enough to power the backup generators for three days in an emergency, water storage with the capability of pumping 1.7 million gallons of liquid per day, as well as a sewage system and massive air-conditioning system to keep all those servers cool. Electricity will come from the center’s own substation built by Rocky Mountain Power to satisfy the 65-megawatt power demand. Such a mammoth amount of energy comes with a mammoth price tag—about $40 million a year, according to one estimate.

Wired: NSAs New Data Collection Center and Details on Its Public Eavesdropping Capabilites

NSA’s data center layout. (Image via Wired)

Wired also includes a former NSA official going on the record for the first time on the secret, domestic spying program Stellar Wind and its role in data communication collection, which when the Bluffdale facility is complete will be stored there. Former senior NSA “crypto-matematician” William Binney, who helped develop NSA’s spying capabilities before leaving in 2001, explains how the NSA deliberately violated the Constitution, which was the reason why he left, in setting up warrentless wiretapping to the extent that they did. Wired reports that much of NSA’s wiretapping practices now were made legal under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008:

Binney says Stellar Wind was far larger than has been publicly disclosed and included not just eavesdropping on domestic phone calls but the inspection of domestic email. At the outset the program recorded 320 million calls a day, he says, which represented about 73 to 80 percent of the total volume of the agency’s worldwide intercepts. The haul only grew from there. According to Binney—who has maintained close contact with agency employees until a few years ago—the taps in the secret rooms dotting the country are actually powered by highly sophisticated software programs that conduct “deep packet inspection,” examining Internet traffic as it passes through the 10-gigabit-per-second cables at the speed of light.

[…]

According to Binney, one of the deepest secrets of the Stellar Wind program—again, never confirmed until now—was that the NSA gained warrantless access to AT&T’s vast trove of domestic and international billing records, detailed information about who called whom in the US and around the world. As of 2007, AT&T had more than 2.8 trillion records housed in a database at its Florham Park, New Jersey, complex.

Verizon was also part of the program, Binney says, and that greatly expanded the volume of calls subject to the agency’s domestic eavesdropping. “That multiplies the call rate by at least a factor of five,” he says. “So you’re over a billion and a half calls a day.” (Spokespeople for Verizon and AT&T said their companies would not comment on matters of national security.)

Wired reports that in order to return to a Constitutional system, Binney suggested an idea for an automated warrant system, instead of “[subverting] the whole process.” When this didn’t happen, Binney told Wired he had hoped reform could be made under the Obama Administration. His idea didn’t take hold again. Where are we at in this country in terms of surveillance and following Constitutional privacy protections? Wired reports Binney saying  “We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state” as he held up his thumb and forefinger close together.

Check out the full story for more details on data collection, NSA’s Utah facility and the encryption-cracking capability it hopes to develop here. The article post on Wired’s Threat Level and the cover story for Wired Magazine was written by James Bamford, author of The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America published in 2009.

This article has been updated since its original posting.

  • Claims he met young Barack who boasted he would someday be president…

Allen Hulton (WND photo)

CHICAGO – Did the parents of former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers help finance Barack Obama’s Harvard education?

Did Ayers’ mother believe Obama was a foreign student?

And was the young Obama convinced at the time – long before he even entered politics – that he was going to become president of the United States?

A retired U.S. Postal Service carrier who delivered mail to Tom and Mary Ayers in a Chicago suburb in the late 1980s and early 1990s and claims to have met Obama in front of the Ayers home emphatically says yes to all three questions.

Allen Hulton, who was commended for 39 years of honorable service with the USPS, has given a sworn affidavit to investigators commissioned by Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio to determine whether Obama is eligible for Arizona’s 2012 election ballot. Hulton has recorded about three hours of video interviews with WND.

Hulton says that in conversations with Mary Ayers while on his route he learned of the couple’s enthusiasm and support for a black foreign student. One bright, warm Chicagoland day, he recounts, he met the student who fit Mary Ayers’ description in front of the Ayers home in Glen Ellyn, Ill. That young man, Hulton is convinced, was Barack Obama.

Hulton delivered mail to the Ayers, who are both deceased, when he was stationed at the post office in Glen Ellyn, an upper-middle class suburb 25 miles west of downtown Chicago, from late 1986 to 1997. He was a USPS employee from March 28, 1962, through March 30, 2001. (Editor’s note: Although the Ayers family no longer lives there, WND is withholding the Glen Ellyn street address for the sake of the current residents’ privacy.)

“It was a beautiful neighborhood – one of the nicer routes any of the letter carriers would have liked to have had,” Hulton recalls. “It had some large and very beautiful homes.”

As WND reported yesterday, Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers – whom he dismissed in a 2008 debate as “just a guy who lives in my neighborhood” – plagued him in the 2008 presidential campaign and could resurface in this year’s election, as many questions remain.

Young Obama

Over a period of years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Hulton estimates he spoke with Mary Ayers about 18 to 20 times and once to Tom Ayers, who died in 2007. Mary Ayers died in 2000.

“Sometimes Mary would be out when I delivered the mail, and we would exchange a few words on occasion,” he says, recalling that she liked to talk about her family.

“One day, Mary came to the door when I came up to the house with the mail,” he remembers. “After a greeting, she started enthusiastically talking to me about this young black student they were helping out, and she referred to him as a foreign student.”

Hulton assumed that by “helping” the student, Mary Ayers meant she and her husband were financially supporting the black foreign-exchange student with his education.

See excerpts of Jerome Corsi’s interviews with Allen Hulton:

http://www.wnd.com/2012/03/postman-ayers-family-put-foreigner-obama-through-school/#ooid=E0ZGg2NDqsd2ZwNHinIhhgXegZkT00X1

http://player.ooyala.com/player.swf?embedCode=E0ZGg2NDqsd2ZwNHinIhhgXegZkT00X1&version=2He says that Mary Ayers told him the student’s name, but that it was a “strange name” that he could not remember, even though at the time it sounded African to him.

“I was taken aback by how enthusiastic she was about him,” Hulton says. “And I believe she said he was from either Kenya or Indonesia, and I favor Indonesia in my recollection.”

WND has reported that when Obama was in Indonesia with his Indonesian stepfather and his mother from ages 6 to10, he was registered in school as an Indonesian citizen and a Muslim. He went by the name Barry Soetoro, adopting the surname of his Indonesian stepfather. His mother’s passport listed him with the surname Soebarkah.

Obama refuses to waive privacy rights that would allow the Hawaii Department of Health to release any adoption records that may exist for him.

NOTE: In case you missed the news conference of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s “Cold Case Posse,” you can view it here.

Even should Obama waive privacy rights, the Hawaii Department of Health might not feel compelled to release any adoption records that may exist. Tight restrictions to vital records have been enacted by the Hawaii State Legislature to seal any public documents pertaining to Obama’s birth records and his adoption status.

If Obama were adopted by his Indonesian stepfather, he may have compromised his eligibility to be president, according to Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution, which requires that a president be a “natural-born citizen,” which experts say means having both parents be U.S. citizens.

‘I’m going to be president of the United States’

About a year after discussing with Mary Ayers the foreign student she and her husband were supporting, Hulton recalls meeting a young black male on the sidewalk in front of the Ayers home.

Hulton describes the man as being in his early 20s, noting that he was tall, thin, had a light complexion and that his ears stuck out.

“He greeted me,” Hulton says. “He was very polite, dressed nicely, but informally – slacks and a dress shirt – and he spoke with no accent. Immediately this young black man entered into conversation with me. He told me he had taken the train out from Chicago and had come to thank the Ayers family personally for having helped him with his education.”

Hulton remembers asking the young man what his plans were for the future.

“He looked right at me and told me he was going to be president of the United States,” Hulton says.

“There was a little bit of a grin on his face when he said it – he sounded sure of himself, but not arrogant. I know how people will say things because they have an ambition, but it did not come across that way,” Hulton says. “It came across as if this young black male was telling me he was going to be president, almost as if it were the statement of a scientific fact that had already been determined, as if his being president had been already pre-arranged.”

Hulton says the claim made him speechless.

“I kind of stuttered a response and said that nowadays anything is possible. I wished him good luck with his ambition,” he says.

Immediately, Hulton associated the young black man with the foreign student Mary Ayers had mentioned to him so enthusiastically about a year earlier.

“I remembered the conversation I had with Mary, and I associated this young man with the foreign student she had discussed with me, because Mary said they were supporting this foreign student, and the young black man I met outside the Ayers’ home said he had come to Glen Ellyn to thank the Ayers in person for helping him with his education.”

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Hulton observed several news reports detailing the relationship between Obama and Bill Ayers, and he recalled the encounter with the young man in front of Tom and Mary Ayers’ home.

“The facial and physical characteristics, as well as candidate Obama’s voice, matched that of the young black male I met in front of the Ayers’ home,” Hulton says in the affidavit he signed Nov. 12, 2011, for Sheriff Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse investigation.

“I am positive that the black male I spoke with in front of the Ayers’ house that day was indeed a young Barack Obama.”

Hulton distinctly recalls that the day he met Obama in front of the Ayers’ residence was a warm, sunny day and that Obama wasn’t wearing a jacket.

Marxist

Hulton recalls that he had one conversation with Tom Ayers, who was retired as CEO and chairman of Commonwealth Edison, shortly after the Ayers family moved into their home in Glen Ellyn.

“He asked me how I liked my job, and he started into what seemed to me a Marxist viewpoint on what it is like for the working man, trying to convince me that working people like me were exploited by their employers,” Hulton remembers of the conversation.

“As an American citizen, I appreciated everything I had, and I was not at war with people who had more than I had,” he says. “It surprised me to hear somebody who had been president of Consolidated Edison talking in these terms.”

Hulton says he got the feeling that Tom Ayers thought he knew more about the plight of the workingman and than he did.

Summer 1989

A likely timeframe for Hulton’s alleged encounter with Obama is the summer of 1989, when Obama was an intern at the Chicago law firm Sidley Austin, after his first year at Harvard Law School.

Hulton says Obama mentioned to him taking the train. The Metra, a commuter from downtown Chicago, stops at a Glen Ellyn station a little more than a mile from the Ayers’ residence.

Michelle Robinson, Obama’s wife-to-be, was the attorney at the firm assigned to mentor Obama in the summer of 1989.

Bernardine Dohrn also had worked as a paralegal at Sidley Austin, from 1984 through 1988. Dohrn’s 1960s radical activities as a self-described “revolutionary communist” landed her on the FBI’s list of 10 most wanted fugitives, and because of her felony conviction, she was not allowed to take the Illinois bar exam.

Widely speculated in Chicago is that Dohrn got the job at Sidley Austin through the influence of her father-in-law, Thomas Ayers, who was one of the law firm’s biggest clients.

Michelle Obama started at the firm in the summer of 1988 and remained there until 1991.

Hulton recalls meeting Dohrn at the home of her in-laws, although his encounters with her were limited to having Dohrn sign for mail addressed to her.

First reported in 2009

Hulton’s account of meeting Obama in suburban Chicago was first reported by California lawyer and political scientist Stephen Diamond in September 2009.

Writing on his blog, Diamond reported that he had interviewed Hulton at length and considered his account credible.

“The statement by Hulton is the first eyewitness account of a possible relationship between Obama and Tom Ayers and the first that dates his relationship with the Ayers family to the mid-1980s,” Diamond wrote.

As early as Oct. 13, 2008, prior to the November 2008 presidential election, Diamond had reported that Obama’s relationship with the Ayers family dated back to 1988. At that time, Obama, as head of the Developing Communities Project, joined the Alliance for Better Chicago Schools, the ABCs Coalition. The lobbying alliance aimed to push through Chicago public schools the creation of “Local School Councils,” or LSCs, to oversee teachers and administrators.

“The proposal was very controversial, and groups like Operation PUSH headed by Jesse Jackson did not support it, because many teachers were black – it was one of the first stable middle class careers a black person, and black women in particular, could aspire to in Chicago,” Diamond wrote.

Tom Ayers and Bill Ayers were strong supporters of the LSCs, however, according to Diamond, and Chicago United, a group founded by Tom Ayers, joined ABCs too. Bill Ayers became chairman of ABCs.

Knew Ayers’ brother

Hulton was in the same class as Tim Ayers, Bill Ayers’ brother, at Glenbard High School in Glen Ellyn. Although he did not know Bill Ayers, Hulton thought he might have met him at the parents’ home once or twice, but he could not say for certain.

Hulton attended Glenbard, now known as Glenbard West, for four years, but did not have enough credits to graduate. He later earned a GED while in military service. Taking leave from the USPS when he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1965, Hulton returned to work as a mailman following his honorable discharge in 1967.

While in the Army, he was assigned to a Pershing Ballistics Missile unit in Germany. Although the Vietnam War was being fought at the time, he was never assigned to Vietnam.

Read the preliminary findings of Sheriff Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse investigation.

Are Smart Appliances Spying on You?

Posted: March 22, 2012 in People
CIA Director David Petraeus admits the government could, and likely would, spy on citizens through their appliances, as “smart home” devices become a market reality.

While discussing an “Internet of things,” Petraeus said household devices with online connectivity will change the notion of secrecy, indicating the rise of these devices will create a fresh wave of privacy concern.

Devices collecting data from a home can potentially watch anything inside it, gathering information that may be stored in the parent company’s server. Such data may be subject to review by regulators, or probes by agencies like the CIA if the user is a person of interest, sparing law enforcement the step of bugging the home, Petraeus said.

“Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters — all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing,” Petraeus said, according to Wired. “The latter now going to cloud computing, in many areas greater and greater supercomputing, and, ultimately, heading to quantum computing.”

Federal laws keep the CIA from spying on just anyone without a warrant or proper judicial procedure. But multiple cases of agencies tracking GPS data without a warrant nudge the boundaries of Fourth Amendment privacy protections, and laws that predate today’s technology could be vaguely interpreted when applied to data residing in a cloud.

Following the theory that home devices would be controlled by a smartphone, the more connected the devices are raises the likelihood that stored information could be prone to search by law enforcement.

Potential pitfalls grow increasingly clear as many tech companies research and experiment with smart home devices. Google is working on getting smartphones to work like remotes for home electronics, using near-field communications, or NFC, technology so devices communicate directly with one another as part of the “Internet of things.”

Other companies support these efforts with their own inventions, like a chip from ARM employs a single grid that helps prolong power for devices across the home, intending to limit overall energy use.

But these next-generation inventions are fraught with potential complications. In California, utility providers hooked up “smart meters” to give hourly reports on home electricity use back to the company to monitor use. But thousands of complaints rolled in, despite energy-saving benefits. The utility company offered customers options to trade the device in for older models, as many expressed concern about the long-term health effects from radio frequencies, though regulators and health experts said risk was minimal.

In this case, consumers uncomfortable with the technology had the chance to get rid of it. As such products become available, consumers interested in trying them out may want to thoroughly understand how the device operates in order to comprehend what types of risks it could pose.

On the other hand, companies producing the device will need to clearly explain how something works and what kind of vulnerabilities it may have, as well as what legal protections surround relevant data.

The smart home concept isn’t far from becoming a reality, a charge no doubt illuminating the imaginations of inventors and engineers looking to take advantage of modern technology for everyday, efficient purposes. But these developments are sure to run into complications with the law and consumer advocates, especially if a home that’s more connected is a home more likely to be monitored

Firearm stocks surge despite anti-gun protests, calls for stricter gun laws following controversial Florida killing

Despite calls for stricter guns laws in response to the shooting of Trayvon Martin, firearm stocks are soaring as gun companies struggle to keep up with high demand.

Shares of Sturm Ruger & Co. (RGR) were up as high as 14 percent Thursday afternoon after CEO Michael Fifer announced the company was temporarily suspending its acceptance of new orders in an effort to meet a dramatic surge in demand for its products.

“Despite the company’s continuing successful efforts to increase production rates, the incoming order rate exceeds our capacity to rapidly fulfill these orders,” Fifer said in the statement late Wednesday.

Ruger received more than a million order requests in the first quarter of 2012.

Shares of rival firearm maker Smith & Wesson (SWHC) were similarly up about 13 percent Thursday — a sign, gun proponents say, that Americans are not swayed by the recent protests.

“I think it’s evidence that no one believes that the ‘stand your ground’ law is flawed or had a role in precipitating this tragedy,” said Michael Hammond, legislative counsel for Gun Owners of America. “Government by lynch mob hasn’t worked particularly well in this country when it’s been employed, and I don’t think it’s going to work now.”

Martin’s killing, which took place in Florida, has sparked controversy over the state’s so-called “stand your ground” law allowing individuals to use lethal force, rather than flee, in threatening situations.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio
Sheriff Joe Arpaio

Rips ‘biggest censorship blackout in the history of the United States’

“America’s toughest sheriff” says there is “tons” more potentially shocking information on Barack Obama in connection with his probe into the president’s eligibility, and he calls the media’s suppression of his findings of a likely forged presidential birth certificate and Selective Service Card “probably the biggest censorship blackout in the history of the United States.”

“I’m not going after the president to keep him off a ballot or anything else, but that could happen,” Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio said. “I’m going at it strictly as a law-enforcement guy investigating a possible forgery and fraud. I’m sticking with that, but I’ll tell you one thing. We got tons of other information that could be very shocking, too, but I’m sticking now with just the [forgery] investigation and possible criminal violations.”

The lawman from Maricopa County made the comments March 16 on a national radio show hosted by Roger Hedgecock. (Scroll down for video.)


As WND reported March 1, Arpaio and his Cold Case Posse announced there is probable cause indicating the documents released by the White House last April purported to be Obama’s original, long-form birth certificate and Selective Service registration card are actually forgeries.

Read the preliminary findings of Sheriff Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse investigation.

He stressed on the radio show his original intent with the posse was to put to rest all the claims suggesting Obama was not meeting the constitutional requirements to hold the presidency.

“I told these guys, ‘I want you to do a good job. I hope we clear the president,’” he explained. “I said give me the microfiche in Hawaii to show that he was born in that hospital. Give us the microfiche. I said that six months ago. And that would clear everything up. But as we went into it with an open mind, now we’re coming to a conclusion that we may have some forged documents revolving around this situation.”

When asked about making an arrest, Arpaio said, “We’re trying to identify any alleged forger. We haven’t done that yet. … I’m not blaming the president, but if they’re forged, someone has to be responsible for doing that.”

The sheriff also said that on Friday, he made a decision about where to send Obama’s Selective Service Card in order to have that agency “help us or do an independent investigation.”

“We have nothing to hide. We’re bringing it to their attention, and see what happens,” Arpaio said. “My problem is, there’s a lot of conflicts out here to get somebody to look into this. [Regarding] the media … this is probably the biggest censorship blackout in the history of the United States. When I go to the toilet, I make it in national news. … I just can’t believe the media, including the cable media blocking this thing out.”

Arpaio did not specify the agency to which he sent his information and request for assistance, and when he was asked by Hedgecock if it were the U.S. Selective Service System, the sheriff responded:

“I guess common sense would be to send it to them. The Selective Service director is appointed by the president. … They only have 136 employees in the whole organization. I presume if I did that, what do you think they’re gonna to do with it? The director [Lawrence Romo] who was appointed from San Antonio, Texas, eight months into the Obama administration, what do you think he’s gonna do? He’s probably gonna call some guy at the White House if he can get up to the chief of staff to ask some advice, and then what are they gonna do? Give it to the attorney general? I don’t know. … So I’m fighting big battles here.”

Arpaio made special note about the issue of Obama’s possibly forged Selective Service Card.

“We had a press conference. A lot of people came. They were snickering, trying to embarrass me, [saying] this is a pony show trying to get publicity,” he said. “However, when we showed the Selective Service Card on the screen, you could hear a pin drop.”

Though Arpaio did not focus on Obama’s Social Security Number at his news conference, WND has also reported the president may be using a fraudulent number, another important piece of information the national news media continue to suppress.

The Arpaio findings are not the only items the media are refusing to cover. As WND reported yesterday, a full-blown cover-up appears to be taking place in connection with WND’s disclosure about a retired U.S. postman who has signed a sworn affidavit suggesting Obama was a foreign-born student who was receiving financial help to go to Harvard from the parents of domestic terrorist Bill Ayers.

Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse began its investigation in August after 250 members of the Surprise, Ariz., Tea Party, presented a signed petition asking him to undertake the investigation. The tea partiers indicated if a forged birth certificate had been used to place Obama on the 2012 Arizona presidential ballot, their rights as Maricopa County voters could be compromised.

NOTE: In case you missed the news conference of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s “Cold Case Posse,” you can view it here.

Then last December, Obama’s Justice Department held its own news conference to claim Arpaio’s office committed civil-rights violations against Hispanics, including racial profiling and heavy-handed immigration patrols based on racially charged complaints.

When asked about that during Friday’s radio show, Arpaio said, “They want to control my organization, [imposing] monitors and everything else. I’m not gonna go for that. So I guess they’ll sue me and we’ll go to court and put the real facts out. The real facts that they’re going to have to come up with including all their so-called witnesses that they won’t identify. They won’t give us anything.”