Fait accompli?

..... an accomplished thing already done: The enemy's defeat was a fait accompli long before the formal surrender. 

Well, we have not surrendered quite yet, but a lot of people are beginning to believe efforts are futile if they want to continue believing in privacy and even democracy at all. PRISM seems to defeat any efforts toward privacy in communications. And so far it looks like democracy on the web is over. Using the simplest software from Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, AOL and Facebook betrays everything you do, say, type, phone, send, record, talk, email, message, what else is there? 
 
PRISM is collecting data on all of us. We know that, and many in the know suggested this a long time before Edward Snowden revealed anything. Bush and Cheney were running the US government when it came into being, of course we suspected foul play. Bush secretly okayed the NSA to do whatever it wanted to do! Using FISA, (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) and then the secret court of FISC. (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court)
Barack Obama has continued and expanded that nefarious role of the POTUS.

So you could have been surveilled, been to court, and convicted of something dreadful already! We said democracy was dead, didn't we? 

As of April 2013, PRISM is said to allow the organisation to "receive" emails, video clips, photos, voice and video calls, social networking details, logins and other data held by a range of US internet firms, namely companies as: Microsoft and its Skype division; Google and its YouTube division; Yahoo; Facebook, AOL, Apple and PalTalk.

So what still isn't known?

Security researcher Ashkan Soltani has posted a blog saying there are still five key unanswered questions about Prism:

• How effective is the "51% test" at preventing US citizens' records being swept up by the NSA?
• Are the tech companies trusted with knowing who the potential targets of the NSA investigations are?
• What systems are in place to ensure NSA officials do not overstep their boundaries?
• Bearing in mind Skype has previously denied making changes to its system to "provide law officers greater access", how are its voice calls being intercepted if indeed they are?
• What steps have been taken to ensure third parties cannot intercept the information? 

Then we are being asked to trust that the info we have already, CAN be trusted. What they are forgetting or at least not acknowledging, is that we NEVER have trusted the US agencies to tell any truths since 9-11.

 

pretty picture, ugly data

One more unanswered question: Whose side is PRISM on?

 

What exactly is PRISM?   -  explained

pgp software download  -  Pretty Good Privacy

conspiracy-theory-microsoft  -  I told you so



 

While we're on the subject ...

VERY important reading. Even if you think you don't care, or you're not doing anything wrong.

This was published by Eric Limer on Gizmodo, 22, June, 2013.  Don't be afraid, read it!

exactly-how-the-NSA-is-getting-away-with-spying-on-us

My Pericles quote on the sidebar is apropo.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Obama's hit list?

They say President Obama has a hit list and those people on it disappear. 
We thought he was Barack Obama until he emerged as George Bush. Seemingly following along in the wake of the Bush/Cheney regime. 
What does all this mean?
Here's an easy conspiracy theory for you. 

Michael Hastings

Journalist Michael Hastings, working for Buzzfeed, wrote a report about General Stanley McChrystal, the Runaway General, commander of NATO's International Security Assistance Force in the Afghanistan war, in which Michael documented the widespread contempt McChrystal and his staff had for civilian officials in the US government. 
The story resulted in the general's forced resignation. Hastings also had much to say about General David Petraeus and his affair with Paula Broadwell as well as his conduct of the war in Iraq. 

He has also written about CIA operatives, killer drones and said he had received death threats from a former member of McChrystal's staff, who allegedly said, 'We'll hunt you down and kill you if we don't like what you write."

Just before he died, he told a friend that the FBI was investigating him. (the FBI denies this)

So one night, about 4:30 am. Michael Hastings aged only 33, died in his Mercedes as it apparently crossed the center line of a road and hit a tree, resulting in a flaming wreck! The car engine was hurled from the car. Hastings body was burned beyond recognition. 

Conspiracy to stop Michael's investigations and shut out the truth?

You decide.


A side note: during the Iraq war, over 47 independent war journalists died. Many of friendly fire or killed in firefights by US mercenary contractors. No so-called embedded reporters died.




addenda: It is just revealed that the NSA can now hack your CAR! I assume through your 'little black box' which is similar to what aircraft have and has your GPS coordinates telling 'someone' exactly where you were and what you were doing, and how fast you were going when you crashed. (EVERY new car now has one) Is this what happened to Michael Hastings? Is this why there was such a horrific fire after the crash of his new Mercedes? To destroy evidence? Hmm.

Shocking huh? 
Black box - Forbes magazine

Your Personal Web

I wanted to tell you about my web browser and how, through managing the settings of it, I hope to have a little privacy on my web meanderings. 
But first ....

We have the huge furor right now of the NSA and other secretive agencies monitoring and reading your private files, searches and web activity. Unless you live on another planet you know about this. You can't call mother-in-law a bitch in an email to your sister without the possibility it could come back to haunt you! Just like she haunts your marriage! 


So because of these NSA scandals, various talking heads, political and even military are saying it ain't so. Reassuring?  No.
Usually, on careful listening, you'll hear these experts tell you they need a court order to listen in to your phone chat. But that court order is obtained from a SECRET court. (FISC) And it may be true, but no reporter I have watched zeros in to the differences between a phone chat and web searches, emails, social media posts, blogs or other internet activity. 
My understanding is that under the Patriot Act, FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the NSA or Homeland Security need NO court order or warrants to read whatever you do on the internet through your web servers. And your ISP, under that post 9/11 law, MUST turn over data to them and CANNOT tell you that you have been inquired about.

[And this makes one wonder if SIRI users are under scrutiny without a warrant to their voice messages because they go to a cloud base for decryption into digital and text before forwarding to the intended recipient. So it is no longer a phone voice message, but text, and subject to peeking without that legality?] 

There are several choke points on the World Wide Web in North America that virtually ALL information travels through. And in virtually all of those points, a certain government agency has installed splitters that siphon off copies of everything going through the web. To and from virtually everywhere in N.A. and beyond.
So your Facebook posts, Tweets, emails, websites, searches and everything else you do while connected are available for scrutiny. This is what the panic is all about from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Verizon, AT&T, et al. These companies have been made to look like they are betraying your privacy. Why? Because their search engines store whatever you search for, and browsers record and store whatever you do on the web. Like where you go. How often, how long you stay there, and perhaps what forms or info you pass into that website. All browsers do it and it remains on their servers.

Is there any hope of keeping your web thoughts and travels private? Maybe a little. So to get back to the settings feature of the Chrome web browser, and others, you CAN change a few settings so the movement of your info is not under automatic review.

In Chrome,  they want you to sign up and sign in to see your page as do Microsoft and Firefox. By having a home page, your interests are revealed as you set it up. I know, you have nothing to be afraid of, you're not a terrorist. But you can use the speed of Chrome without having a home page. Signing up is the usual process of telling them everything. 

Look at the settings in the Chrome browser - 

Sign in - just don't.
On startup - your choice.
Appearances - do you really need a theme eating up bandwidth? The others are your choice.
Search - now we get critical - You can set your preferred search engine here, from Google, Bing, Yahoo, CNN etc. And under Manage Search Engines, you can add any other search you would like to use. Two that are secure, are ixquick, and DuckDuckGo. To add either of these or others to the mix, you need to put in the correct URL for them. These two search engines, simply do not store your search requests, and should they be asked to reveal them, they have nothing to share with anyone who may be interested.  (in contrast, you may have searched two years ago for something on Google and it could be still there!)
The key to a secure website is the https:// instead of the http://.

Users - this goes to whomever you were when you first downloaded and started the browser. In the case of a PC and Apple, your Microsoft Internet Explorer and Safari were already there, with settings. And you should have lied to begin with. Your true information and identity is NOT necessary for you to surf the web. You COULD delete the present user and do a whole new one. A nom de guerre if you like, a safe pseudonym. (But remember that you do have a unique ISP number) However you can change the default settings in MSIE and Safari easily.
Default browser - up to you, might as well be this one if you are making all these changes. 
Privacy - ah, this is the one, look at those buttons. Content Settings are more about cookies. You could disable the setting of cookies but that would be a hassle and slow down everything. Better to instruct your browser on what to do and the search facility NOT to save anything. 
But the buttons below could betray you too, they are probably already checked. Use a web service to resolve navigation errors, you are basically sending out your search requests to a third party, who then CAN save it somewhere. Same with prediction service and automatically send usage statistic to Google. Really?

I only have Enable phishing and malware protection checked.

Passwords and forms - Wow, did you ever fill out a job application on the web? Mmm juicy information probably still on your ISP server!  (if you have your own domain name, you can go to your host and see the info)
Further down we have HTTPS and SSL. And investigation of this one leads to a part where the words authority and trust are used a lot. Well I never trust authority, so you probably need someone smarter to tell you what these actually do. But keep in mind that the programmers who invented all these inherent programs were only trying to help you have a seamless web experience. Nothing nefarious. It's only that others could use the information too. And do.
Google Cloud Print - Well, it seems to me that the whole idea of so called cloud computing has come under suspicion with the latest revelations on surveillance and monitoring. I can't believe that companies trust their private information outside of their own computers, just to use the newest program updates. And companies must now consider that if leaks to media can happen for ideological reasons, then leaks to other companies can happen for money.
System - UNcheck that first box, that says continue running background apps when browser is closed unless you want your computer still doing stuff even when you're back to your FreeCell game.  

So. You're not a terrorist, you have nothing to hide. You're not in the 80% of web users who surf porn. You have no opinion about HSBC laundering crime money. It's only your crazy Uncle Harry who sent you a note that could incriminate you about believing two planes could crash on the same day without leaving crash evidence. And when you searched for IMDB as the Internet Movie DataBase and you typoed BDSM by mistake, you got out of there right away though, didn't you? Well, didn't you?

Wait, you say you joined facebook a year ago? OMG, forget everything above and just go hide under your bed.  Too late for you.

NSA's Utah data center

And none of this will help you if 'they' come looking for you. Maybe give you enough time to get out the back door and halfway down the lane .... Michael Hastings never had a chance.



Try not to scream, you'll wake all those other people who have nothing to hide and are sleeping peacefully.



 

You need to download any of these and install into your browser -

ixquick safe search 

duckduckgo.com

startpage search 

You need to go here to scare yourself -

NSA cyberspying

Utah spy center

Tell Canada to quit spying on you! Sign here ...

secretspying

Conspiracy? No no NSA!

Here's the way some people think. 

The US uses Seal Team VI to go into Pakistan to get Osama bin Laden. They fly in with stealth helicopters, storm the compound and find Osama watching TV and kill him. That's their story and they're sticking to it.
There are pictures of some guy with his back to you placidly watching TV, probably American Idol. The guy in the pic seems to be the same photo double they used a couple of years ago to impersonate bin Laden. Not many people believe the picture was of him then and don't now.
And many believe that if they did get bin Laden in a sneaky raid there would be hundreds of pictures to document the operation. Pictures of the dead terrorist, the house, other rooms with communications tech from what is said to be a Command Center. Maybe even a pic of some of the medical equipment he needed to enable his regular dialysis. 

bin Laden or been wrong again?

Then the stealth team buries the body at sea in another secret operation, to prevent martyrism of the burial site of course. Again no pictures. 

Seal Team VI is celebrated, along with President Obama, for getting the world's most wanted terrorist. Mission accomplished, to use a familiar Presidential line.
Except, that a lot of folks believe President Clinton had already killed Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora several years ago when he sent cruise missiles into the caves the Saudi Prince was supposedly hiding in! 
No one heard or saw a reliable sign of bin Laden since that targeted raid. In spite of the picture of that fat-head guy posing as Osama a few years later when the need to keep the bogey man alive became evident and they tried to make a credible video.  

So now come the revelations about NSA snooping. And we have one family who had a son on Seal Team VI. This family says they criticized the military for the loss of 38 lives and Seal Team VI soldiers (including their son) in a very suspicious helicopter crash in Afghanistan. That criticism resulted in them being targeted and surveilled by NSA. So they are suing the US Government.

The alleged surveillance violated the plaintiffs' right of freedom of association by making them and others weary and fearful of contacting other persons and entities via cell phone out of fear of the misuse of government power and retaliation against these persons and entities who challenge the misuse of government power. To paraphrase the reasons for their lawsuit.

Remember that only your telephone communications need a court order, the Patriot Act already covers your email and other internet activities, without a court order, and in its wisdom, forbids your ISP to even TELL you you have been scrutinized by the NSA, under penalty of law. So Verizon, for instance, HAS to give out information about you while keeping the very inquiry secret from you. 

So haven't we seen this scenario in TV gangster movies hundreds of times? The bad guys get other bad guys to kill someone, then we learn they never trusted the perpetrator bad guys not to eventually talk and so they engineer their deaths too. 
Neat and tidy, dead men don't talk. Or point fingers. Or write books. Or whistleblow. Or testify.

The trouble is they're all supposed to be the good guys!

Sea Change

People change. You go this way, then something happens and you now go that way. This is especially odd in politics. Mostly a lot of people just vote endlessly (aimlessly?) for whatever political bent they embrace. Republicans and Democrats do this a lot in spite of how their chosen government acts in day to day business. They don't see the nuances of right and wrong. Those are sheeple. They don't judge by the action of the day, they have the faith. Misplaced or not. 

But yes there is a huge portion of the voting public who watches the goings on of government and although they might have voted for that party last year, they grow to disagree with the direction of the people they voted for.

This is what I believe is happening to Barack Obama right now. "Yes we can." the famous motto of Barack, has become 'Yes we will', whether you like it or not. 

The first time this change happened to me was during the terrible Gulf of Mexico oil spill. BP (British Petroleum) and CEO Tony Hayward lied continually about what was spilling. Obama was in the news daily but only accepted the desperate PR spin of the BP executives and the inability of the International oil company in stopping the oil for 87 days as it destroyed the sea bed of the Gulf of Mexico. Which may be an expanding dead spot for hundreds of years. No one is inspecting that spill today to see if the rumors are true of it still leaking. 

The problem for me, was that when the TV news media hired speed boats for a closer look at the oil rig, they were kept away at gun point by BP security in gun boats! Because this was not a company issue, but an international incident, I expected that Obama would simply bristle and send in the US Navy with a submersible to look at what was really happening down there. But BP got away with it. 
The most powerful nation on Earth was sent packing. Obama's body language at the time was showing defeat every day. Sort of the same thing that Colin Powell did in the UN before the invasion of Iraq when he declared Saddam Hussein had WMDs! We could all see that he didn't believe in his own words. It was PR directed from the CIA and he was simply chosen as the messenger. 
All during the BP spill I expected Obama to just take over BP oil interests in America because of the lies and damages!  I know, I know, I'm told you can't do things like that. International business etc. But it would only have to be done once, wouldn't it. 
And to top it all off and shove it in our faces, BP was approved to drill more offshore wells! 

So GITMO is still open, and prisoners in Cuba are still known as 'detainees' even though some have been there for six years or longer! Obama promised to close the prison and have the inmates presented in American courts to face democratic justice. What America stands for. And to stop torture, which now goes on in secret facilities off American soil. 'Extraordinary Rendition', it is called, which is the apprehension and transfer of a person abducted from one country and sent to another country which allows torture, for interrogation by US authorities. Started under George Bush and continued under Barack Obama. 
Hard to face but America is no longer a democracy upholding justice. 

So now we have drone warfare going on in the Middle East. Exercised with impunity by America on foreign soil. Which is spreading to North America. Local Sheriffs are beginning to use drones for surveillance and information gathering on US soil! Always with the rider, 'to protect us.'  Will it be long until they are armed too? The question has become, Who are we being protected FROM?

We have had huge banks, too big to fail, get away with ripping off billions of dollars from their depositors. All with impudence and arrogance. HSBC even laundered drug money and knew when they were doing it!  Did anyone go to jail? No. President Obama just takes to the TV screen and speaks in his stentorian voice about the economy or something else. 

This all falls into the argument that the President of the United States, the supposedly most powerful man in the World, has no power whatsoever, and only does as he is told. 

And right now, people all around the world are beginning to rebel against Monsanto. Because of the genetic engineering of food products. Country after country is banning the use of their GMO seeds. And we have the Deputy Director of the FDA, Michael Taylor, a former executive of Monsanto, planning future food safety! And a bill was passed in the US senate, nicknamed the Monsanto Protection Act, which prevents anyone from suing Monsanto because of negative effects of consuming Monsanto grown GMO foods! 

And on and on. And yes we could go on, but it seems to boil down to what we suspected, that someone visits new presidents, and simply tells them what it is going to be, sort of like Tony Soprano walking into your new restaurant and telling you what percentage he will be getting from your daily take. 

Something is not right, we all know it now. But the change is that the Democratic Barack Obama is turning out to be a failure when we hoped for so much more. 
He changed one way, and many of those who voted for him changed another. It's an ebb tide. 


The BP oil spill and the ensuing actions signaled a sea change to corporate superiority over government. 

And the USA IS now a nation in distress .... but nothing a juicy little war wouldn't help.





The only thing constant, is change.

Monsanto 3

Mainstream media coverage? NO!

May 2013. Two million protesters. Rallies and marches held in 436 cities in 52 countries! Still no mainstream news coverage, ask yourself why?




Why not? Isn't this news?

Monsanto Two

UNbelievable ..... You are being cheated by the ones who are supposed to be looking out for you!

These people should be in shame, they are making fools of the rest of us. Keep the groundswell going that is well underway in Europe and Asia.