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Accused ricin mailer J. Everett Dutschke and his group, RoboDrum, of Tupelo, MS, in a contest video shot by Budweiser in St. Louis for a Bud Light beer Battle of the Bands competition.
Watch for the “Enjoy Responsibly” subtitling.
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At GlobalSecurity.Org. Pass it around.
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Corporate kleptocracy systemically hard on the most vulnerable:
The United States has the highest rate of first-day deaths in babies than any other industrialized nation, according to a report released this week by the humanitarian group Save the Children …
Babies born to the poorest mothers are 40 percent more likely to die than babies born to wealthy mothers, said Miles …
The health dangers that poor and minority women face—like a high rate of premature birth and low birth weights—are compounded by the difficulties they have getting high-risk care in the United States, Miles said.
But questions remain about why the United States is in a league of its own for first-day deaths. “We can really only explain about half of the discrepancy,” Miles said, “and more research is needed.”
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Today, Google’s worthless ads for scum ideas, people and products, attached to My Plastic Gun Kills Fascists at Globalsecurity.Org.
And here’s a free prediction.
Three years from now Google Fiber ultimate broadband will not have touched off a renaissance in high speed Internet access here. S— don’t work that way in the United States. You’re not some fool who drinks the daily bathwater, right?
We’ll have slid another few notches in broadband availability and capacity for the average American when compared against other developed nations. But a few cities, or neighborhoods in these cities, will have Fiber because their local bund leaders were most adept at bribing Google.
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Mark Zuckerberg has publicly yearned for more immigrant visas. But only a certain kind of worker need apply. He wants cheaper revolving door programming and development labor in the Silicon Valley. Let’s dispense with the tech propaganda and have a quick look at how his desired knowledge workers compare with other necessary workers in the great state of California.
Zuckerberg, in the pages of the Washington Post, a few weeks ago:
Today’s economy is very different. It is based primarily on knowledge and ideas — resources that are renewable and available to everyone. Unlike oil fields, someone else knowing something doesn’t prevent you from knowing it, too. In fact, the more people who know something, the better educated and trained we all are, the more productive we become, and the better off everyone in our nation can be.
This can change everything. In a knowledge economy, the most important resources are the talented people we educate and attract to our country. A knowledge economy can scale further, create better jobs and provide a higher quality of living for everyone in our nation.
Many people can grasp why this isn’t really true anymore.
In a global knowledge economy everyone knowing the same thing around the world has and does disempower huge classes of people who helped pay for the invention, development and deployment of the network that distributes it worldwide.
And how this is done is easy to see.
Where the cost of living is high, as it is in the United States relative to China or India or somewhere else, the knowledge the American workers possess — even though it may be the same as those in other countries — is more costly to employ.
Therefore, the value of our knowledge in body has crashed, even though it is the same as elsewhere. It is uncompetitive not because of lack or inferiority, but because of where we live.
And this is really what Mark Zuckerberg and others like him are about. They want cheaper educated labor, always.
However, Mark Zuckerberg is not even particularly accurate in terms of the needs of the United States. He overlooks one of the giant engines of the California economy because it just doesn’t contain the kind of people who are of any consequence to his wealth or business.
Take this bit, written by ex-California Arnold Schwarzenegger, the same week:
The [state of California] produces more than half of the fruits, nuts and vegetables grown in the U.S., with an output of $43.5 billion last year. Californians don’t rely just on the food produced by the state’s farms; they rely on the revenue and the jobs too. Agriculture employs more than 1.5 million people in California.
And who are many of these people employed in the California field, many more than employed in the Silicon Valley?
Well, they’re the brown people without the legal smartypants visas meritocratic KnowledgeStan’s Mark Zuckerbergs want. And these agricultural knowledge workers do not earn top dollar. No one in powerful American giant business stands for them in the Washington Post although it is easy to find those who hate on them. But they cannot be dispensed with, like lots of other American workers with knowledge who are deemed too expensive to employ because you still need people to go into the fields and do s— while being sprayed by crop dusters.
Silicon Valley software, programming genius, social networking, the cloud, Big Data and my new favorite phrase — “the Internet of things” — can’t eliminate the need for their work in this country.
But did you know Mark Zuckerberg and his wife solved the world problem of organ donation, just over a couple glasses of posh wine?
Of course you did. Everyone knows that!
Oh, wait. Oops! Never mind.
Then there’s the fellow who almost was able to wipe out measles and mumps. Nobody remembers his name.
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Selected from the personalized junk and pro charlatan advertising provided by Facebook’s Open Graph algorithms.
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The Obama administration on Monday explicitly accused China’s military of mounting attacks on American government computer systems and defense contractors, saying one motive could be to map “military capabilities that could be exploited during a crisis.???
While some recent estimates have more than 90 percent of cyberespionage in the United States originating in China, the accusations relayed in the Pentagon’s annual report to Congress on Chinese military capabilities were remarkable in their directness. Until now the administration avoided directly accusing both the Chinese government and the People’s Liberation Army of using cyberweapons against the United States in a deliberate, government-developed strategy to steal intellectual property and gain strategic advantage.
“In 2012, numerous computer systems around the world, including those owned by the U.S. government, continued to be targeted for intrusions, some of which appear to be attributable directly to the Chinese government and military,??? the nearly 100-page report said.
The report, released Monday, described China’s primary goal as stealing industrial technology, but said many intrusions also seemed aimed at obtaining insights into American policy makers’ thinking. It warned that the same information-gathering could easily be used for “building a picture of U.S. network defense networks, logistics, and related military capabilities that could be exploited during a crisis.???
The Pentagon report is here.
Whether or not these Pentagon statements on Chinese cyberespionage are “remarkable in their directness,” as New York Times reporter David Sanger writes, is open to interpretation.
Chinese cyberwar/cyberespionage capabilities comprise somewhat less than two pages in the entire thing. More space is devoted to China’s conventional warfare capabilities and hardware, its ballistic missiles programs, it’s preliminary moves into aircraft carrier aviation through the refurbishment and equipping of the old Varyag — now renamed the Liaoning, its naval modernization and other subjects.
In fact, the Pentagon can say little about Chinese cyberespionage other than it exists and much material, from the US private sector devoted to supporting the US military, is being copied.
What benefit this has been the Pentagon does not know and cannot or will not say. No one knows. It’s impossible to put a finger on the value of it to China, or precisely what losses this country directly suffers. It is an argument that has no meaning for the majority of Americans, something only the top most cares about.
And that’s because they can only be made to care about things they suspect may make them slightly less wealthy.
In terms of what’s actually happening, for example, China has not made any obvious great leap in generating a carrier battlegroup-centered navy.
On the other hand, we certainly do know that the US private sector, our multi-national corporations, are intimately involved in business relations with China.
Indeed, it is safe to say that the strapped American middle class would have next to nothing if all its household consumer electronics and dry goods of Chinese origin were taken away.
If, for example, Chinese cyberwarriors are stealing Apple’s secrets, what does it matter? Is Apple stopping its majority manufacturing through China?
America’s electric guitar and rock amplifier companies make the majority of their mainstream goods in China. If Chinese cyberwarriors have stolen plans from Fender Musical Instruments or many other American companies, so?
The entire American industry of pop music instrumentation manufacturing, excepting custom shop artisan work, was sent to China to increase profit margins and decrease labor costs.
American business ceded its property to the Chinese industrial base for immediate profit in pursuit of the very cheapest unprotected manpower. This was long before Chinese espionage became an issue the national security megaplex decided to exploit for the purpose of parasitic rent-seeking.
Who are you going to find on the street who cares if Chinese cyberwarriors from a building in Shanghai are into American businesses? They’ve already lost their jobs or much of their earning power. And their access to the Internet is a smartphone made in China.
Take a day off from the memes. Corporate America isn’t hiring, haven’t you heard? It’s not because of mass Chinese cyber-spying.
One last figure, furnished to again put Chinese cyberespionage/cyberwar efforts in perspective, as they relate to the American experience …
You can really tell how Chinese cyberespionage/cyberwar is taking away our futures, right?
National cyberdisaster described in less than 120 words: We’ll lose power, then we’ll drown:
U.S. intelligence agencies traced a recent cyber intrusion into a sensitive infrastructure database to the Chinese government or military cyber warriors, according to U.S. officials.
The compromise of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ National Inventory of Dams (NID) is raising new concerns that China is preparing to conduct a future cyber attack against the national electrical power grid, including the growing percentage of electricity produced by hydroelectric dams …
The database contains sensitive information on vulnerabilities of every major dam in the United States. There are around 8,100 major dams across waterways in the United States.
Since this incident there has been a growing realisation that various elements of a critical national infrastructure are similarly vulnerable. They use similar, if not identical, embedded computer systems as were used at Natanz. The initial thought was one of defending the realm against foreign aggressors. After all, it was an obvious way to cripple a country without firing a physical shot. Why launch missiles if you can switch out the lights and turn off the water. It’s cheaper too. So much so that this form of attack has become a great leveller, allowing small nations to potentially punch well above their weight.
The same guy, in the Irish Times:
The North Koreans have been blamed for interrupting websites run in South Korea by banks, newspapers and TV companies in “a show and tell??? warning about what they are capable of during a conflict, warns Sally Leivesley of Newrisk. The South Koreans have taken the warning seriously, upgrading security at their nuclear plants – including disabling every USB port in every computer at the plants lest they be used to breach defences.
States initially used internet hacking for espionage, or intellectual property thefts, but warns Prof Woodward, they are using it for “aggressive??? attacks: “This is the cool war, as some people have put it, not the cold war. Why invest in bombs and bullets when, potentially, in a shooting match you can turn out the lights, turn off the water. Some countries are really punching above their weight. They don’t need a huge nuclear weapons programme.???
Some yob nobody knows at the Huffington Post:
Cyber terrorism. Terrorist groups and states will make use of cyber-war tactics, though government will focus on information-gathering than outright destruction. Stealing trade secrets, accessing classified information, infiltrating government systems, disseminating misinformation — traditional intelligence agency ploys — will make up the bulk of cyber-attacks between states.
Virtual statecraft. States will be wistful for the simpler days of foreign and domestic policy. Power in the physical world is no assurance of power in the digital world. This disparity presents opportunities for small states looking to punch above their weight …
Cyberwar allows small nations to punch above weight — brainless new received wisdom.
Usage: North Korea was really punching above its weight when it quietly took its missile off the launch platform this week turned off all the electricity in Los Angeles County with a secret cyberattack.
From the New York Times, a few weeks ago, on the White House collecting the wealthiest and most infamous CEOs from the companies that have profited immensely in the last three years, to talk about cyberwar:
The difficulty of deterring such [Iranian cyber attacks] was also the focus of a White House meeting this month with Mr. Obama and business leaders, including the chief executives Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase; Brian T. Moynihan of Bank of America; Rex W. Tillerson of Exxon Mobil; Randall L. Stephenson of AT&T and others.
Mr. Obama’s goal was to erode the business community’s intense opposition to federal legislation that would give the government oversight of how companies protect “critical infrastructure,??? like banking systems and energy and cellphone networks. That opposition killed a bill last year, prompting Mr. Obama to sign an executive order promoting increased information-sharing with businesses.
“But I think we heard a new tone at this latest meeting,??? an Obama aide said later. “Six months of unrelenting attacks have changed some views.???
Unrelenting attacks, in this case, meaning making banking websites occasionally run more slowly.
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The now infamous Cody Wilson successfully fired a 3D printed plastic pistol one time by hand, without maiming himself. The tech press went wild.
From Forbes, Wilson’s intellectually flimsy rationalization for making what is called the “Liberator:”
“[Cody Wilson] prefers to think of his Liberator in the same terms as its namesake, the one built for distribution to resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied countries in the 1940s. That plan was conceived in part as a psychological operation aimed at lowering the occupying forces’ morale, Wilson says, and he believes his project will strike a similar symbolic blow against governments around the world. ‘The enemy took notice that weapons were being dropped from the sky,’ he says. ‘Our execution will be better. We have the Internet.’ “
The journalist doesn’t even blink.
A claim that one is symbolically and virtually making a plastic gun available to those who wish to rise up against dictatorship worldwide doesn’t hold much water. The expense (at least $8k for what is Wilson’s used 3D printer) makes it so that’s not achievable. The people in such nations tend toward the poverty stricken.
Wilson is also ignorant of history but perhaps this is a sham for publicity purposes.
Anyone even slightly familiar with WWII history knows how the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS dealt with armed resistance, partisans and uprisings, which had much more than plastic guns.
As for current belief in the efficacy of a 3D plastic gun in enabling overthrow, one considers the current case of Syria, or Libya.
It’s Wilson’s career to foster this eyewash because he depends on philanthropic Bitcoin donation from other like-minded, very white, very libertarian, very right-wing nuisances with plenty of disposable income.
We can thank the NYT tech journalist who publicized Wilson to the greatest effect last year, making much of his work much easier to fulfill.
[At] Secrecy Blog, Steve Aftergood has mounted a Congressional Research Service report entitled “The U.S. Income Distribution and Mobility: Trends and International Comparisons.???
“Based on the limited data that are comparable among nations, the U.S. income distribution appears to be among the most unequal of all major industrialized countries … Empirical analyses estimate that the United States is a comparatively immobile society,??? it reads.
Obviously, we have offsetting benefits. Like a geek and supporters who will bring us a “redoubt??? of 3-D plastic gun manufacturing.
Disruptive technology is giving us such innovation, progress and collective and individual empowerment … God bless the USA.
Does this look like someone who could destroy anything?
Nugent called President Barack Obama a “bad, bad man??? and Attorney General Eric Holder a “gun runner??? … “[If] if you dare attempt to argue with me about my right to self-defense, I will just have to destroy you,??? he said as the NRA crowd cheered again.
Getting old ain’t for sissies, as the saying goes. If you ever saw what Ol’ Shredded Wheat used to look like in person, you’d laugh too.
From loin cloth to the guy who gets punked by kids putting a burning paper bag full of excrement on his porch at Halloween.
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