Israeli defence minister says he is 'not responsible' for lives of Iranian nuclear scientists following historic US-Iran deal

The Independent

Israel’s Defence Minister has appeared to imply that his country is prepared to assassinate Iran’s nuclear scientists following a historic deal with the West.

Moshe Ya’alon, the former chief of staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, gave a damning assessment of the nuclear agreement between Iran and a number of western nations in an interview with German newspaper Der Spiegel.

The 65-year-old minister condemned the deal, reportedly telling the newspaper “ultimately it is very clear, one way or another; Iran’s nuclear programme must be stopped.”

Asked whether Iran would see further deaths of its nuclear scientists, he allegedly told the newspaper: "We should be ready to defend ourselves. I’m not responsible for the lives of Iranian scientists."

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"Orwellian" FBI Says Citizens Should Have No Secrets That The Government Can't Access

J.D. Heynes
NaturalNews.com 

The police and surveillance state predicted in the forward-looking 1940s classic “1984” by George Orwell, has slowly, but steadily, come to fruition. However, like a frog sitting idly in a pan of steadily-warming water, too many Americans still seem unaware that the slow boil of big government is killing their constitutional liberties.

The latest sign of this stealth takeover of civil rights and freedom was epitomized in recent Senate testimony by FBI Director James Comey, who voiced his objections to civilian use of encryption to protect personal data – information the government has no automatic right to obtain.

As reported by The New American, Comey testified that he believes the government’s spy and law enforcement agencies should have unfettered access to everything Americans may store or send in electronic format: On computer hard drives, in so-called i-clouds, in email and in text messaging – for our own safety and protection. Like many in government today, Comey believes that national security is more important than constitutional privacy protections or, apparently, due process. After all, aren’t criminals the only ones who really have anything to hide?

In testimony before a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee entitled “Going Dark: Encryption, Technology, and the Balance Between Public Safety and Privacy” Comey said that in order to stay one step ahead of terrorists, as well as international and domestic criminals, Uncle Sam’s various spy and law enforcement agencies should have access to available technology used to de-encrypt protected data. Also, he believes the government should be the final arbiter deciding when decryption is necessary.

What could go wrong there?

Government, at all levels, is responsible

During the hearing, TNA reported, technology experts warned the panel that giving the FBI limitless access to the personal electronic data of Americans would open it up to exploitation by “bad actors.” But Comey was having none of that.

“It is clear that governments across the world, including those of our closest allies, recognize the serious public safety risks if criminals can plan and undertake illegal acts without fear of detection,” he told the committee.

“Are we comfortable with technical design decisions that result in barriers to obtaining evidence of a crime?”

So, in essence, Comey – like many before him, especially since the global war on terror was launched – believes that, in the name of national security Americans ought to give up more of their individual and constitutional rights because that’s the only way we can be adequately protected.

Perhaps realizing that his Senate hearing testimony was public, Comey gave the Constitution a passing glance, noting that the government should respect the “requirements and safeguards of the laws” and the country’s founding document. However, as Americans now know, spy agencies during the past two presidential administrations have been tasked increasingly with conducting warrantless, unchecked surveillance of Americans’ electronic data and communications.

But all of this is not on men like Comey and Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Congress bears its share of responsibility, too.

This is the way it is – shut up and take it

When such activities of the National Security Agency were exposed in 2013 by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, many in the media and among the American electorate were quick to blame the agency, as if it was somehow acting out of rogue instinct.

The reality is, however, that the agency is tasked to perform its duties– either by statutory law (think the USA Patriot Act) or by presidential directive (think Bush’s order after 9/11 to conduct warrantless surveillance).

“We are not asking to expand the government’s surveillance authority, but rather we are asking to ensure that we can continue to obtain electronic information and evidence pursuant to the legal authority that Congress has provided to us to keep America safe,” Comey said during the Senate hearing.

What does all this mean? It simply means that at every level, government considers its own citizens hostile.

Oh, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

Illegal settler threatens to kill international activists

On Sunday the 26th, Israeli settlers gathered at the end of Hebrons occupied Shuhada Street, preparing to go on a march through the H1 area, which is the Palestinian administrated part of the city. Three international activists were present, documenting the behavior of the settlers and Israeli soldiers. At one point a settler walked up to the activist, and openly issued threats on their lives, telling them “Remember this face, because it will be the last thing you see on this earth” and “I am going to find each and every one of you”. This is not the first time that settlers has threatened the safety of international activists, and activist has in the past been subjected to severe physical attacks and harassment from settlers.

Citigroup’s Unchecked Crime Wave Proves that America Is Headed in the Wrong Direction

Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Wall Street On Parade


Citigroup, the bank that played a central role in bringing America to its knees in 2008; received the largest taxpayer bailout in the history of finance to resuscitate its insolvent carcass; pleaded guilty to a felony count of rigging foreign currency trading in May and was put on a three year probation – is now under a string of criminal and civil investigations.

On August 3, Citigroup filed its quarterly report (10Q) with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Instead of reporting a pristine slate free of transgressions as one would expect from a felon on probation, Citigroup reported that it had settled allegations of money laundering with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Commissioner of the California Department of Business Oversight involving its Banamex USA unit. The bank was, as typical, able to pay a penalty of $140 million and avoid an admission of guilt.

What Citigroup did not report on its 10Q is that it is also under another criminal money laundering probe by the Justice Department for its Mexican-based Banamex unit, according to a Bloomberg Business report. On July 24, Bloomberg reported the following:

“The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether Citigroup Inc. let customers move illicit cash through its Mexico unit, setting the bank’s biggest international operation in the path of an expanding money-laundering probe.”

Publicly-traded companies are required to report material information to investors. Citigroup’s 10Q was filed on August 3 while the Bloomberg report was filed 10 days earlier, indicating that subpoenas had been issued to the company. Why Citigroup did not report the new investigation is unknown. Citigroup has a serial history of money laundering allegations, as Wall Street On Parade reported in 2013.

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Only Six Days After Starting Cannabis Oil, This Little Girl’s Leukemia Went into Remission

Free Thought Project

Diagnosed with cancer at the age of seven, Mykayla Comstock was declared in remission of T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia three years ago yesterday. Although her family credits cannabis for saving Mykayla’s life and cannabis has been shown to kill cancer cells in the laboratory, the FDA still refuses to approve cannabis as a cancer treatment.

Three years ago, Mykayla began showing symptoms, including a hacking cough, body aches, fever, night sweats, and a rash across her legs. Suspecting Mykayla had strep throat, her doctor placed her on antibiotics, but her health continued to deteriorate. A second doctor found a large mass in her chest pressing against her internal organs. After enduring spinal taps and bone marrow biopsies, she was diagnosed with aggressive T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

To treat the symptoms of her daughter’s chemotherapy, such as nausea, loss of appetite, and restlessness, Mykayla’s mother, Erin Purchase, started giving her a gram of cannabis oil each day. Mykayla usually ingests the cannabis either in a pill form or a brownie baked with marijuana-laced butter.

Under Oregon law, pediatric cancer patients are allowed to treat the symptoms of cancer and the side effects of chemotherapy with medical marijuana if the children have parental consent and a doctor’s approval. Although her father, Jesse Comstock, is concerned about the long-term effects of cannabis on his daughter, Mykayla’s mother credits the plant for helping to save her daughter’s life.

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We don't need more optimists: Unchecked positive thinking is more dangerous than it sounds

Scott Timberg
Salon via sott.net

From The Secret to destructive management theories, unbridled optimism is just another way to ignore real issues.

Depending on how you look at it, the mood in the United States of late has been either an overdue stock-taking — as we reckon with issues like racism, rape culture, runaway law enforcement and out-of-control income inequality — or relentlessly grim. Surely, unrelieved despair — either personally or more broadly, socially — can lead to paralysis. But despite a big Sunday Review cover piece in the New York Times, We Need Optimists, extolling the virtues of positive thinking, that habit without reflection can be just as dangerous, especially in our leadership.

As a society we don't have a whole lot of patience for skeptics or even realists — our politics and popular culture has been dominated by people who tell us what we want to hear. Arthur C. Brooks, president of the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute, argues that we need more of that positive thinking. His Times story lists some indicators of our current dour state. "In 2014," he writes, "a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll revealed that 76 percent of Americans did not feel confident that 'life for our children's generation will be better than it has been for us.' This is 10 percentage points worse than the poll had ever recorded." If you're one of the millions of Americans who feels these pressures — who sees the promise dying — this might be reason to try to identity the problems or work toward fixing this slide. Brooks, instead, blames "our politicians' choosing the dark side. More than half of Americans said that our last presidential election was too negative, and complaints about the destructive, ad hominem discourse that dominates Washington have become a national cliché."

Is our political sphere too negative? Sure, especially with the harsh noises in the reactionary echo-chamber. But it's a symptom of a society that's lost its direction, not a cause. If you want optimism, there are plenty of ways to find it — DVDs, motivational speakers, inspirational courses, churches begging for your money and promising riches. Here's Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of an excellent book on the perils of optimism, Bright-Sided, which looks at the dangers both personally and politically:

But the question, before you whip out your credit card or start reciting your personal list of affirmations, is, What makes you think unsullied optimism is such a good idea? Americans have long prided themselves on being positive and optimistic — traits that reached a manic zenith in the early years of this millennium. Iraq would be a cakewalk! The Dow would reach 36,000! Housing prices could never decline! Optimism was not only patriotic but was also a Christian virtue, or so we learned from the proliferating preachers of the "prosperity gospel," whose God wants to "prosper" you. In 2006, the runaway bestseller "The Secret" promised that you could have anything you wanted, anything at all, simply by using your mental powers to "attract" it. The poor listened to upbeat preachers like Joel Osteen and took out subprime mortgages. The rich paid for seminars led by motivational speakers like Tony Robbins and repackaged those mortgages into securities sold around the world.

One of the interesting things Ehrenreich describes in Bright-Sided, which is subtitled How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, is the origins of American optimism. While we typically assume that optimism and the U.S.A. have walked hand in hand from the beginning, the country was founded by Puritans, and it remained Calvinist — with its emphasis on depravity and sin — well into the 19th century. American optimism as necessary to pull away from all of that, but the happy talk got commodified, absorbed into corporate culture, and ratified through management theory — a strategy to keep powerless workers docile by pumping false hope through the office vents. There's no question Brooks has a point that the nation needs to look forward. But despite some nods to things like optimistic bias, he ignores the larger context. The psychologist Gabriele Oettingen has done important research on the subject of positive thinking, and she's found that it's a very mixed bag. Yes, cheery optimism can help sooth us, but it can also make us think we've already satisfied our goals even when we haven't. "Positive thinking is pleasurable," she writes, "but that doesn't mean it's good for us. Like so much in life, attaining goals requires a balanced and moderate approach, neither dwelling on the downsides nor a forced jumping for joy."

American society can't give in to despair. But we've got a lot of work to do — and we need a sober, hard-headed realism about our accomplishments and failings, not empty cheerleading. 

The 7/7 London Bombings

James Robertson
Crimes of Empire

The London Bombings of July 7th, 2005.

Almost all of the evidence presented here is a distilled version of Tom Secker’s authoritative work Secrets, Spies and 7/7 the most comprehensive account of these events that was available and for which I am immensely grateful and heavily indebted.

Covert MI5 Recording of 21st February 2004.

“Mohammed Sidique Khan: Are you really a terrorist eh?

Omar Khyam: They’re working with us.

Mohammed Sidique Khan: You’re serious, you are basically…

Omar Khyam: No I’m not a terrorist but they are working through us.”

An Historical Context – Within the War on Terror.

On July 7th , 2005 the public transport system in London was struck by a number of explosions that killed 56 people and wounded hundreds more causing the largest single loss of life in Britain since World War 2.

The July 7th bombings formed and continue to form a key part of the War on Terror narrative. Of the dozens, indeed hundreds of mass casualty attacks attributed to the “al Qaeda” synthetic terror outfit in the first decade of the 21st century the London attacks along with the 911 events, the Bali bombings, the Madrid attack of 2004 and the Mumbai massacre of 2008 stand out as the “iconic” attacks that are still utilised to promote the War on Terror narrative of foreign wars and the domestic police state  whilst many other massacres such as the attack in Djerba, Tunisia in March 2002, and the series of blasts that struck Istanbul in late 2003 have been largely forgotten.

Historian Webster Tarpley in his 2004 work “911 Synthetic Terror Made in the USA”” provides an analysis of the phenomenon of modern terrorism that explains why all events of world changing political violence should be subjected to intense scrutiny.

“We start from the strong presumption that terrorism is therefore an activity which is controlled by a faction of government, probably acting under the influence of financier factions which are generally the ultimate source of authority in the globalized universe after 1991. Terrorism cannot be described as a spontaneous sociological phenomenon, as the old saying goes – it must rather be seen as a phenomenon developed by sociologists, along with psychologists, profilers, psychiatrists, case officers, handlers, and cut-outs. For every terrorist and terrorist group in the field, an extensive bureaucratic support system is necessary. Spontaneous combustion is the last thing that should be expected.”
9/11 SYNTHETIC TERRORISM MADE IN USA page 57.

The next time you hear the British Prime Minister David Cameron refer to the supposed threat from non-violent extremists, a farcical and meaningless category, it might be worth asking this question.

If everything about the 7/7 attacks is as they have claimed why are the British establishment not simply content to win every debate on the subject?

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The Genesis Engine - We now have the power to quickly and easily alter DNA ...

Subscribe to WIRED Photo by: Richard Mosse 

 

Wired.com

Spiny grass and scraggly pines creep amid the arts-and-crafts buildings of the Asilomar Conference Grounds, 100 acres of dune where California's Monterey Peninsula hammerheads into the Pacific. It's a rugged landscape, designed to inspire people to contemplate their evolving place on Earth. So it was natural that 140 scientists gathered here in 1975 for an unprecedented conference.

They were worried about what people called “recombinant DNA,” the manipulation of the source code of life. It had been just 22 years since James Watson, Francis Crick, and Rosalind Franklin described what DNA was—deoxyribonucleic acid, four different structures called bases stuck to a backbone of sugar and phosphate, in sequences thousands of bases long. DNA is what genes are made of, and genes are the basis of heredity.

Preeminent genetic researchers like David Baltimore, then at MIT, went to Asilomar to grapple with the implications of being able to decrypt and reorder genes. It was a God-like power—to plug genes from one living thing into another. Used wisely, it had the potential to save millions of lives. But the scientists also knew their creations might slip out of their control. They wanted to consider what ought to be off-limits.

By 1975, other fields of science—like physics—were subject to broad restrictions. Hardly anyone was allowed to work on atomic bombs, say. But biology was different. Biologists still let the winding road of research guide their steps. On occasion, regulatory bodies had acted retrospectively—after Nuremberg, Tuskegee, and the human radiation experiments, external enforcement entities had told biologists they weren't allowed to do that bad thing again. Asilomar, though, was about establishing prospective guidelines, a remarkably open and forward-thinking move.

At the end of the meeting, Baltimore and four other molecular biologists stayed up all night writing a consensus statement. They laid out ways to isolate potentially dangerous experiments and determined that cloning or otherwise messing with dangerous pathogens should be off-limits. A few attendees fretted about the idea of modifications of the human “germ line”—changes that would be passed on from one generation to the next—but most thought that was so far off as to be unrealistic. Engineering microbes was hard enough. The rules the Asilomar scientists hoped biology would follow didn't look much further ahead than ideas and proposals already on their desks.

Earlier this year, Baltimore joined 17 other researchers for another California conference, this one at the Carneros Inn in Napa Valley. “It was a feeling of déjà vu,” Baltimore says. There he was again, gathered with some of the smartest scientists on earth to talk about the implications of genome engineering.

The stakes, however, have changed.

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8 Financial Experts That Are Warning That A Great Financial Crisis Is Imminent

Michael Snyder
Economic Collapse Blog

Will there be a financial collapse in the United States before the end of 2015?  An increasing number of respected financial experts are now warning that we are right on the verge of another great economic crisis.  Of course that doesn’t mean that it will happen.  Experts have been wrong before.  But without a doubt, red flags are popping up all over the place and things are lining up in textbook fashion for a new financial crisis.  As I write this article, U.S. stocks have declined four days in a row, the Dow is down more than 750 points from the peak of the market in May, and one out of every five U.S. stocks is already in a bear market.  I fully expect the next several months to be extremely chaotic, and I am far from alone.  The following are 8 financial experts that are warning that a great financial crisis is imminent…

#1 During one recent interview, Doug Casey stated that we are heading for “a catastrophe of historic proportions”…

“With these stupid governments printing trillions and trillions of new currency units,” says investor Doug Casey, “it’s building up to a catastrophe of historic proportions.”
Doug Casey, a wildly successful investor who’s the head of the outfit Casey Research, is predicting doom and gloom for the global economy.
“I wouldn’t keep significant capital in banks,” he told Reason magazine Editor-in-Chief Matt Welch. “Most of the banks in the world are bankrupt.”

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Edward Heath sex abuse claims: Four police forces now investigating former Tory Prime Minister

Comment: Like Brittan, this guy has been a known Establishment child rapist, paedophile and pederast for decades. It's all very convenient when an "investigation" takes place when most of these people are dead. 

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

The Independent 

Four police forces are now investigating former Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath for his alleged involvement in historic child sex abuse. 

The Met Police has reportedly also been investigating the late Tory politician for six months as part of the Operation Midland inquiry into claims of child sex abuse by members of the establishment, the BBC reported. However, the force has said it is "not giving a running commentary" on the inquiry.

Jersey Police has also confirmed it has been looking into historic allegations of child sex abuse involving Sir Edward.

Kent Police is the fourth force known to be investigating him, after it was made aware of allegations of a sexual assault in the east of the country in the 1960s. 

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U.S. Agrees To Act As Terrorist Bodyguard; Open To Attacking Assad Forces

Activist Post

Brandon Turbeville

Fresh on the heels of the establishment of an "ISIL-Free Zone" (aka "No-Fly Zone") in northern Syria along the Turkish border, the United States has quietly announced that it will also extend its airstrike operations to act as the traveling bodyguard of the jihadists it has trained and “vetted.”

The policy, reportedly authorized by Barack Obama, would involve the US Air Force bombing any force attacking the so-called “moderate rebel fighters,"including the Syrian military.

The announcement was first reported on Sunday by the Wall Street Journal via anonymous military sources. The senior military official told the WSJ “For offensive operations, it’s ISIS only. But if attacked, we’ll defend them against anyone who’s attacking them. We’re not looking to engage the regime, but we’ve made a commitment to help defend these people.”
White House National Security Council spokesman, Alistair Baskey, stated “We won't get into the specifics of our rules of engagement, but have said all along that we would take the steps necessary to ensure that these forces could successfully carry out their mission.”

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Why The U.S. Is the Next Greece: Doug Casey On America's Economic Problems

ReasonTV

"With these stupid governments printing trillions and trillions of new currency units," warns investor Doug Casey, "it's building up to a catastrophe of historic proportions." In an excellent brief interview with Reason magazine Editor-in-Chief Matt Welch, Casey expounds on the US noting that "as any institution gets larger and older it inevitably becomes corrupt and fails." What to do? "I wouldn't keep significant capital in banks," he exclaimed, "most of the banks in the world are bankrupt. That didn't stop the "brain dead" Greeks who left their money in banks as all the signs were on the wall, he notes as he addresses whether gold is a good investment in 2015, and offers back-handed bright side: Catastrophes create many opportunities to earn a profit.

Police chases kill more people each year than floods, tornadoes, hurricanes and lightning — combined

Washington Post

 This week Zachary Crockett of the Priceonomics blog highlighted some eye-popping statistics on high-speed police pursuits. Crockett points to a 2007 study ... which found that these [chases] take about 323 lives each year. To put it in perspective, that's more than the number of people killed by floods, tornadoes, lightning and hurricanes - combined. 

These numbers ... only count deaths directly related to vehicle accidents involved in these chases. If a person is chased down by cops and eventually shot, for instance, that death wouldn't show up here. But the most shocking thing is that innocent bystanders account for 27 percent of all police chase deaths, or 87 deaths per year.

This underscores a key fact that may seem obvious: high speed police chases are incredibly dangerous not just to the people involved in them, but to everyone who crosses their path. Given the high risk, you might assume that cops only give chase to the most violent criminals. But you'd be wrong. Ninety one percent of high-speed chases are initiated in response to a non-violent crime, according to a fascinating report from the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the National Institute of Justice. 42 percent involved a simple traffic infraction. Another 18 percent involved a stolen vehicle. 15 percent involved a suspected drunk driver. Is it worth risking life and limb ... to catch somebody who ran a red light? Or who failed to signal a turn? 

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UN paid millions to Russian aviation firm since learning of sex attack on girl

The Guardian

The United Nations has spent half a billion dollars on contracts with a Russian aviation company since discovering one of its helicopter crews in the Democratic Republic of the Congo drugged and raped a teenage girl in a sexual attack. The girl was dumped naked and unconscious inside the helicopter base.

Internal UN documents, marked “strictly confidential” and leaked to the Guardian, reveal how the UN’s internal complaints unit uncovered evidence the woman was abused ... by the manager in charge of UTair’s base in Kalemie, eastern DRC. The main investigative report, from March 2011, warned of a possible “culture of sexual exploitation and abuse” at UTair. Copies of that report were circulated among top officials at the UN. The company was permitted to continue doing business with the UN on the condition it introduce a new training regime overseen by a monitor. 

The disclosures come at a critical moment for the UN secretary general, who has struggled to contain the fallout from recent revelations concerning the sexual abuse of children by French and other peacekeeping troops in the neighbouring Central African Republic. “It wasn’t just one or two bad apples,” said a senior UN official familiar with the report and its fallout. “It was clear the problems of sexual exploitation were wider.” In total, the company ... has been granted contracts worth $543.3m for services provided in 11 countries since the UN became aware it had a problem with sexual exploitation.


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The Fake War on ISIS: US and Turkey Escalate in Syria

New Eastern Outlook

It is late July 2015, and the media is abuzz with the news that Turkey will allow US jets to use its bases to bomb Islamic State (ISIS) targets in Syria. There is much talk about how this development is a “game-changer,” and how this is a clear escalation of the much ballyhooed, but more fictional than real, US war on ISIS: the terror organization that US intelligence welcomed as a positive development in 2012 in their continued attempts to instigate regime change against the Syrian government led by Bashar al-Assad.

The western public is told that “This is a significant shift…It’s a big deal,” as a US military official told the Wall Street Journal. What the corporate media fail to mention, however, is the fact that Turkey has been, and continues to be, a central actor in the war in Syria and, consequently, in the development and maintenance of ISIS. So, while Washington waxes poetic about stepping up the fight against the terror group, and lauds the participation of its allies in Ankara, the barely concealed fact is that Turkey is merely further entrenching itself in a war that it has fomented.

Of equal importance is the simple fact that a “war on ISIS” is merely a pretext for Turkey’s military engagement in Syria and throughout the region. Not only does Turkey’s neo-Ottoman revanchist President Erdogan want to flex his military muscles in order to further the regime change agenda in Syria, he also is using recent tragic events as political and diplomatic cover for waging a new aggressive war against the region’s Kurds, especially Turkey’s longtime foe the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK).

In this way, Turkey’s recent moves should be seen as merely a new phase of its engagement in the regional war that it has helped foment. Contrary to western corporate media talking points, Turkey has not just recently become actively engaged in the conflict; Ankara has merely shifted its strategy and its tactics, moving from covert engagement to overt participation.

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Drought Toll: California Now Missing 1 Year’s Worth of Rain

Live Science

The amount of rain that California has missed out on since the beginning of its record-setting drought in 2012 is about the same amount it would see, on average, in a single year, a new study has concluded.

The study’s researchers pin the reason for the lack of rains, as others have, on the absence of the intense rainstorms ushered in by so-called atmospheric rivers, the ribbons of very moist air that can funnel water vapor from the tropics to California during its winter rainy season.

Overall, the study, accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres, found that California experiences multi-year dry periods, like the current one, and then periods where rains can vary by 30 percent from year to year. Those wet and dry years typically cancel each other out. 

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Israel behind JP Morgan cyber attack, 83 million customers data stolen

Hang the bankers

U.S. and Israeli authorities arrested four people in Israel and Florida on Tuesday in connection with several fraud schemes tied to last summer’s massive data breach at JPMorgan Chase & Co, according to news reports.

The hacking of JPMorgan’s computers compromised information in 83 million household and small business accounts, making it one of the largest such breaches in history.

Federal prosecutors in New York confirmed the four arrests but did not mention the breach, and charging documents unsealed on Tuesday did not refer to the hack. Bloomberg was the first news outlet to report the connection.

The New York Times reported that federal authorities had identified some of the JPMorgan hackers because the attack was relatively unsophisticated but authorities were unable to collect enough evidence to charge anyone with the breach itself.

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Anglo Irish Bank officials jailed for offences related to financial crash

The Guardian
 

The bank’s failure played a major part in forcing the government to seek help from the EU and IMF.

Three officials from the bank that almost bankrupted Ireland have become the first bankers to be jailed for offences related to the Republic’s financial crash.

The failure of Anglo Irish Bank, which became synonymous with the casino-style lending practices that drove Ireland’s “Celtic Tiger” boom and subsequent bust, cost the state €30bn (£21bn), part of what forced the government to seek a bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

The trio worked at the now defunct bank and were found guilty on Friday afternoon at Dublin’s circuit criminal court of hiding accounts related to bank boss Sean Fitzpatrick and of conspiring to defraud the tax authorities.

On Friday the court sentenced former chief operations officer Tiarnan O’Mahoney, 56, to three years in prison and former company secretary Bernard Daly, 67, to two years. Aoife Maguire, a former assistant manager, was given 18 months.

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Global warning? Top UK climate scientist and expert on Arctic ice cries foul over colleagues' deaths

Niall Bradley
Sott.net

Extraordinary claims made by a prominent British climate scientist recently made headlines in the UK. Peter Wadhams, Professor of Ocean Physics at Cambridge University, told the UK Times that he suspected the deaths of three of his peers in early 2013 were the result of foul play: 

'Climate scientist fears murder by hitman'
By Ben Webster, The Times, July 25th, 2015

[Wadhams] said that assassins may have murdered scientists who were seeking to reveal how rapidly global warming was melting Arctic ice... [and] believed that he had also been targeted but had a narrow escape after a driver of an unmarked lorry tried to push his car off the M25.

Professor Wadhams faced criticism this week after a study contradicted his prediction that Arctic ice was melting so fast that it could all disappear this summer. Asked by The Times for his response to the discovery that the total volume of ice grew 40 per cent in 2013, Professor Wadhams insisted that there was still an outside possibility of the Arctic being ice-free this year [in 2015 - NB].

 

Top left: Peter Wadhams. Top right: Seymour Laxon. Bottom left: Katharine Giles. Bottom right: Tim Boyd.

He then said there were only four people in Britain who were "really leaders on ice thickness in the Arctic" and he was one. The others, he said, had died in early 2013.

He said: "It seems to me to be too bizarre to be accidental but each individual incident looks accidental, which may mean it's been made to look accidental."

He named the three as Seymour Laxon of University College London, Katharine Giles, a climate change scientist who worked with Professor Laxon at UCL, and Tim Boyd of the Scottish Association for Marine Science.

Professor Laxon died after falling downstairs at a New Year's Eve party in Essex; Dr Giles died in a collision with a lorry while cycling to work in London; and police said they believed that Dr Boyd was killed by lightning as he walked near a loch in Scotland.

Professor Wadhams said that about the same time he was driving on the M25 late at night when the lorry hit his car. "This guy showed definite evidence of malevolence. He was trying to run me right off the road." He said his car was damaged but he managed to get home and called the police the next day. He was told no action could be taken.

"I just thought 'what is going on here?' Somebody is trying to do in people who are working on ice thickness in Britain."

He said: "If it was some kind of death squad, you don't expect that with something like climate change. I know oil companies have been giving lots and lots of money to... climate change denialist organisations but you don't expect them to kill people."

 While Wadhman's claims may seem outlandish, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that scientists working in certain areas might be discretely bumped off. Post 9/11, a flurry of microbiologists died in mysterious circumstances. More recently, a pattern has emerged of holistic medical doctors and practitioners meeting untimely demises.

In the case of the microbiologists, it's either known, or considered very likely, that their research connected into high-level military/government projects and sensitive research areas. It's less clear-cut how natural health practitioners could present such a threat to the Powers that Be that they merit 'termination'. While a string of suspicious deaths of researchers in particular fields is not necessarily evidence of a conspiracy or cover-up, it's also true that powerful interests may wish to, at any time and in any field, snuff out apparently innocuous research. Science can indeed be dangerous work.

The problem with Wadham's claim however is that the research he and his former colleagues were engaged in supports the dominant man-made global warming theory. 'Warmists' are a godsend to those in power because it deflects blame for increasing climate chaos from powerful and extremely wasteful institutions like central banking and the US military onto the masses of ordinary people. 

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Pentagon Employing Top Scientists to Improve US Propaganda Machine

Cassius Methyl
Information Clearing House

Throughout human history, governments have been interested in “mastering the human domain”—in fully understanding how to control the minds of their populations. In 2015, DARPA’s “Narrative Networks” ( or N2) program is in full swing.

The project is intended to analyze how “narratives” play into human psychology, delving into the way these constructs affect the mind. A narrative is a way of phrasing something, a choice of words, for example, that is likely a biased strategy to frame information.

“Narratives exert a powerful influence on human thoughts, emotions and behavior and can be particularly important in security contexts,” DARPA researchers said in a paper published in the Journal of Neuroscience Methods.

They discussed “…conflict resolution and counterterrorism scenarios [and] detecting the neural response underlying empathy induced by stories is of critical importance.”

Mastery of “narratives” could potentially be used to manipulate the perception of a population using platforms of communication like television to subtly and potently make a person think a certain way. Many people know this tactic by a more familiar term: propaganda.

“Governments often use stories to present information, so understanding how we comprehend them is important,” said co-author Eric Schumacher, an associate professor of psychology at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

In addition to narratives, the study focused on fear. Researchers observed a phenomenon of “tunnel vision,” or impaired reasoning, triggered in the brain when suspects processed, for example, a suspenseful moment in a movie.

As the Washington Post summarized,

“When suspense grew, brain activity in viewers’ peripheral vision decreased. Schumacher called it the ‘neural signature of tunnel vision.’ Moments of increasing suspense were also associated with greater interference with a secondary task. In this case, responding by pressing a button when hearing a tone.”

It is likely that predatory actions of war could come out of this particular accumulation of knowledge. The U.S. Military has a long history of funding psychological experiments, some entrenched in human rights violations (like the experiments performed during the Project MKUltra era).

Now we have the Pentagon-funded DARPA program, which pays researchers at colleges and other scientists millions of dollars to enhance and bolster methods of war. Such work places great technological power in the hands of a demonstrably criminal government and military DARPA paying geniuses to work for them could be considered an exploitation of intellectual capability to further consolidate government and military power.

This is but a sliver of information in the full timeline of the U.S. Military’s acquisition of propaganda techniques, but even that smallest sliver of information is a necessary piece of the puzzle.

Cassius Methyl joined Anti-Media as an independent journalist in March of 2014. His topics of interest include thinking, creating a future, deep spirituality, and astrology. He resides in Sacramento, California.

Copyright 2014 The Anti Media

This Coal Mine Valued At $630 Million In 2011 Just Sold For One Dollar

Zero Hedge

Why is Isaac Plains relevant? Well, in 2011 at the height of the Australian mining boom, Japanese conglomerate Sumitomo thought it has spotted a bargain, and a SMH reports, it approached Tony Poli, the founder of mid-tier miner Aquila Resources with an offer: it would buy its 50% stake in Isaac Plains, at the time Aquila's only producing mine, for $430 million. 

Market participants thought Aquila's stake might fetch $300 million at best but Sumitomo was confident it would make a strong return, and offered almost 50% above fair value, especially since Brazil's legendary mining company Vale owned the other 50% stake. 

Net, the total value of the Isaac Plains mine in 2011 just just about $630 million.

It turns out Sumitomo was very, very wrong, and within a few years the writing was on the wall. In September 2014, Sumitomo and Vale shuttered the mine citing the downturn in the international coal market. Sumitomo said it would also take a writedown worth ¥30 billion ($11 million) on its Australian coal investments.

And as SMH tongue in cheekly adds, Isaac Plains was added to the long list of coal mines up for sale – but at a price. That price was finally revealed on Thursday: the princely sum of $1.

Why the complete collapse in price of the mine? Simple: blame China.

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(photos)
 

NATO Member Busted Massively Supporting ISIS … Now Declares War Against ISIS, But Instead Bombs Its Political Rival (Which Is the Most Effective Force FIGHTING ISIS)

George Washington's Blog

Turkey Enabling ISISNATO member Turkey has been busted supporting ISIS.

The Guardian reported this week:

US special forces raided the compound of an Islamic State leader in eastern Syria in May, they made sure not to tell the neighbours.

The target of that raid, the first of its kind since US jets returned to the skies over Iraq last August, was an Isis official responsible for oil smuggling, named Abu Sayyaf. He was almost unheard of outside the upper echelons of the terror group, but he was well known to Turkey. From mid-2013, the Tunisian fighter had been responsible for smuggling oil from Syria’s eastern fields, which the group had by then commandeered. Black market oil quickly became the main driver of Isis revenues – and Turkish buyers were its main clients.

As a result, the oil trade between the jihadis and the Turks was held up as evidence of an alliance between the two.

***

In the wake of the raid that killed Abu Sayyaf, suspicions of an undeclared alliance have hardened. One senior western official familiar with the intelligence gathered at the slain leader’s compound said that direct dealings between Turkish officials and ranking Isis members was now “undeniable”.

“There are hundreds of flash drives and documents that were seized there,” the official told the Observer. “They are being analysed at the moment, but the links are already so clear that they could end up having profound policy implications for the relationship between us and Ankara.”

***

However, Turkey has openly supported other jihadi groups, such as Ahrar al-Sham, which espouses much of al-Qaida’s ideology, and Jabhat al-Nusra, which is proscribed as a terror organisation by much of the US and Europe. “The distinctions they draw [with other opposition groups] are thin indeed,” said the western official. “There is no doubt at all that they militarily cooperate with both.”

***

One Isis member says the organisation remains a long way from establishing a self-sustaining economy across the area of Syria and Iraq it controls. “They need the Turks. I know of a lot of cooperation and it scares me,” he said. “I don’t see how Turkey can attack the organisation too hard. There are shared interests.”

While the Guardian is one of Britain’s leading newspapers, many in the alternative press have long pointed out Turkey’s support for ISIS.

And experts, Kurds, and Joe Biden have accuses Turkey of enabling ISIS.

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