There are 11 sunspot clusters and massive 2042 is too large to even distibuish everything that is
going on in there. The solar wind is a blistering 642 km/sec. Earth is approaching a stream of
debris from ancient Comet Thatcher, source of the annual Lyrid Meteor Shower. Usually the
shower is mild (10-20 meteors per hour) but unmapped filaments of dust in the comet's tail
sometimes trigger outbursts ten times stronger. Forecasters expect this year's peak, however
strong it may be, to occur on April 22nd. In order to study the effects of today's geomagnetic
storm on Earth's upper atmosphere, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched a double
balloon mission to the stratosphere: The two balloons carried two experiments. One is the
group's Rapid Response Space Weather Payload, which measures high energy radiation. The
other carried a colony of extreme-loving halobacteria. The purpose of their flight is to discover if
they can live in the extreme environment of the stratosphere. Oh, and in honor of Easter, the
students sent a team of peeponauts as well.
The Greed for Speed
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is probing whether high-speed trading firms are engaging in
insider trading by taking advantage of fast-moving market information unavailable to other investors.
The investigation, launched about a year ago, involves a range of trading activities and is still in its
early stages, according to a senior FBI official and an agency spokesman. Among the activities being
probed is whether high-speed firms are trading ahead of other investors based on information that
other market participants can't see.
Among the types of trading under scrutiny is the practice of placing a group of trades and then
canceling them to create the false appearance of market activity. Such activity could be considered
potential market manipulation by encouraging others to trade based on false orders.
Another form of activity under scrutiny involves using high-speed trading to place orders to conceal
that the transactions are based on an illegal tip.
"There are many people in government who are very focused on this and who are concerned about it
and who think it breaks the law," an FBI spokesman said. "There is a big concern that high-frequency
traders are getting material nonpublic information ahead of others and trading on it."
Ultimately, federal prosecutors would have to decide whether the facts of a specific case warrant
bringing charges, the FBI official said.
The probe, which has picked up steam in recent months, comes amid heightened scrutiny of
computerized trading. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is investigating whether highspeed trading firms have gained advantages that aren't available to regular investors, such as access
to superfast data feeds.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission are
looking into ties between high-speed traders and major exchanges, examining whether the firms are
getting preferential treatment that puts other investors at a disadvantage, said people familiar with the
probes.
Since the beginning of the investigation, the FBI, working with the SEC, has developed fact patterns
of potentially illegal trading and run them by prosecutors to determine if they could be used in a
criminal case.
For the FBI, the investigation marks a new and unusual phase of its focus on insider trading. Because
high-speed trades are executed by computer programs, it is often more difficult to detect nefarious
activity and to prove that it was executed intentionally.
FBI officials said they are looking for patterns in the market that can reveal whether any trading
activities in question violate the law. They would then have to be able to prove that those trades were
made with fraudulent intent.
Related

High-Speed Trading Firm Tries Charm Offensive
The FBI said it has dedicated a large number of agents to the investigation. FBI officials are looking
into whether some brokers trade on information about client orders before executing them, and
whether brokers use information about after-hours trading to beat the market when it opens the next
morning.
Among those being probed are proprietary-trading outfits, which trade strictly for their own account,
as well as fast-moving broker operations that buy and sell orders on behalf of clients, such as mutual
funds and pension plans.
The push comes after a long-running focus on more traditional insider trading by federal prosecutors
and the FBI in New York.
Speed in the Spotlight
Scrutiny has been growing on fraction-of-a-second differences in access to information. Recent
highlights:
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Second Firm to Stop Direct Feeds to High-Speed Traders (March 19, 2014)
Speedy Traders Face New U.S. Scrutiny (March 18, 2014)
N.Y. Probes Traders' Access to Data (March 18, 2014)
Firm Stops Giving High-Speed Traders Direct Access to Releases (Feb. 20, 2014)
Traders Turn to Laser Beams to Zip Data (Feb. 11, 2014)
Trade Tactics: Slow vs. Speed (Feb. 10, 2014)
High-Speed Traders Unite to Press Case (Jan. 5, 2014)
Action Urged on High-Speed Traders' Early Access to Data (Sept. 24, 2013)
Traders Pay for Early Peek at Key Data (June 12, 2013)
High-Speed Traders Exploit Loophole (May 1, 2013)
For Superfast Traders, a Way to Jump Line (Sept. 19, 2012)
The U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan has charged 90 people with insider trading using confidential
information about earnings reports, mergers and other market-moving news since October 2009. So
far, 79 of those people have pleaded guilty or been convicted at trial and none have been acquitted.
The Justice Department said it is working with other regulators on the probe, including the SEC,
CFTC and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, which oversees broker-dealers. The
investigation, which the FBI calls the High-Speed Trading Initiative, is also focusing on whether the
waves of orders that flood the market from high-frequency firms are being used to manipulate prices
to their benefit.
Investigators are also seeking leads from traders or others who may have participated in illegal
activity. "People will benefit to varying degrees by calling us at an early stage," he said.
Market regulators have been investigating whether high-frequency traders have unfair advantages
over other investors for several years. SEC enforcement officials continue to probe whether highspeed firms were using so-called order types—directions traders use to tell an exchange how to
handle their orders—to jump ahead of less savvy investors. In a page-one article in September 2012,
The Wall Street Journal reported that a former high-frequency trader, Haim Bodek, blew the whistle
to the SEC on how certain order types could hurt other investors.
CFTC investigators are probing whether high-frequency firms are routinely distorting futures
markets by acting as buyer and seller in the same transactions, illegal trading activity known as wash
trades. Such trades are banned by U.S. law because they can feed false information into the market
and manipulate prices.
Write to Scott Patterson at scott.patterson@wsj.com and Michael Rothfeld at
michael.rothfeld@wsj.com
Report: EPA tested deadly pollutants on humans to push Obama admin’s
agenda
11:53 AM 04/02/2014
Michael Bastasch
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See All Articles
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The Environmental Protection Agency has been conducting dangerous experiments on humans
over the past few years in order to justify more onerous clean air regulations.
The agency conducted tests on people with health issues and the elderly, exposing them to high
levels of potentially lethal pollutants, without disclosing the risks of cancer and death, according
to a newly released government report.
These experiments exposed people, including those with asthma and heart problems, to
dangerously high levels of toxic pollutants, including diesel fumes, reads a EPA inspector
general report obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The EPA also exposed people
with health issues to levels of pollutants up to 50 times greater than the agency says is safe for
humans.
The EPA conducted five experiments in 2010 and 2011 to look at the health effects of particulate
matter, or PM, and diesel exhaust on humans. The IG’s report found that the EPA did get consent
forms from 81 people in five studies. But the IG also found that “exposure risks were not always
consistently represented.”
“Further, the EPA did not include information on long-term cancer risks in its diesel exhaust
studies’ consent forms,” the IG’s report noted. “An EPA manager considered these long-term
risks minimal for short-term study exposures” but “human subjects were not informed of this risk
in the consent form.”
According to the IG’s report, “only one of five studies’ consent forms provided the subject
with information on the upper range of the pollutant” they would be exposed to, but even more
alarming is that only “two of five alerted study subjects to the risk of death for older
individuals with cardiovascular disease.”
Three of the studies exposed people to high levels of PM and two of the studies exposed people
to high levels of diesel exhaust and ozone. Diesel exhaust contains 40 toxic air contaminants,
including 19 that are known carcinogens and PM. The EPA has publicly warned of the dangers
of PM, but seemed to downplay them in their scientific studies on humans.
“This lack of warning about PM,” the IG’s report notes, “is also different from the EPA’s public
image about PM.”
The EPA has been operating under the assumption that PM is deadly for years now. The IG’s
report points to a 2003 EPA document that says short-term exposure to PM can result in heart
attacks and arrhythmias for people with heart disease — and long-term exposure can result in
reduced lung function and even death. A 2006 review by the EPA presents even further links
between short-term PM exposure and “mortality and morbidity.”
“Particulate matter causes premature death. It doesn’t make you sick. It’s directly causal to dying
sooner than you should,” former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson told Congress on Sept. 22,
2011.
“If we could reduce particulate matter to healthy levels it would have the same impact as finding
a cure for cancer in our country,” Jackson added.
PM is a “mixture of harmful solid and liquid particles” that the EPA regulates. PM that is 2.5
microns or less is known as PM2.5, which is about “1/30th the thickness of a human hair.” These
small particles can get into people’s respiratory system and can harm human health and even
lead to death after just short-term exposure.
The EPA set PM2.5 primary standards at 15 micrograms per cubic meter of air on an annual
average basis, but the agency exposed test subjects to PM levels of 600 micrograms per cubic
meter — 40 times what the EPA sets as an acceptable outdoor air standard.
But in five of the studies, people were subject to levels higher than what they signed on for. The
EPA IG found that one person was hit with “pollutant concentrations that reached 751
[micrograms per cubic meter], which exceeded the IRB-approved concentration target of 600
[micrograms per cubic meter].”
The EPA says that when PM2.5 levels are between about 250 and 500 micrograms per cubic
meter “[e]veryone should avoid any outdoor exertion. People with respiratory or heart disease,
the elderly and children should remain indoors.”
No one was killed during the test, but a source close to the issue says that one test subject — a
58-year-old obese woman with medical problems and a family history of heart disease — was
ordered to go to the hospital by the EPA after being exposed to “ambient air pollution particles”
in October 2010.
Other test subjects also experienced health problems during their testing. One subject developed
a persistent cough after being exposed to ozone for 15 minutes in April 2011 and two other
subjects suffered from “cardiac arrhythmias” during testing in 2010 after being exposed to “clean
air.”
Regulatory implications
The EPA has been trying to justify setting stricter PM2.5 standards in its upcoming national
ambient air quality standards (NAAQS). But the agency’s public statements on PM don’t square
with its lax attitude about testing the air pollutant on humans.
“Maybe the biggest reason to slow down the new rule is that the EPA is talking out of both sides
of their mouth,” Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter said last year. “On one side exposure to
it is deadly, and on the other they say human exposure studies are not harmful.”
The EPA has said for many years now that PM is a deadly air pollutant that can cause death even
after short-term exposure, but it did not disclose the mortality risks in some of its human tests,
despite exposing people to high levels of PM.
One manager overseeing EPA human testing told the IG’s office that “the exposure risk for
healthy individuals is minimal” and that a person breathing 420 micrograms per cubic meter for
two hours “would inhale the same concentration as they would breathing 35 [micrograms per
cubic meter]” which is the EPA’s 24-hour regulatory standard for outdoor PM2.5 levels.
The manager also said “that PM risk is focused on susceptible populations and that the risk is
small for those with no overt disease.”
This alarmed Republicans who said that either the EPA was misrepresenting the science around
PM2.5 to advance its own regulatory agenda or it was exposing people to deadly pollutants for
little scientific gain.
“It’s alarming how the EPA is purposefully and blatantly ignoring an ongoing investigation of
the legality and therefore scientific legitimacy of the use of human testing,” Vitter said. “This is
another example of the EPA continuing to pick and choose scientific ‘facts’ to support their
overreaching agenda.”
“It is a concern that EPA would assert in the rulemaking process that PM2.5 exposure is deadly
while simultaneously asserting in the waivers signed by participants in EPA human exposure
studies that these exposures are not harmful,” Republicans wrote to the EPA in February 2013.
“Furthermore, there are valid questions about the quality or usefulness of the exposure studies
actually relied upon by EPA.”
The agency actually proceeded in its PM2.5 rulemaking while the EPA IG’s office was
conducting a review of its human testing procedures.
“EPA policy decisions must be based on sound science,” Lek Kadeli, acting administrator for the
EPA’s Office of Research and Development (ORD), said in response to the EPA IG’s report.
“While there is a critical need for studies involving human subjects, ORD also understands that
the research must be conducted in an ethical and vigilant manner.”
“As documented in the OIG’s report, EPA has established guidelines for conducting this type of
research that are far in excess of what is normally required by universities, industry, and other
government agencies conducting human studies research,” Kadeli said.
The Vegetarian Farce
TLANTA (CBS ATLANTA) – Vegetarians may have a lower BMI and drink alcohol sparingly,
but vegetarian diets are tied to generally poorer health, poorer quality of life and a higher need
for health care than their meat-eating counterparts.
A new study from the Medical University of Graz in Austria finds that vegetarians are more
physically active, drink less alcohol and smoke less tobacco than those who consume meat in
their diets. Vegetarians also have a higher socioeconomic status and a lower body mass index.
But the vegetarian diet — characterized by a low consumption of saturated fats and cholesterol
that includes increased intake of fruits, vegetables and whole-grain products — carries elevated
risks of cancer, allergies and mental health disorders.
Vegetarians were twice as likely to have allergies, a 50 percent increase in heart attacks and a 50
percent increase in incidences of cancer.
The cross-sectional study from Austrian Health Interview Survey data and published in PLos
One examined participants dietary habits, demographic characteristics and general lifestyle
differences.
The most significant dietary habit difference between meat-eaters and vegetarians concerned
their BMI and alcohol consumption – with both being higher for those who consume meat.
Many past studies have instead put an emphasis on the health risks associated with red meat and
carnivorous diets, but this study points the other dietary direction. However, the researchers do
caution that continuing studies will be needed to substantiate some of the rather broad dietary
distinctions, associations presented in this current research.
Overall, vegetarians were found to be in a poorer state of health compared to other dietary
groups. Vegetarians reported higher levels of impairment from disorders, chronic diseases, and
“suffer significantly more often from anxiety/depression.”
Subjects who consumed lower amounts of animal fat were also linked to poor health care
practices, such as avoidance of vaccinations and a lack of preventive care.
Chronic problems associated with vegetarians and people eating carnivorous diets rich in fruits
and vegetables were linked to more frequent visits to doctors, which the study authors suggest
requires public health programs to reduce the health risk due to their nutritional factors.
The researchers conclude: “Our study has shown that Austrian adults who consume a vegetarian
diet are less healthy (in terms of cancer, allergies, and mental health disorders), have a lower
quality of life, and also require more medical treatment.”
“Therefore, a continued strong public health program for Austria is required in order to reduce
the health risk due to nutritional factors.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that healthy diets rich in fruits and
vegetables may reduce the risk of cancer and other chronic diseases for all dietary groups. A
2009 study from the CDC found that about 1 in 200 young Americans, or 367,000 US children,
are vegetarians.
Serious reading takes a hit from online scanning and skimming,
researchers say
By Michael S. Rosenwald, Sunday, April 6, 8:34 PM
Claire Handscombe has a commitment problem online. Like a lot of Web surfers, she clicks on
links posted on social networks, reads a few sentences, looks for exciting words, and then grows
restless, scampering off to the next page she probably won’t commit to.
“I give it a few seconds — not even minutes — and then I’m moving again,” says Handscombe,
a 35-year-old graduate student in creative writing at American University.
But it’s not just online anymore. She finds herself behaving the same way with a novel.
“It’s like your eyes are passing over the words but you’re not taking in what they say,” she
confessed. “When I realize what’s happening, I have to go back and read again and again.”
To cognitive neuroscientists, Handscombe’s experience is the subject of great fascination and
growing alarm. Humans, they warn, seem to be developing digital brains with new circuits for
skimming through the torrent of information online. This alternative way of reading is competing
with traditional deep reading circuitry developed over several millennia.
“I worry that the superficial way we read during the day is affecting us when we have to read
with more in-depth processing,” said Maryanne Wolf, a Tufts University cognitive neuroscientist
and the author of “Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain.”
If the rise of nonstop cable TV news gave the world a culture of sound bites, the Internet, Wolf
said, is bringing about an eye byte culture. Time spent online — on desktop and mobile devices
— was expected to top five hours per day in 2013 for U.S. adults, according to eMarketer, which
tracks digital behavior. That’s up from three hours in 2010.
Word lovers and scientists have called for a “slow reading” movement, taking a branding cue
from the “slow food” movement. They are battling not just cursory sentence galloping but the
constant social network and e-mail temptations that lurk on our gadgets — the bings and dings
that interrupt “Call me Ishmael.”
Researchers are working to get a clearer sense of the differences between online and print
reading — comprehension, for starters, seems better with paper — and are grappling with what
these differences could mean not only for enjoying the latest Pat Conroy novel but for
understanding difficult material at work and school. There is concern that young children’s
affinity and often mastery of their parents’ devices could stunt the development of deep reading
skills.
The brain is the innocent bystander in this new world. It just reflects how we live.
“The brain is plastic its whole life span,” Wolf said. “The brain is constantly adapting.”
Wolf, one of the world’s foremost experts on the study of reading, was startled last year to
discover her brain was apparently adapting, too. After a day of scrolling through the Web and
hundreds of e-mails, she sat down one evening to read Hermann Hesse’s “The Glass Bead
Game.”
“I’m not kidding: I couldn’t do it,” she said. “It was torture getting through the first page. I
couldn’t force myself to slow down so that I wasn’t skimming, picking out key words,
organizing my eye movements to generate the most information at the highest speed. I was so
disgusted with myself.”
Adapting to read
The brain was not designed for reading. There are no genes for reading like there are for
language or vision. But spurred by the emergence of Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Phoenician
alphabet, Chinese paper and, finally, the Gutenberg press, the brain has adapted to read.
Before the Internet, the brain read mostly in linear ways — one page led to the next page, and so
on. Sure, there might be pictures mixed in with the text, but there didn’t tend to be many
distractions. Reading in print even gave us a remarkable ability to remember where key
information was in a book simply by the layout, researchers said. We’d know a protagonist died
on the page with the two long paragraphs after the page with all that dialogue.
The Internet is different. With so much information, hyperlinked text, videos alongside words
and interactivity everywhere, our brains form shortcuts to deal with it all — scanning, searching
for key words, scrolling up and down quickly. This is nonlinear reading, and it has been
documented in academic studies. Some researchers believe that for many people, this style of
reading is beginning to invade when dealing with other mediums as well.
“We’re spending so much time touching, pushing, linking, scrolling and jumping through text
that when we sit down with a novel, your daily habits of jumping, clicking, linking is just
ingrained in you,” said Andrew Dillon, a University of Texas professor who studies reading.
“We’re in this new era of information behavior, and we’re beginning to see the consequences of
that.”
Brandon Ambrose, a 31-year-old Navy financial analyst who lives in Alexandria, knows of those
consequences.
His book club recently read “The Interestings,” a best-seller by Meg Wolitzer. When the club
met, he realized he had missed a number of the book’s key plot points. It hit him that he had been
scanning for information about one particular aspect of the book, just as he might scan for one
particular fact on his computer screen, where he spends much of his day.
“When you try to read a novel,” he said, “it’s almost like we’re not built to read them anymore,
as bad as that sounds.”
Ramesh Kurup noticed something even more troubling. Working his way recently through a
number of classic authors — George Eliot, Marcel Proust, that crowd — Kurup, 47, discovered
that he was having trouble reading long sentences with multiple, winding clauses full of
background information. Online sentences tend to be shorter, and the ones containing
complicated information tend to link to helpful background material.
“In a book, there are no graphics or links to keep you on track,” Kurup said.
It’s easier to follow links, he thinks, than to keep track of so many clauses in page after page of
long paragraphs.
Kurup’s observation might sound far-fetched, but told about it, Wolf did not scoff. She offered
more evidence: Several English department chairs from around the country have e-mailed her to
say their students are having trouble reading the classics.
“They cannot read ‘Middlemarch.’ They cannot read William James or Henry James,” Wolf said.
“I can’t tell you how many people have written to me about this phenomenon. The students no
longer will or are perhaps incapable of dealing with the convoluted syntax and construction of
George Eliot and Henry James.”
Wolf points out that she’s no Luddite. She sends e-mails from her iPhone as often as one of her
students. She’s involved with programs to send tablets to developing countries to help children
learn to read. But just look, she said, at Twitter and its brisk 140-character declarative sentences.
“How much syntax is lost, and what is syntax but the reflection of our convoluted thoughts?” she
said. “My worry is we will lose the ability to express or read this convoluted prose. Will we
become Twitter brains?”
Bi-literate brains?
Wolf’s next book will look at what the digital world is doing to the brain, including looking at
brain-scan data as people read both online and in print. She is particularly interested in
comprehension results in screen vs. print reading.
Already, there is some intriguing research that looks at that question. A 2012 Israeli study of
engineering students — who grew up in the world of screens — looked at their comprehension
while reading the same text on screen and in print when under time pressure to complete the task.
The students believed they did better on screen. They were wrong. Their comprehension and
learning was better on paper.
Researchers say that the differences between text and screen reading should be studied more
thoroughly and that the differences should be dealt with in education, particularly with schoolaged children. There are advantages to both ways of reading. There is potential for a bi-literate
brain.
“We can’t turn back,” Wolf said. “We should be simultaneously reading to children from books,
giving them print, helping them learn this slower mode, and at the same time steadily increasing
their immersion into the technological, digital age. It’s both. We have to ask the question: What
do we want to preserve?”
Wolf is training her own brain to be bi-literate. She went back to the Hesse novel the next night,
giving herself distance, both in time and space, from her screens.
“I put everything aside. I said to myself, ‘I have to do this,’ ” she said. “It was really hard the
second night. It was really hard the third night. It took me two weeks, but by the end of the
second week I had pretty much recovered myself so I could enjoy and finish the book.”
Then she read it again.
“I wanted to enjoy this form of reading again,” Wolf said. “When I found myself, it was like I
recovered. I found my ability again to slow down, savor and think.”
"Captain America: The Winter Soldier" Is About Obama's Terror-Suspect
Kill List, Say the Film's Directors
—By Asawin Suebsaeng
| Fri Apr. 4, 2014 7:23 AM PDT
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Marvel Studios
There are currently no plans to screen Captain America: The Winter Soldier at the White House,
as far as the film's directors have heard. But if it makes it to the White House family theater,
President Obama would be watching one big-budget, action-packed, and Scarlett Johanssonstarring critique of his controversial terror-suspect "kill list."
This isn't me reading things into a mainstream comic-book movie. It's what the directors
themselves will tell you.
"[Marvel] said they wanted to make a political thriller," Joe Russo, who directed the film with
his brother Anthony, tells Mother Jones. "So we said if you want to make a political thriller, all
the great political thrillers have very current issues in them that reflect the anxiety of the
audience...That gives it an immediacy, it makes it relevant. So [Anthony] and I just looked at the
issues that were causing anxiety for us, because we read a lot and are politically inclined. And a
lot of that stuff had to do with civil liberties issues, drone strikes, the president's kill list,
preemptive technology"—all themes they worked into the film, working closely with
screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely.
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In The Winter Soldier, Captain America and the rest of the heroes (played by Chris Evans,
Anthony Mackie, Samuel L. Jackson, Cobie Smulders, and so on) confront the government
program Project Insight, which involves three Helicarriers (gigantic autonomous killer drones,
basically) that are fed large amounts of data and intel. The Helicarriers process the data to
identify and preemptively eliminate potential threats to national and global security. And though
the film's topical parts were all crafted prior to the NSA revelations, the directors say it's no
accident that data mining is a key element of the plot: "It was all leading up to Snowden," Joe
says. "It was all in the ether [already], it was all part of the zeitgeist. The Snowden stuff actually
happened while we were shooting."
"If there are 100 people we can kill to make us safer, do we do it? What if we find out there's
1,000?...What if it's a million?"
The politics of The Winter Soldier fit comfortably into the Russo brothers' oeuvre, which has
included plenty of political satire and commentary. Prior to The Winter Soldier, the duo was best
known for directing episodes of Arrested Development, which produced some of the finest satire
of the Bush era and Iraq War, and Community, which is also peppered with solid political humor
and jabs. (As for their go-to sources for news and politics, Anthony's top two are the the New
York Times and NPR, while Joe's are Digg and Reddit.) The day I interviewed them, they
happened to be in Washington, DC, to meet with the Congressional Creative Rights Caucus.
According to Joe, the brothers pushed to make their Captain America political thriller even more
political and topical than it initially was. "There were already things in the script that just needed
to be pulled out to make it more [relevant]," he recalls. One of the film's stars, Robert Redford,
was approached for the role in large part because he starred in the 1975 political thriller Three
Days of the Condor.
"[That film] was a big influence on this movie," Joe says. "You could really call this movie
'Three Days of Captain America,' if you wanted to. The structure is so similar...We felt like we
had a decent shot at getting [Redford] because the script had a political component to it and we
thought that might motivate him."
But don't take any of this to mean the film is a stern lecture on American foreign policy. It's
thrilling as hell, and also the best to emerge in the recent string of Marvel movies. "We're action
fetishists," Joe says. "And we love '70s thrillers." The brothers drew on the influence of some of
their favorite action-flick moments: The famous bank heist and shootout in Michael Mann's
Heat. William Friedkin's The French Connection. John Schlesinger's Marathon Man. John
McTiernan's Predator. Gareth Evans' The Raid: Redemption. (And for the Washington, DC-set
car chase in The Winter Soldier, the brothers consulted YouTube, searching for videos of actual
car chases. One video—wherein two escaped convicts in Brazil get stuck in traffic and plow
through cars as police pursue them on foot—was especially helpful.) "Choreographing action, it's
like choreographing a Broadway show," Anthony says.
But at the heart of the explosion and melee -filled film are the political themes, including
targeted killing. "The question is where do you stop?" Joe says. "If there are 100 people we can
kill to make us safer, do we do it? What if we find out there's 1,000? What if we find out there's
10,000? What if it's a million? At what point do you stop?"
Meditation
Why is mindfulness so popular?
It appeals to people seeking an antidote to life in work-obsessed, tech-saturated, frantically busy
Western culture. There is growing scientific evidence that mindfulness meditation has genuine
health benefits — and can even alter the structure of the brain, so the technique is drawing some
unlikely devotees. Pentagon leaders are experimenting with mindfulness to make soldiers more
resilient, while General Mills has installed a meditation room in every building of its
Minneapolis campus. Even tech-obsessed Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are using it as a way to
unplug from their hyperconnected lives. "Meditation always had bad branding for this culture,"
says Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter. "But to me, it's a way to think more clearly and to
not feel so swept up."
What is mindfulness, exactly?
It's a meditation practice central to the Buddha's teachings, which has now been adapted by
Western teachers into a secular self-help technique. One of the pioneers in the field is Jon KabatZinn, an MIT-educated molecular biologist who began teaching mindfulness in the 1970s to
people suffering from chronic pain and disease. The core of mindfulness is quieting the mind's
constant chattering — thoughts, anxieties, and regrets. Practitioners are taught to keep their
attention focused on whatever they're doing at the present moment, whether it's eating,
exercising, or even working. The most basic mindfulness practice is sitting meditation: You sit in
a comfortable position, close your eyes, and focus your awareness on your breath and other
bodily sensations. When thoughts come, you gently let them go without judgment and return to
the focus on the breath. Over time, this practice helps people connect with a deeper, calmer part
of themselves, and retrain their brains not to get stuck in pointless, neurotic ruminations about
the past and future that leave them constantly stressed, anxious, or depressed.
Does it work?
Scientific research has shown that mindfulness appears to make people both happier and
healthier. Regular meditation can lower a person's blood pressure and their levels of cortisol, a
stress hormone produced by the adrenal gland and closely associated with anxiety. Meditation
can also increase the body's immune response, improve a person's emotional stability and sleep
quality, and even enhance creativity. When combining mindfulness with traditional forms of
cognitive behavioral therapy, patients in one study saw a 10 to 20 percent improvement in the
mild symptoms of their depression — the same progress produced by antidepressants. Other
studies have found that up to 80 percent of trauma survivors and veterans with PTSD see a
significant reduction in troubling symptoms. Walter Reed National Military Medical Center is
also teaching mindfulness as a form of treatment for patients with substance abuse problems.
Why does it work?
MRI scans have shown that mindfulness can alter meditators' brain waves — and even cause
lasting changes to the physical structure of their brains (see below). Meditation reduces electrical
activity and blood flow in the amygdala, a brain structure involved in strong, primal emotions
such as fear and anxiety, while boosting activity regions responsible for planning, decisionmaking, and empathy. These findings have helped attract the more skeptical-minded. "There is a
swath of our culture who is not going to listen to someone in monk's robes," says Richard J.
Davidson, founder of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds and a professor at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison, "but they are paying attention to scientific evidence."
Who are these converted skeptics?
Ironically enough, Silicon Valley's tech geeks are leading the way. "It seems counterintuitive,
since technology is perhaps the biggest driver of mindlessness and distraction," says Ann Mack,
a director at marketing communications brand JWT Worldwide. Google now has an in-house
mindfulness program called "Search Inside Yourself," and the company has even installed a
labyrinth at its Mountain View complex so employees can practice walking meditation. Tech
leaders flock annually to the Wisdom 2.0 conference, and there are now countless smartphone
apps devoted to the subject. But these developments have led to a growing concern that
mindfulness is being co-opted and corrupted.
Why is that?
Long-term adherents of mindfulness worry that what is fundamentally a spiritual practice is
being appropriated by new age entrepreneurs seeking to profit off it. Others are concerned that
Fortune 500 executives are pushing meditation so that overworked employees can be even more
productive without melting down. But Westerners clearly need some sort of strategy to cope with
a world now filled with the inescapable distractions of technology. The average American now
consumes 63 gigabytes of content, or more than 150,000 words, over 13.6 hours of media use
every single day — and all indications are that those numbers will keep climbing. For Janice
Marturano, founder of the Institute for Mindful Leadership, mindfulness is not just a way of
coping with the deluge of input; it's a way of confronting the modern world head-on. "There is
no life-work balance," says Marturano. "We have one life. What's most important is that you be
awake for it."
Rewiring the brain
Until recently, neurologists believed that a person's brain stopped physically developing when
they were 25 to 35 years old. From that point onward, the hardware was set. But a growing body
of research points to the possibility of lifelong "neuroplasticity" — the ability of the brain to
adapt to new input — and a 2011 Massachusetts General Hospital study found that those who
meditate regularly for as little as eight weeks changed the very structure of their brains. MRI
scans showed that by meditating daily for an average of 27 minutes, participants increased the
density of the gray matter (which holds most of our brain cells) in an area that is essential for
focus, memory, and compassion. Previous research had already shown that monks who had spent
more than 10,000 hours in meditation had extraordinary growth and activity in this part of the
brain. But it's now clear that even relative beginners at mindfulness can quickly rewire their
brains in a positive way.
Light from Mars
A NASA camera on Mars has captured what appears to be artificial light emanating outward
from the planet's surface.
The photo, beamed millions of miles from Mars to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,
Calif., was taken last week, apparently by one of two NASA rovers on the red planet.
Although the space agency hasn't issued any official statement yet about the phenomenon,
bloggers and NASA enthusiasts have started chiming in.
RELATED: The biggest hoaxes ever exposed
Scott C. Waring, who maintains the website UFO Sightings Daily, posted the photo April 6.
Waring noted that the light shines upward, as if from the ground, and is very flat across
the bottom.
"This could indicate there there is intelligent life below the ground and uses light as we do,"
Waring wrote on his website. "This is not a glare from the sun, nor is it an artifact of the
photo process."
On Tuesday, Slate.com's Bad Astronomy blog suggested that a UFO conspiracy site might not be
the best source of information for exploring serious planetary phenomena. A more serious source
of this light, said blogger Phil Plait, is that "a subatomic particle smacked into the camera,
leaving behind its trail of energy."
HoustonChronicle.com: Vast ocean found on Saturn – could it sustain life?
Earlier this month, NASA announced that on April 2, the Curiosity rover drove the last 98 feet
needed to arrive at "the Kimberley," a spot where it can study rock clues about ancient
environments that might have been favorable for life, according to a news release.
The Kimberley, where four different types of rock intersect, is named for a region of western
Australia. The rover's stay there has been planned since early last year, the release said.
"This is the spot on the map we've been headed for, on a little rise that gives us a great view for
context imaging of the outcrops at the Kimberley," Melissa Rice of the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena said in the release.
Rice is the scientist in charge of planning several weeks of observations, sample-drilling and onsite laboratory analysis of the area's rocks.
Arrival at this location means Curiosity has driven 3.8 miles since August 2012, when it landed
inside Mars' Gale Crater.
HoustonChronicle.com: Space station sidesteps space junk again
The Kimberley investigations are to be the most extensive since Curiosity spent the first half of
2013 in an area called Yellowknife Bay, the release said.
At Yellowknife Bay, the one-ton rover examined the first samples ever drilled from rocks on
Mars. These samples showed signs of an ancient lakebed environment that provided the chemical
ingredients and energy necessary for life, the release said.
At the Kimberley and, later, at outcrops on the slope of Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater,
researchers plan to use Curiosity's science instruments to learn more about habitable past
conditions and environmental changes.
The Article 5 Convention
The most important political development in 200 years was triggered last week, when the state
legislature of Michigan became the 34 th state to demand a “Constitutional Convention” in the
United States. Under Article 5 of the US Constitution, if 2/3rds of the states call for such a
convention, (meaning 34 states) it MUST take place. During such a convention, the ENTIRE
Constitution can be changed; nothing is off-limits. This would even allow the States to dismantle
the federal government without its consent, and repudiate the debt which that government has
incurred! When it voted for the convention last week, Michigan became the 34 th state, thus
meeting the requirement.
A goal has been reached behind what would be an unprecedented effort to amend the U.S.
Constitution, through a little-known provision that gives states rather than Congress the power to
initiate changes. This is the most significant political development in the entire world in the last
200 years.
Breaking: Sen. Harry Reid Behind BLM Land Grab of Bundy Ranch

BLM attempted cover-up of Sen. Reid/Chinese gov’t takeover of ranch for solar farm
Kit Daniels
Infowars.com
April 11, 2014
The Bureau of Land Management, whose director was Sen. Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) former senior
adviser, has purged documents from its web site stating that the agency wants Nevada rancher
Cliven Bundy’s cattle off of the land his family has worked for over 140 years in order to make
way for solar panel power stations.
Corrupt Democratic Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) working with the Chinese gov’t to take land from
hard-working Americans.
Deleted from BLM.gov but reposted for posterity by the Free Republic, the BLM document
entitled “Cattle Trespass Impacts” directly states that Bundy’s cattle “impacts” solar
development, more specifically the construction of “utility-scale solar power generation
facilities” on “public lands.”
“Non-Governmental Organizations have expressed concern that the regional mitigation strategy
for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone utilizes Gold Butte as the location for offsite mitigation for
impacts from solar development, and that those restoration activities are not durable with the
presence of trespass cattle,” the document states.
The first segment of the document pulled by the feds from BLM.gov.
Another BLM report entitled “Regional Mitigation Strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy
Zone” (BLM Technical Note 444) reveals that Bundy’s land in question is within the “Dry Lake
Solar Energy Zone and surrounding area” which is part of a broad U.S. Department of Energy
program for “Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States” on land “managed” by
BLM.
The second segment of the document pulled by the feds from BLM.gov.
“In 2012, the BLM and the U.S. Department of Energy published the Final Programmatic
Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) for Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern
States,” the report reads. “The Final Solar Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement
assessed the impact of utility-scale solar energy development on public lands in the six
southwestern states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.”
Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone and surrounding area (Click to enlarge.)
“The Approved Resource Management Plan Amendments/Record of Decision (ROD) for Solar
Energy Development in Six Southwestern States implemented a comprehensive solar energy
program for public lands in those states and incorporated land use allocations and programmatic
and SEZ-specific design features into land use plans in the six-state study area.”
Back in 2012, the New American reported that Harry Reid’s son, Rory Reid, was the chief
representative for a Chinese energy firm planning to build a $5-billion solar plant on public land
in Laughlin, Nevada.
And journalist Marcus Stern with Reuters also reported that Sen. Reid was heavily involved in
the deal as well.
“[Reid] and his oldest son, Rory, are both involved in an effort by a Chinese energy giant, ENN
Energy Group, to build a $5 billion solar farm and panel manufacturing plant in the southern
Nevada desert,” he wrote. “Reid has been one of the project’s most prominent advocates, helping
recruit the company during a 2011 trip to China and applying his political muscle on behalf of
the project in Nevada.”
“His son, a lawyer with a prominent Las Vegas firm that is representing ENN, helped it locate a
9,000-acre (3,600-hectare) desert site that it is buying well below appraised value from Clark
County, where Rory Reid formerly chaired the county commission.”
Although these reports are in plain view, the mainstream media has so far ignored this link.
The BLM’s official reason for encircling the Bundy family with sniper teams and helicopters
was to protect the endangered desert tortoise, which the agency has previously been killing in
mass due to “budget constraints.”
“A tortoise isn’t the reason why BLM is harassing a 67 year-old rancher; they want his land,”
journalist Dana Loesch wrote. “The tortoise wasn’t of concern when [U.S. Senator] Harry Reid
worked with BLM to literally change the boundaries of the tortoise’s habitat to accommodate the
development of his top donor, Harvey Whittemore.”
“Reid is accused of using the new BLM chief as a puppet to control Nevada land (already over
84% of which is owned by the federal government) and pay back special interests,” she added.
“BLM has proven that they’ve a situational concern for the desert tortoise as they’ve had no
problem waiving their rules concerning wind or solar power development. Clearly these
developments have vastly affected a tortoise habitat more than a century-old, quasihomesteading grazing area.”
“If only Cliven Bundy were a big Reid donor.”
Update: The Drudge Report, the #1 news aggregate site in the world, has now picked up this
story. Unfortunately for the BLM, the documents they wanted to delete are now exposed for the
world to see.
Update #2: ENN Energy Group describes itself as a “privately-owned clean energy distributor
in China.” However, as the People’s Republic of China is a single-party state governed by the
Communist Party, all large companies in China, one way or the other, are either controlled or
are heavily influenced by the Chinese government.
Range Wars
We have been telling you for weeks on this program that the only thing preventing the complete
tyrannical takeover of the United States is the armed American. I told you about my survey of numerous
gun stores in multiple states where they reported sales so strong that they did not have enough registers in
the store to ring up the orders. Several online clearing houses have emerged allowing people to buy guns
online. Gun ranges have three-hour waiting lines as tens of thousands of Americans are training every
available hour for war. They are practicing to kill. They are not shooting round targets. They are
shooting human forms. They are focused and determined and they are very very good with a gun.
In an epic standoff between armed Federal mercenaries and supporters of Nevada cattle rancher
Cliven Bundy more than 200 armed civilians sat quietly on horseback while the mercs stood
behind shields and vehicles waiting for orders to fire at will. Several cowboys walked up to the
metal barricade and went nose to nose with the camouflage-clad soldier with a small beard.
“You need to turn around and back away,” the soldier stated coldly.
“The cowboy in a white western shirt and a black hat raised his right finger and pointed to the
soldier’s nose and quickly responded, “You need to leave.”
No one was backing off. Hundreds of cowboys sat with their holsters open to 45-caliber
revolvers loaded and ready just a few yards behind the ones doing the negotiating. The cowboy
drew a slowly knife and cut the zip ties holding the DO NOT TRESPASS sign off the barricade.
He turned around an faced his cowboys on foot and on horseback, raised the sign over his head,
and loudly proclaimed something like, “It is time for them to go.”
The entire line of horses began moving forward, while the lead cowboy walked calmly past the
four pairs of sun glasses with out-gunned soldiers behind them. They kept walking until the
horses then walked majestically past the front defense line, while the bullhorn scratched that they
would open fire if they continued to advance. Not a cowboy was seen blinking this day.
With Waco burned into their memories, the cowboys moved resolutely toward the armored
vehicles, staring down the barrels of automatic weapons trained on those saddles. At least a
dozen cell phones were sending the video out live during the entire confrontation. Someone at
the highest levels was watching, and calculating.
As though they had seen an army of angels descending upon them, the mercenaries lowered their
weapons, put their vehicles in reverse, and pulled back out of the news cameras, and out of the
history books of tyranny…for now.
RENO, Nev. (MyNews4.com & KRNV) -- Senate majority leader Harry Reid hasn't been very
vocal about the cattle battle showdown in recent days, but says "it's not over."
Reid tells News4's Samantha Boatman his take on the so-called cattle battle in southern Las
Vegas. "Well, it's not over. We can't have an American people that violate the law and then just
walk away from it. So it's not over," Reid said.
It cannot be overstated how much of a gargantuan victory this represents for the American
people in their battle against big government tyranny.
“The people have the power when they unite,” Ammon Bundy told the Las Vegas Review
Journal. “The war has just begun.
China Liberty
The Communist Party’s time in power is running out, one of China’s leading civil rights activists
warned on Friday after a court rejected his attempt to overturn a four year jail term that
supporters, activists and diplomats claim was based on trumped-up charges.
In a remarkable courtroom attack on Beijing’s attempts to silence its opponents, Xu Zhiyong, the
41-year-old founder of a civil-rights group called the New Citizens’ Movement, warned the Party
its ongoing crackdown on activists was destined to fail.
“This ridiculous judgment cannot hold back the tide of human progress. The dark clouds of the
Communist dictatorship will one day clear,” Dr Xu said, according to Zhang Qingfang, his
lawyer, who was present.
“The light of freedom, fairness, justice and love will eventually fill China,” added Dr Xu, a legal
scholar whose imprisonment came during a year-long campaign by China’s new president Xi
Jinping against dissenters.
Dr Xu was speaking after Beijing’s high court rejected an appeal to overturn his earlier
conviction for “gathering crowds to disturb public order”.
The academic, who was sentenced to four years imprisonment in January, is one of dozens of
activists caught up in what has been described as the most severe attack on government critics
since the 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square.
Members of the movement marked Dr Xu’s failed appeal by publishing a withering critique of
the Communist Party’s attempts to force their group into extinction.
Beijing’s “systematic persecution” of its enemies would fail to destroy a growing popular
demand for major political and social change, argued a combative essay on the movement’s
newly launched website.
“This is a movement that cannot be stopped,” wrote Chen Min a journalist and activist better
known by the pen name Xiao Shu.
“Any attempt to hold [it] back is destined to fail, like beating back water with a sword,” Mr Chen
added, according to a translation by the University of Hong Kong’s China Media Project. “False
charges, persecution and forced suppression will not avail but in fact will only steel our resolve.”
Teng Biao, a lawyer and co-founder of the New Citizens’ Movement, said Beijing’s politically
motivated campaign would backfire.
“We will not stop,” Teng Biao told The Telegraph shortly after his friend’s appeal was rejected.
“We will let the whole world know that this crackdown cannot stop us. We will keep following
Dr Xu’s example. We believe that what we are doing and what we have done is legal and useful
and important for society.”
Dr Xu and others conceived the New Citizens’ Movement in mid-2012 as a China-wide network
of lawyers, academics, petitioners and liberal thinkers who were united by their desire for social
change.
Its members, said by some to number in the thousands, hold informal dinner gatherings where
they discuss the future of the world’s second largest economy and highlight issues including
government corruption and transparency.
China’s leaders apparently feared the movement might grow into a “political threat”, said Maya
Wang, a Hong Kong-based researcher for Human Rights Watch.
Beijing responded with force, detaining or arresting dozens of activists since last year in order to
send a message that “organised advocating for change is not acceptable”.
A spokesperson for the US embassy in Beijing said: “We call on Chinese authorities to release
Xu and other political prisoners immediately, remove restrictions on their freedom of movement
and guarantee them the protections and freedoms to which they are entitled under China's
international human rights commitments.”
A Foreign Office report issued on the eve of the appeal said 2014 had seen “ongoing restrictions
on civil and political freedoms in China”.
Teng Biao said attempts to kill off the New Citizens’ Movement by jailing members would only
make it stronger.
“I know that many citizens around China continue their activities, their dinner gatherings, their
activities demanding the disclosure of officials’ assets,” he said.
“This kind of crackdown cannot prevent the New Citizens’ Movement from growing stronger.
We have seen more and more people standing up and fighting for liberty and human rights.”
Mr Zhang, Dr Xu’s lawyer, said Friday’s verdict, while not unexpected, was “outrageous”.
“I believe the government has made a grave mistake,” he said. By criminalising “sensible and
peaceful” citizens with legitimate complaints, the Communist Party risked creating “radical and
violent opposition.”
“The government will come to regret this,” he said.
Beijing’s internet censors appeared to have blocked the New Citizens’ Movement new website
by Friday afternoon, just hours after its launch. However, internet users who managed to scale
the “Great Firewall of China” found a defiant message from the group.
“Repression will not end the New Citizens’ Movement,” it said. “This is the road to a free China.
It is the road to a better China. We are duty bound to forge ahead.
Electile Dysfunction
You and I know the most important thing in politics is to keep getting elected. We slap ourselves in the
forehead with disbelief when people like Nancy Pelosi, formerly Miss Lube Rack 1955, gets elected over
and over again every 2 years. Or we stare like someone who just saw a two-year old throw a 110 mile an
hour baseball when we see John McCain or Sheila Jackson Lee, or God save us all Harry Reid get
reelected yet another time. The dynasty of corruption and greed has swallowed all reason and defecated a
stinking, rotting plutocracy in place of our beloved constitution.
The question on everyone’s mind from time to time is, “Who is going to be the first to attack the capital?”
No, I am serious. Have you been to Washington DC in the last 8 years? This is a city on a war footing.
They have implanted impregnable steel barricades that can pop up like built in bulldozer blades at nearly
every key intersection. When deployed, they prevent any traffic from doing anything but sitting there in
the killing zone. There is no escape. If they want to gun you down in broad daylight, they will do it.
Just ask the family of Miriam Carey was the 34 year-old single mother who drove with her one
year-old daughter, Erica, 270 miles from her home in Stamford, Connecticut, to the White House
and claimed Obama was trying to communicate with her. The official story has Miriam
“ramming a barricade” at the first White House checkpoint then speeding off to ram another
barricade outside the Capitol; then, after being pursued by law enforcement and crashing near a
guardhouse, Miriam was shot by Capitol Police and the Secret Service. 12 bullets penetrated her
body, ending her life and disfiguring her to such an extent that her family did not identify her
remains except from photos. Luckily, Baby Erica was not hit by gunfire, nor was anyone in law
enforcement.
The problem with this version of events offered by authorities and faithfully reported by the
mainstream media is that none of the details stand up to scrutiny. If you still have faith in the
mainstream media, please read this tale, click through on all the links to evaluate the information
yourself, then go back and see what was reported by Fox and CNN. You will see the true nature
of these outlets as vehicles of persuasion not information.
Here is the information and disinformation in the Miriam Carey case, point by point:
MIRIAM TRIED TO GAIN ENTRANCE TO THE WHITE HOUSE BY RAMMING THE
BARRICADE. As an eyewitness and the police report lay out, Miriam was trying to leave the
White House gate and the Secret Service there were trying to detain her by quickly putting a bike
rack in front of her car as she was attempting to exit. Miriam did not stop for the bike rack, drove
through it and in so doing knocked over the Secret Service agent who was trying to put the
barrier in front of her car. For some reason, Miriam did not want to be detained. Presumably that
reason was fear – a fear that later events justified
A truly fascinating theory by blogger American Everyman about the Miriam Carey case offers a
possible explanation for this action. He speculates that perhaps the baby was not an innocent
bystander, but is the center of the story. Perhaps the decontamination was to destroy Baby
Erica’s DNA. Subsequent events seem to support the theory that the baby is the center of the
story, as you will find below. This theory would also explain why Miriam took the baby to DC in
the first place. Miriam allegedly claimed that Obama was trying to communicate with her.
Perhaps he or his agents were trying to communicate with her, either on Obama’s behalf or on
behalf of someone close to him, especially if the paternity of the baby is at the heart of this story.
Obama first met Ms Carey on 18 May 2011 when he traveled to New London, Connecticut to
address the graduating class of the US Coast Guard Academy.
The US press, at that time, blamed Obama’s “substantial delay” for making this address on bad
weather, but according to GRU sources the American President was, instead, having a
“significant” problem after having lodged a portion of a pistachio nut (one of his favorite snack
foods) shell into one of his back molars.
Prior to Air Force One arriving in Connecticut, this report continues, Obama’s Secret Service
(SS) detail contacted an “approved” local dentist to meet the President upon his planes landing
for the purpose of alleviating his then present condition.
As Obama’s personal White House physician at the time was US Navy Captain Jeffrey
Kuhlman, MD, this report says, the “approved” dentist selected was Dr. Brian Evans of
Advanced Periodontics located in Hamden, Connecticut, whom Captain Kuhlman was long
associated with through their shared US Navy service.
Dr. Evans had served on active duty in the United States Navy as a staff periodontist in Norfolk,
Virginia. While in the Navy, Dr. Evans was, also, the periodontics mentor for the Navy’s
Advanced Education for General Dentistry program and held top-secret security clearances. Dr.
Evans was further awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal for meritorious
service.
Dr. Evans’ licensed dental assistant while treating the President on Air Force One on 18 May
2011 was Ms Carey, whom GRU assests in this report state “struck up an almost immediate
friendship with Obama.”
Important to note, this report says, is that after Ms Carey was assassinated, Dr. Evans was quoted
in the US press as stating that she was fired from her job at his office about a year ago but
wouldn't say why. Dr. Evans further stated that Ms Carey had been away from the job for a
period after falling down a staircase and suffering a head injury and it was a few weeks after she
returned to work that she was fired.
GRU analysts in this report, however, state that Ms Carey’s absence from work was “directly
related” to an affair she had begun with Obama in 2011 and which culminated in a girl child
being born in August 2012, and which it appears the President attempted to have her abort, but
which Ms Carey refused to do because of her Christian beliefs.
Critical to note, this report says, are that GRU signal intelligence analysts (SIGNIT) who were
monitoring CIA-NSA-FBI encrypted electronic communication traffic in Washington D.C. on 3
October observed the exact same “encrypted electronic signature” used by the elite hit squad
that attacked the US Navy Yard on 16 September, had assassinated the award winning American
journalist Michael Hastings on 18 June, and on 25 June attacked the Los Angeles Police
detectives investigation Hastings assassination.
From the tracing of this unique “encrypted electronic signature” as it pertained to Ms Carey’s
actions on 3 October, this report continues, it suggests that she was “lured” to Washington D.C.
under the pretext that Obama wanted to see for the first time his new baby daughter.
Obama’s concerns about Ms Carey, the GRU says, was related to her reporting to local
Connecticut police authorities late last year her fears that she was being followed and secretly
recorded by US intelligence agents and her belief that her life was in danger.
These same local police authorities, however, state that Ms Carey told them in December that
she was a prophet, that Obama would place the city of Stamford under a “lockdown” and that he
had her and her residence under electronic surveillance.
Upon Ms Carey arriving at the White House on 3 October, this report says, she became “aware”
of the trap she had driven into, and in her attempting to flee to safety was viciously tracked by
multiple US intelligence agencies and ultimately assassinated by a point-black gunshot to the left
side of her head.
Even though Ms Carey’s sister Amy Carey-Jones said there were no indications that her sister
was unstable, and that her sister “seemed OK” the last time they spoke more than a week ago,
and a second sister, Valarie Carey, who is a retired New York City police officer, said there was
“no need for a gun to be used,” the propaganda US media continues to paint this young mother
as nothing more than a lunatic.
The same, however, cannot be said of one of Obama’s longest mistresses, Vera Baker, who aside
from raising millions for his Senate and Presidential campaigns, fled to the Caribbean island of
Martinique when her affair with the American President was discovered and remains in hiding to
this day.
As to why Obama would engage himself in dangerous affairs in the first place, this report
bizarrely concludes, is the growing evidence that his wife, and First Lady, Michelle Obama, was
born Michael LaVaughn Robinson in Chicago, Illinois on 17 January 1964. He was the second
son born to Fraser Robinson III, a well known cocaine dealer and union thug for Crime LordMayor Richard J. Daley, and Marian Shields Robinson, a transient street prostitute who was
diagnosed with the HIV virus in 1998.
After a successful sex-change surgery, this report says, Michelle met Obama, married and have
since adopted two daughters, Malia and Sasha. And even though she is said to have a “watch
list” of women that were to be kept away from her President husband, most unfortunately it did
not include Miriam Carey.
When a Despot is put into a Corner, he will do anything to remain in power.
President Obama has been making comments lately about his fear that someone is about to set
off a nuke in the eastern US. “The president was not discussing intelligence when he said, ‘I
continue to be much more concerned when it comes to our security with the prospect of a nuclear
weapon going off in Manhattan,’” White House National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin
Hayden said in an e-mailed response to a question.
Obama’s comment came at the closing a multinational Nuclear Security Summit at The Hague
yesterday. At a news conference, he was downplaying the power that Russia holds over his national
security agenda in its annexation of Crimea, and trying to highlight the importance of the summit and
its goal of monitoring and controlling nuclear weapons material so that it doesn’t fall into the hands
of terrorists.
I was wondering if the government had deigned to share with us citizens any tips for, you know,
surviving something their own intelligence points to as the likeliest unlikely Black Swan event.
Well, no. And yes.
No — very few people in Washington, D.C., who work for the government have any idea what
they would do if a 10-kiloton nuclear device exploded at the intersection of 16th and K streets.
You can always look to movies to figure this stuff out, right? And in movies, since nuclear
radiation is BAD, the thing to do is to get away from it as quickly as possible. In the movies,
electronics are fried, too, the response is chaotic, and hundreds of thousands of people die.
Interestingly enough, though, the government has done quite a bit of work to figure out what
exactly would happen if a suitcase nuke — which, I know, doesn't really exist, but, for the sake
of this example, bear with me — actually did explode a few blocks from the White House.
And curiously, and perhaps hearteningly, it turns out that there is quite a lot that you or I can do
if we get stuck in Washington when something like that happens. Choices we make could very
well make the difference between our imminent death and a relatively full and happy life,
assuming the bomb is a one-off.
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory released a report in 2011 that spells all this out. It
hasn't gotten nearly the attention it deserves.
It's called the "National Capital Region Key Response Planning Factors for the Aftermath of
Nuclear Terrorism" and it makes for fascinating reading.
Did you know, for example, that:
1. The WORST thing for someone to try to do, in the aftermath of a nuclear explosion that they
survive, is to get in a car and drive away.
2. Unless you're within about a third to a half a mile radius of ground zero and the shelter options
are poor, the BEST thing for someone to do is to find a stable location inside a well-built
apartment or office building — the majority of which will remain standing outside that half mile
radius — and stay there for 24 hours.
And if you were very close to ground zero and you did survive — and a lot of folks will — the
best thing for you to do is to:
A. Take immediate shelter somewhere, because fallout will rain down on you if you don't.
B. Wait an hour.
C. Then, walk about a half-dozen blocks laterally until you find intact large buildings to shelter
you.
3. The electromagnetic pulse from a ground burst will NOT, in fact, knock out all types of
communication. Some? Maybe.
4. If you live in a single-family house with thin walls, your chances of surviving in the
immediate aftermath of a blast and not getting cancer later are exponentially higher than if you
seek shelter in a bigger building, even one that might literally be next door.
5. Rescuers should NOT put on radiation protection gear if it will slow them down. So long as
the fallout has stopped falling, they're best advised to turn out in their normal gear.
6. Though thousands of people will die from the blast effects, almost all — about 96 percent —
of the other potential casualties could be avoided if people understood the basics of what to do in
the event of mass radiation exposure.
7. Did I mention that the worst place to be in the immediate aftermath of a nuclear blast is in a
car trying to get away? The so-called DFZ — the Dangerous Fallout Zone — will extend out as
much as 20 miles, but it is likely to be extremely narrow. (If it's not, that means the concentration
of radioactive particles will be lower.) The vector and location of this zone depends on the wind.
And its size will shrink with every passing hour.
8. Penetrating trauma from broken glass is probably the largest treatable cadre of blast injuries.
I admit that I don't know what forum the president or anyone else could use to educate people in
major cities about this stuff. Government never wants to alarm people. But maybe a little bit of
alarmism is worth it, if it turns out that a terrorist's nuclear blast is a lot more survivable than we
might think, if only we do certain things.
The Texas Hacker that tried to Save the Day: See Something, Say
Nothing.
27-year-old Fidel Salinas of Dona, Texas is accused of illegally attempting to
access several Internet servers to include government assets. He is thought to
be affiliated with the notorious online hacking group dubbed “Anonymous.”
According to court documents obtained by Breitbart Texas, Salinas is facing 14 hacking charges
for trying to access websites belonging to the La Joya School District, Hidalgo County, and The
McAllen Monitor newspaper. Each charge carries potential jail time of up to ten years.
A criminal complaint states that Salinas tried to hack the Hidalgo County's management page
thousands of times on January 5, 2012.
The complaint stated, "During the early morning, Salinas made over 14,000 attempts to log into
their website server...The intrusion attempts were severe enough to prevent the administrators
from accessing their website for at least half a day; subsequently, this prevented employees from
managing their own website."
It allegedly cost the county $10,620.32 to repair the damages caused by Salinas' hacking
attempts.
Investigators were ultimately able to track down Salinas using his IP address, according to the
complaint. When confronted, Salinas said he hacked the county website "after he saw a flaw."
He claimed that he was going to relay any errors he found to Hidalgo County officials as a
"courtesy." Officers subsequently confiscated multiple computers and hard drives from the
residence.
Upon further investigation, officials claim to have found Salinas' chat logs relating to
Anonymous. More specifically, he was conversing with members of the group's “Operation
Anti-Security section.”
When questioned, Salinas admitted to posting the following on his Facebook page on January 22,
2012:
"F**k you corrupt officials and politicians. When someone tries to give you advice that your
servers aren't secure and said person doesn't modify, access, or download 'restricted' information.
I believe you say thank you instead of being afraid of what you don't know by getting an invalid
warrant, arresting, and wrongfully jacking all his electronics. -We do not forgive, we do not
forget, divide by zero we fall, EXPECT US!
GMO Update
Just when we think we are making progress, the Agency government steps in and seizes control of State’s
rights.
Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2014
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By U.S. Congress
Organic Consumers Association, April 10, 2014
113TH CONGRESS
2D SESSION
To amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act with respect to food produced from,
containing, or consisting of a bioengineered organism, the labeling of natural foods, and
for other purposes.
PROHIBITION AGAINST MANDATORY LABEL15 ING.—Section 403A of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cos16 metic Act (21 U.S.C. 343–1) is amended by adding at the
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‘‘(c) PROHIBITIONS AGAINST MANDATORY LABELING
OF FOOD DEVELOPED USING BIOENGINEERING.—Except
for claims under subsection (a)(1) or (b)(1) of section 425,
no State or political subdivision of a State may directly
or indirectly establish under any authority or continue in
effect as to any food in interstate commerce any requirement for the labeling of a food by virtue of its having been
developed using bioengineering, including any require-
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ments for claims that a food is or contains an ingredient
that was developed using bioengineering.’’.
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TITLE II—NATURAL FOODS
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SEC. 201. LABELING OF NATURAL FOODS.
Section 403 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic
Act (21 U.S.C. 343), as amended by section 103 of this
Act, is further amended by adding at the end the following:
‘‘(aa)(1) If its labeling contains an express or implied
claim that the food is ‘natural’ unless the claim is made
in accordance with subparagraph (2).
‘‘(2) A claim described in subparagraph (1) may be
made only if the claim uses terms that have been defined
by, and the food meets the requirements that have been
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established in, regulations promulgated to carry out this
paragraph.
‘‘(3) Notwithstanding subparagraph (2), prior to the
finalization of regulations to carry out this paragraph, the
use of any claim that a food is ‘natural’ shall be allowed
if consistent with the Secretary’s existing policy for such
claims.
‘‘(4) In promulgating regulations to carry out this
paragraph, the Secretary shall differentiate between food
for human consumption and food intended for consumption by animals other than humans.
‘‘(5) For purposes of subparagraph (1), a natural
claim includes the use of—
‘‘(A) the terms ‘natural’, ‘100% natural’, ‘naturally grown’, ‘all natural’, and ‘made with natural
ingredients’; and
‘‘(B) any other terms specified by the Secretary.
Conservation Efforts are Working as Planned
(CNSNews.com) - The average price for a kilowatthour (KWH) of electricity hit a March record
of 13.5 cents, according data released yesterday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was up
about 5.5 percent from 12.8 cents per KWH in March 2013.
The relative price of electricity in the United States tends to rise in spring, peak in summer, and
decline in fall. Last year, after the price of a KWH averaged 12.8 cents in March, it rose to an alltime high of 13.7 cents in June, July, August and September.
If the prevailing trend holds, the average price of a KWH would hit a new record this summer.
The BLS’s seasonally adjusted electricity price index rose to 209.341 this March, the highest it
has ever been, up 10.537 points—or 5.3 percent--from 198.804 in March 2013.
In its press release on the Consumer Price Index, BLS noted that the overall energy index
declined in March, driven by declining gasoline and fuel oil indexes, despite increases in natural
gas and electricity.
”The energy index fell 0.1 percent in March after a 0.5 percent decline in February,” said BLS.
“The gasoline index declined 1.7 percent in March, the same decline as in February. (Before
seasonal adjustment, gasoline prices rose 5.1 percent in March).
“The fuel oil index also declined, falling 2.9 percent after rising 4.1 percent the previous month,”
said BLS. “In contrast, the index for natural gas rose sharply, increasing 7.5 percent, its largest
one-month increase since October 2005. It has increased 15.3 percent over the last three months.
“The electricity index also increased, rising 1.1 percent,” said BLS. ”Over the last 12 months, the
energy index has increased 0.4 percent, with the natural gas index rising 16.4 percent, the
electricity index increasing 5.3 percent, and the fuel oil index advancing 2.1 percent. These
increases more than offset a 4.7 percent decline in the gasoline index.”
Historically, rising electricity prices have not been inevitable in the United States. The BLS’s
annual electricity price index—which goes back a century—shows that electricity prices
generally declined in the United States between 1913 and the end of World War II. They then
held relatively steady for about two decades before beginning to escalate in the late 1960s