Fire in Chile. Party at Coachella.

So, there's a pretty big fire in Chile right now:

 

It has been reported that at least 11 people have died due to this fire.

More than 10,000 people have evacuated the city of Valparaiso, after the city was declared a disaster zone. 

Around 1,200 firefighters are fighting this massive beast of a fire, which has destroyed at least 1,000 homes since Saturday.

More to American news' satisfaction a certain music festival is going on this weekend.

Coachella. Coachella. Coachella.

This festival is dominating most of the news sites I have seen, and most of the internet in general.

Which disaster will you decide to keep up with? The life-taking fire in Chile? Or the hipster convention somwhere in California?

Sources:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/13/chile-blaze-dead-500-homes-destroyed

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-27007884

Hillsborough

In 1989, nearly 100 fans of English soccer club Liverpool were killed in when a section of the stadium collapsed during an FA cup semi-final match. What seems like a horrible incidental disaster may actually be at the fault of the police. 

The youtube link below shows the scene at the stadium after the collapse, fast forward to the 7 minute mark for the time of the collapse. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SdGtCWrvlo

The collapse happened in a section of the stadium that was considered to be standing room only after people that did not actually have tickets to the game ended up in the stadium. The stadium then became overcrowded and could not support the amount of people inside. What I don't understand is why these people were let in knowing the stadium was at capacity. After it happened police immediately put the blame on the victims and the people in that section as being hooligans and causing a ruckus that the section of the stadium could not hold. It is the logical theory here but police actually filed people without tickets into the stadium into that section to keep it from being overcrowded outside the stadium. It's a blatant act of negligence and misconduct by the police in this situation and the blame should be thrown on them, it is just sad that 20 plus years after altered police statements bad mouthing the fans and getting the blame taken off them that this is finally coming out. 

Don't worry it gets worse. Some say that many of those who died didn't receive police or medical attention when it happened. After it happened police just shoved people into sectioned off areas that were already full to get people off the field. The death total was 96 and prosecutions from the families of the victims today. The front page below paints a perfect image of what's going on here, the part that stands out to me is "23 years later" .. it really is sickening that the corrupt side of this took 23 years to get any sort of media coverage. 

See the link below for the story and watch the ESPN 30 for 30 film entitled "Soccer Stories" for more details.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/sports/soccer/new-inquests-begin-into-deaths-of-96-liverpool-fans-in-1989-hillsborough-stadium-disaster-253190041.html?device=mobile

Assassination Campaign?

In the past, we have heard of other governments attempts to kill their own citizens. For the most part it has been for political reasons, but even though it is by no means acceptable to take another individuals life, some of those countries core values and system functions that way. Now, can you imagine those orders being approved by our government? that one we often proclaimed to be fair and just in all senses, and where Freedom and Equality for All is part of who we are? Probably not! The sad news are that its been happening and most of us have been clueless about it. 

It has been reported that President Obama has been directing a "assassination campaign" for several months already. Even though his primary targets are those to be accused of terrorism, many of them are U.S. citizens as well. In many instances the campaigns goals are being met using drones, reason being is because they are cheaper then sending intelligence personnel to do the dirty work and it can be done fast and quiet. It must be kept in mind that this idea was not initiated by President Obama, it was a left over proposition from the Bush Administration that seemed to fit with this presidency's ideals which have taken many hits and accusations of being "weak" in the last couple of worldwide events.

By allowing such of thing to happen without question and given our government branches (Executive) this much power, are we not allowing them to control our lives at every instance? Don't we think that this might lead to the creation of a secret army of spies who would eventually turn on its own people just because they are following orders and the goals of those in office need to be met? 

For some reason reading about this "Campaign" reminded me of the book 1984 by George Orwell where big brother is always watching you. Is this the type of government that we really want? Or is it too late, and we are part of it already? When the case of the "Assassination Campaign" was brought to the New York courts, the judged ruled that “There are circumstances in which the executive’s decision to kill U.S. citizens overseas is constitutionally committed to the political branches and judicially unreviewable.” Meaning that there is not much that can be done and or questioned about the actions of our so called Democratic government.

For further information on the subject please visit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_campaign

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/mit-s-noam-chomsky-obama-s-running-global-assassination-campaign

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-06-04/opinion/ct-oped-0604-krauthammer-20120604_1_drone-strike-barack-obama-civilians

http://www.salon.com/2010/04/07/assassinations_2/

http://www.projectcensored.org/3-obama-authorizes-international-assassination-campaign/


D.S.

Is "America's Secret Army" in the Ukraine?

The Facebook post by Russian Foreign Ministry on April 8th blatantly accusing the United States of deploying 150 private operatives (supplied by Greystone Ltd.) dressed as Ukrainian soldiers into Southeast Ukraine has spread like wildfire over the past few days.

National news coverage in America has hovered around refuting these accusations by downgrading Russian decision makers, and repeating statements by Greystone Ltd. which deny their involvement.

However there is of course more to the story than this...

http://greystone-ltd.com/

1. Greystone Ltd. is a aviation and protective services company affiliated with the group formerly known as Blackwater (now Academi). They are both infamous for their part in the 2007 Baghdad shootings that killed 17 civilians and wounded 20 others. In 2008, five operatives from Blackwater were put on trial for manslaughter, but charges were dropped later that year on a technicality.

2. Dr Nafeez Ahmed, a security expert with the Institute for Policy Research & Development said:

“On the face of it, the uniforms of the people in the videos are consistent with US mercs - they don't look like Russian soldiers mercs. On the other hand, why run around in public making a show of it?” Ahmed also added that “Of course the other possibility is it's all Russian propaganda.”

3. Russian Underlying Intention: The Daily Mail explained that “any suggestion that a US mercenary outfit like Blackwater...had begun operating in east Ukraine could give Russian President Vladimir Putin the pretext for a military invasion.”

4. The Voice of Russia reported - (Americans)...are not the only ones. A Russian national that took part in clashes in Kiev was arrested in Russia’s Bryansk region this week...made a statement on record that he met a large number of foreigners taking active part in the fighting with police.

He claimed he saw dozens of military-clad people from Germany, Poland, and Turkey, as well as English speakers who were possibly from the US.

5. "According to the website: Greystone has recently been awarded contracts for executive protection services in Russia and the Caucasus region of Eurasia, southeast of Ukraine."

B.G.

Web Info:
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2014/04/10/russia-virginia-based-private-soldiers-in-ukraine.html?ESRC=topstories.RSS
http://rt.com/op-edge/ukraine-blackwater-mercenaries-russia-794/
http://blogs.wsj.com/emergingeurope/2014/04/08/security-firm-denies-involvement-in-ukraine/
http://rt.com/op-edge/foreign-mercenaries-in-ukraine-373/

Here, Take My Information

News has recently dropped of a serious internet security threat known has the heartbleed bug. This bug can access private information from a wide variety of websites by bypassing an internet security system known as Open SSL; this can include your passwords, credit card information or bank information, social security number, virtually anything you can think of. On top of this, this bug leaves absolutely no trace and it is actually quite simple for the average hacker to figure out. This could be considered the most serious security vulnerability of all time.  Nearly 18% of websites are effected by this bug right now. That equates to over half a million trusted websites. Fortunately this website is considered safe at the moment, most likely because it is owned by Google.

Now this bug has isn't anything new, it has been around since December 2011, but didn't start effecting security until the release of OpenSSL 1.0.1 in March 2012. So the 18% of the internet effected now would certainly be a lot larger one year ago. Fortunately the latest update of Open SSL fixes the bug, strangely over 2 years since its release. However, the official website releasing information about this bug states that:

You are likely to be affected either directly or indirectly. OpenSSL is the most popular open source cryptographic library and TLS (transport layer security) implementation used to encrypt traffic on the Internet. Your popular social site, your company's site, commerce site, hobby site, site you install software from or even sites run by your government might be using vulnerable OpenSSL. Many of online services use TLS to both to identify themselves to you and to protect your privacy and transactions. You might have networked appliances with logins secured by this buggy implementation of the TLS. Furthermore you might have client side software on your computer that could expose the data from your computer if you connect to compromised services.


So it's very possible that these vulnerabilities granted someone access to your personal computer files; so even if they can't access your bank account from the vulnerable sites they may be able to access it elsewhere from within your computer memory. The Canadian Revenue Agency even shut down their online tax filing while this issue is going on, clearly looking out for their citizens. Something that America is yet to do.

Some of the websites that are not experiencing these vulnerabilities include Google and Facebook. Both of these sites are considered "First Tier" by the potential internet tier system. It's certainly possible that this event will be looked at as a sign that the government needs to intervene in internet freedom. This is something they've been trying to attack for a few years with SOPA, CISPA and even the NSA. This is clearly speculation but it's certainly a possibility that the government was hoping for something like this to happen. The SOPA bill was introduced in October 2011, only two months before the bug was introduced to the internet.

Now the media has been talking about this briefly but this should certainly be the most important story considering all internet users are at serious risk. ABC News simply had a small link to the story in their "Money" section, showing people how to protect themselves. Protecting oneself right now isn't the issue, it's that this bug has been around for over two years.

http://www.cnet.com/news/heartbleed-bug-undoes-web-encryption-reveals-user-passwords/
http://heartbleed.com/
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2014/04/08/half-a-million-widely-trusted-websites-vulnerable-to-heartbleed-bug.html
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/business/shuts+down+electronic+filing+protect+security+taxpayer/9718322/story.html

Irish President visits UK

Irish President Michael D. Higgins made the first ever state visit to the UK by an Irish head of state today. 

Higgins was there to there to accept an award in his honor, but what may be more important is why an Irish head of state hadn't been there before.

As detailed briefly in this article: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-26883211 

Easter Rising, 1916.

Bloody Sunday, 1920.

The UK and Ireland have a had a rocky history to say the very least.

In terms of US news outlets covering this story, when searched in google, a US news source covering it was the last result on the page. For a story like this, it makes sense for UK and Irish news outlets to be the first results, but it still makes me wonder a bit. How much do American people know English-Irish history? How much do American people know about the histories of other countries in general? Is this just a flaw in our education system or is something else going on? The US news can lead you to believe things that are going on are all-American all the time.

Dredging up the overwhelming negative past between these two countries is the only way to show that Higgins' trip was a very positive step.

Do you feel informed with what is going on in other countries? Comment below.

Sources:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-26883211

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-26932969

http://www.thejournal.ie/michael-d-higgins-state-visit-queen-windsor-1405410-Apr2014/

Alleged but not confirmed..

It's stuff like this that makes me continue to question the government of this country. I am not going to rant about how Martin Luther King Jr. was a hero because you already know that. On record MLK was shot and killed by James Earl Ray at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. He plead guilty after building extradited back to the United States and that was the end of it, but was that really the end of it? Did the government really want MLK out of D.C. so bad that they would organize his murder? The family of MLK all stand by their belief of this government conspiracy in their 1999 trial. The evidence is hard to ignore, the 111th Military Intelligence Group were in MLK's location at the time of his death, MLK has regular police security on him basically 24/7 but for some reason this was removed an hour before his assassination, and the icing on the cake, the rifle the James Earl Ray had was not a bullet match to the bullet that killed Martin.

This civil suit never being released by media to me shows how controlled they are by U.S. government officials. James Earl Ray tried numerous times to change his guilty plea to not guilty after he had been incarcerated, I am at the point where I do not even think this man is the shooter. The three pieces of evidence I listed were only a few of the many, click the link below and see for yourself how beyond corrupt this is. You're trying to tell me every mainstream media outlet passed on basically one of the biggest news reports of all time? Just doesn't seem right to see the listed weapon on the murder and next to it saying *alleged but not confirmed*

http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-government-guilty-of-martin-luther-kings-murder-the-corporate-media-covers-it-up/5376631?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=us-government-guilty-of-martin-luther-kings-murder-the-corporate-media-covers-it-up

Defense Deparment + Defense Mechanism = DENIAL

The Consequence of 'Ignore-ance'

On April 2, 2014 the community of Ft.Hood was again the target of a homicidal 'suicide' missions planned by two different fellow military comrades. On both occasions the motivation to initiate these savage shooting sprees is in direct connection with their involvement in the Iraq War (2003-2011).

This means that both men had complained repeatedly of suffering from intense levels of chronic stress that stemmed from harassment, fear, and hopelessness that went ignored due to systemic failures on the part of the military to allocate appropriate resources to mental health division.

First shooter: Nidal Malik Hasan, was an psychiatrist, Medical Corps officer, and devote Muslim that listened repeatedly to the stories of war-torn soldiers suffering from PTSD, who witnessed as well as took part in acts of war against Iraqi's that they considered both traumatizing and inhumane. 

 

Second shooter: Ivan Lopez was an experienced officer who for 4 months was deployed to Iraq in 2011 as a driver. While on tour Lopez suffered from a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), and when he returned from Iraq began treatment for depression, anxiety and insomnia with prescription drug Ambien. 

Don't take the medias word for it - Educate Yourself! 

Click on the link below for more information of PTSD

Criterion A: Traumatic event

Trauma survivors must have been exposed to actual or threatened:

• death
• serious injury
• sexual violence

The exposure can be:

• direct
• witnessed
• indirect, by hearing of a relative or close friend who has experienced the event—indirectly experienced death must be accidental or violent

Therefore as it stands: both of these officers meet the criteria for PTSD in that their involvement with the Iraq War first qualifies them, and that their subsequent symptoms (stemming from their specifics level of exposure) has rendered them mentally unable to cope with significant feelings of anxiety, anger, helplessness, insomnia, and moral injury.

SYSTEMIC DENIAL - on the part of the military

Nidal Malik Hasan- made a presentation titled "The Quranic World View as It Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military"  suggesting that the Department of Defense "should allow Muslims soldiers the option of being released as "Conscientious objectors" to increase troop morale and decrease adverse events." 

Needless to say this was not well received...

BUT this is a huge insight into his belief structure and mental disposition on the matter of the Iraq War.

DENIAL - Later he asked to be discharged because of moral conflict and was denied.

Instead, he had to continue to perform as a psychiatrist and listen to stories of Muslim's dying in great numbers and in horrible ways, which contributed to the development of PTSD and subsequent horrendous acts of violence.

Ivan Lopez, on the other hand is a straightforward case of misdiagnosis. That is by 2014 he was still not diagnosis for PTSD of which he exhibited several of its main symptoms, and instead was simply being medicated, without proper therapy, for each symptom separately. This was compounded by a TBI, which in effect are linked to causing bouts of inhibition, dissociative behaviors, spontaneous aggression, as well as exasperate preexisting mental illness. 

DENIAL - Lopez was not only denied the mental health resources that he needed after his deployment - Like so many other soldiers. 

BUT the military also denied helping him to transfer his family, when they moved him from Ft. Bliss to Ft. Hood, thereby isolating him further, and not seeing the warning signs on Facebook and other channels that his mental health was worsening, due to their systemic failures.

Conclusion

 Moral Injury can also occur when military professionals, who devote their life to service are betrayed, denied, and invalidated by the ones they trusted to commit their lives to...

I am in no way condoning or excusing their acts of violence, but am advocating for the SOCIAL IMPERATIVE that we as a people demand the Defense Department invest and listen to our military personal both on and off the battlefield. 

Bianca Grace

Sources:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/04/how-the-army-screwed-the-hero-of-fort-hood.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/04/us/gunman-had-clean-record-with-no-violent-sign-officials-say.html?_r=0

http://www.brainlinemilitary.org/content/2010/06/dsm-iv-tr-criteria-for-ptsd.html

http://www.heavy.com/news/2013/08/nidal-malik-hasan-fort-hood-shooter-trial-2/

http://projects.huffingtonpost.com/moral-injury

http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/neuropsychiatry/neuropsychiatric-effects-traumatic-brain-injury
http://psychcentral.com/lib/symptoms-and-diagnosis-of-ptsd/000158

Remember BP?

The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill was one of the most covered stories in recent US media history. This disaster lasted 87 long days in 2010. Considering how covered this story was, one would think future oil spills would get adequate coverage. However, there has been a BP created oil spill happening in Lake Michigan for the past week. This story has been getting absolutely no coverage in the mass media, only local stories have covered it.

It is estimated that over 1,000 gallons of oil has been spilled into Lake Michigan, a lake that over 7 million people in Chicago and surrounding areas use for drinking water. BP, once again, has been very inefficient with their reporting of the incident.

On top of this, only a few days prior, two ships near in Galveston Bay in Texas collided spilling 168,000 gallons of oil into the bay. This has caused numerous deaths to the native wildlife.

 I know these spills don't compare to the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, but oil spills are actually very common around the world. There was a 1.68 million gallon oil spill in Nigeria by Shell and that was never discussed on mainstream media. The oil industry continually gets away with whatever it wants around the world because the US relies heavily on oil. This gives them a hand in US politics, especially considering how economically impactful the oil industry is. In 2013 the five primary oil companies made $93 billion, which equals $177,000 a minute. They've consistently shown that profits are far more important than public safety. The lives of innocent animals are on their hands and yet they and the US government appear to have no remorse as these problems keep arising.


http://www.texastribune.org/2014/04/04/shorebirds-devastated-galveston-oil-spill/
http://fox17online.com/2014/04/03/bp-must-provide-details-behind-lake-michigan-
oil-spill/#axzz2xxshzdb3
http://www.texastribune.org/2014/04/04/shorebirds-devastated-galveston-oil-spill/
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140324-galveston-bay-birds-oil-spill-animals-science/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/03/nigeria-oil-spill_n_4373361.html

Tweet, tweet.

While we were tweeting away this past week advertising this very blog on Twitter, the people of Turkey were doing nothing of the sort. Though not previously mentioned on this blog, for the past two weeks there was a ban on the use of Twitter in Turkey.

That ban was lifted today after the constitutional court ruled on Wednesday that the block breached freedom of expression.

Twitter was blocked in the first place because a stream of leaked recordings of senior officials were tweeted out before a local election.

Pictured above: Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan



Erdoğan dismisses these leaked recordings (which point to wrongdoing by officials and members of his inner circle) as lies.


YouTube on the other hand remains offline in Turkey. It was blocked one week after  Twitter.

What really made me think while reading about this was what the response would be to something like this happening in the United States. I suppose it only seems like the Turkish people have been handling this quietly to the average U.S. news consumer. But there has to be so much going on that we do not see. Do you think the Turkish people have responded properly? How would people of the U.S. handle this happening here? Comment below with your thoughts.

Sources:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/03/turkey-lifts-twitter-ban-court-ruling

K.Y.

Are we being watched?

Every now and then someone will bring up to me that apple can read into our conversations, listen to our phone calls and that the NSA can access anything they want to on our computers. I always wondered how true this is, I mean I'm sure they have the ability to do such a thing but I'm 99.9% sure all of that is illegal. With that in the back of my head I assumed that I could just shrug off the idiots that tell me my texts and calls are being watched. I then stumbled across this article talking about how Snowden released private documents (must not be that private) about how the NSA plans to use malware to be able to expand its hacking capabilities to the publics personal computers. The documents released describe a technology that allows the NSA to break into any targeted computer and file through any data they may be interested in looking at.

So what you're telling me is that my little 4 digit lock code on my phone isn't really keeping people out? Can't really say I'm shocked. I've heard different things on this, some people outraged that the NSA has the ability to basically watch their every more, some people say they aren't really worried about it and that the NSA would be useless if they didn't do stuff like this. I am not picking a side, what I can say is this is not legal, but if it helps keep the country safe all together can I really be opposed to it? The troubling part is there was no media coverage about this until Snowden leaked the documents so it is clear they did not want this getting out to the public. If it is going to help keep the country safe why hide it from everyone and look sketchy. The link below goes into more tech savy detail about how the NSA prepares to watch your every move. comment below with thoughts after you go delete all your embarrassing pictures on your computer.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/03/12/nsa-plans-infect-millions-computers-malware

Is it lost? Are they alive? What's happening with this "missing plane"?

A few weeks ago, we posted about the missing plane MH370 and about the Malaysian Prime Minister, Najib Razak saying that there was no signs of the plane but they were no survivors. Now, the news are back saying that investigators were focusing their efforts on the wrong areas and that a new area of investigation has been selected. Has this become some type of game? Why was it they the teams of investigators were not working together? Why was there such a lack of communication? Could it be that there is a third party benefiting from this tragedy? 

Their main focus of investigation so far as been the ocean, why? I mean there is no evidence showing us that they crash into the water instead of of land. If as of today all of the hypotheses are just plain guesses, why is it that they are no investigating the surrounding land areas as well? Could it be that the plane was highjacked and terrorist or who ever did it does not want to claim it waiting to see what the international organizations are going to do about it? Could it be that they have learned from others past experiences and are just waiting for the right moment?

Now the investigations have changed focus, and more investigators, resources, and technology are being used. As it was explained, the battery on the “black boxes” will eventually died within the next couple of weeks, so time is not in their favor. Hopefully the investigators will work together this time and some good news will eventually come out of all this tragedy. 

May be we should just wait and see what is going to happen instead of paying so much attention to the repetitive news channels...

D.S.

For further information and full story on this topic please read: 

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26721975

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/03/17/world/asia/search-for-flight-370.html#communications

http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/world/2014/03/27/erin-intv-sarah-bajc-philip-wood-partner-flight-370.cnn.html