Countries’ economies are driven by an obsession, continuous growth in the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The absurdity of this becomes clear with a little bit of thought. Never-ending growth that relies on extracting resources from a finite planet is, of course, a mathematical impossibility, but well before we reach that point, this obsession will render our planet uninhabitable.
Among IT security professionals, it has been long understood that the public disclosure of vulnerabilities is the only consistent way to improve security. That’s why researchers publish information about vulnerabilities in computer software and operating systems, cryptographic algorithms, and consumer products like implantable medical devices, cars, and CCTV cameras.
“It is a war crime to launch “an indiscriminate attack affecting the civilian population in the knowledge that such an attack will cause an excessive loss of life or injury to civilians.” -Geneva Conventions, Article 85
The casino has swallowed the system. The sums the players are betting are not only far larger than the value of the rest of their portfolios, but six times larger than the combined assets of every human institution and family on Earth, and almost 17 times bigger than the worth of humankind’s yearly output. Even if the whole planet were offered as collateral, it could not cover Wall Street’s bets.
What is becoming clearer, as stated by various senior military officers as the recent DSEi arms fair, is a commitment to armed drone technology beyond Afghanistan.
“Within 5 to 10 minutes after the Israeli helicopter approached the ship, I ran into Cevdet Kiliclar’s dead body on the deck, before any Israeli commando had boarded the vessel,” O’Keefe said, referring to one of the Turkish activists. “He must have been shot from the air. After seeing Kiliclar’s dead body, I went upstairs to the top of the deck and saw several people lying on the ground, wounded or dead.”
Though former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has been indicted for leaking secrets about the U.S. government’s intrusive surveillance tactics, he was honored by a group of former U.S. intelligence officials as a courageous whistleblower during a Moscow ceremony, reports ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern who was there.
The invasion of Iraq was undertaken with warnings from the intelligence services in the United States and Britain, both the attacking countries, intelligence services warned that this was going to increase terrorism. It did by a huge factor. According to government statistics by about a factor of seven in the first year. Does that help security? Well they had other reasons to invade Iraq, not security and this goes way back.
Israel and Saudi Arabia are rogue states writ large. They’re two of the world’s worst. They deplore democratic values. They spurn rule of law principles.
They commit horrendous human and civil rights abuses. They’re responsible for daily crimes against humanity.
They partner with Washington’s imperial wars. They’re an odd couple. They’re strange bedfellows. Perhaps they’re joining forces. Formal relations aren’t maintained. Back channel secret ones substitute.
The mainstream US media has once again mistranslated an Iranian president’s words.
Last time, they were lying to make the former President of Iran sound anti-West and anti-Israel. Now they are lying to make the new President of Iran sound pro-West and pro-Israel.
I suppose that is an improvement. Lying for peace is at least marginally better than lying for war.
But for those who care about truth, the Western mainstream media’s non-stop lies are nothing short of an ongoing holocaust.
Let’s take a closer look at the latest example of Western media duplicity.
Sentient beings feel pleasure, pain, fear and attachment. Biologically, sentient beings have a nervous system, which allows them to innately experience these feelings. Sentient creatures will seek pleasure, will react to fear, and most significantly, avoid suffering and pain in order to live. Animal rights are based on the idea that non human animals, like humans, are sentient beings, and like humans, non human animals have an interest in preserving their own lives.
A “bail-in” is a relatively new term being used increasingly in international finance to refer to a situation in which private assets, including private bank deposits, are confiscated by government institutions to compensate for shortfalls. The bail-ins are used to address problems ranging from inadequacies in financial institution reserves to situations in which a government needs to reduce debt ratios to resume borrowing.
