Cops Charged After Botched Pot Raid

You hear this kind of stuff all the time but this is especially blatant. Cops decide to help themselves to a persons personal property without any justification whatsoever.

Raiding someones house and finding a negligible amount of marijuana does not allow government employees a right to plunder everything they can from a suspect's home.

The war on drugs is truly a war on our rights.

Here is the story:

Graphic: Action News
The corrupt cops were caught on tape discussing the spoils of their "drug raid" -- which netted a quarter-ounce of marijuana.
​​Two Michigan police officers have been criminally charged after being caught on tape during a botched marijuana raid.

Lt. Luke Davis and Lt. Emmanuel Riopelle face dozens of charges in the case, reports Action News WXYZ. Davis headed the undercover narcotics unit. The indictment alleges that he and the others sold drugs and confiscated goods for personal profit.

The rogue cops were caught on audio tape by a local man, Rudy Simpson, during a pot raid (you can hear the audio at the end of this story). Simpson alleges he was the victim of heavy-handed and unprofessional police tactics during the raid on his home. Of course, it was just business as usual for the cops -- except this time, a tape was rolling.



Photo: Action News
Drug Task Force head Lt. Luke Davis, right, allegedly sold drugs and confiscated goods for personal profit.
​The case centers around Lt. Davis, who now faces corruption charges. The OMNI Drug Task Force, headed by Davis, executed a search warrant on Simpson's Monroe County home in June of 2008. They based the search on an anonymous tip and a single marijuana stem they claimed they found in his garbage.

When the cops busted in, Rudy's band was practicing in his basement recording studio.

What the dumb-ass police didn't know is that the microphones were on, and everything was being recorded.

"They have a recording studio? What the fuck," said one cop.

"I hope they're not mixing," said another.

But they were mixing, and the two clueless cops take turns (badly) singing on the microphone, unaware that their "performance" is being recorded.

While those cops were goofing in the basement, Rudy, his friend Jeremy and members of the band were taken upstairs, where Lt. Davis and other task force members were tossing the house.

They said they were shocked by the behavior of the police.

"Very unprofessional, almost thuggish," Simpson said. "I felt violated, and almost like it was a game to them."

The cops were "going in the kitchen cabinets, eating cookies," said Simpson's friend. "Going in the refrigerator, eating stuff out of the refrigerator.

"It was very unprofessional," he said.

And what did these big, tough "Drug Task Force" cops find? Only a quarter-ounce of marijuana, 12 tiny sprouts in a pot which they claimed were marijuana, and half of a pain pill -- for which Rudy later produced a prescription.

The men said the cops seemed more interested in Rudy's costly music equipment than in the scant amount of marijuana they found.

"Basically what I heard them talking about is what equipment, what materialistic stuff they could take out of my house," Simpson said. "It seems like ... that they were just trying to figure out what they could come out of here with."

"At least a quarter-ounce here; he's gonna give us a chance to frickin' take all this stuff, according to Luke," one of the cops is heard saying on the tape.

The police wound up stealing, I mean "confiscating" three pages' worth of stuff from the home, including a generous helping of Rudy's personal property: a 52-inch flat-screen TV, a DVD player, two computers, a camera and a bunch of DVDs.

Under the law, police are only supposed to confiscate property that was purchased with money earned from drug sales.

"Where was there evidence that you were distributing or selling drugs?" asked Action News investigator Scott Lewis.

"There was none," said Simpson. "There was no sales, there was no undercover cops. There was nothing on paper ... it was basically an anonymous tip, they said."

The corruption charges surrounding Lt. Davis raise serious questions, according to Action News, not only about the thuggish conduct of the officers but also about Michigan's drug forfeiture laws.

A report from a civil liberties group called The Justice Institute grades the forfeiture laws of each state. Michigan gets a "D minus."

In Michigan, cops can seize your property with nothing more than "probable cause," and they are well aware of this. They don't need any proof beyond a reasonable doubt, as they do in many other states.

They can even take your property without charging you with any crime! And as Action News learned, that's what apparently happened.

Rudy Simpson was charged for the quarter-ounce of marijuana and half a pain pill, even though he had a prescription for the pill. Simpson had another marijuana charge from years ago, and he said the prosecutor was playing hardball.

"You either take the charge for half a Lorcet (from the prescription I had) or we're gonna hit you as a habitual, and you're looking at prison time for a quarter ounce of weed," he said.

Simpson, believing he had no choice, pleaded guilty and did some time in a halfway house. He said he decided to come forward with his story after he heard Action News was investigating the Luke Davis corruption case.

Rudy said the OMINI Narcotics crew also took $400 cash and a gold ring that was never even listed on the search warrant return. That allegation, of course, was denied by the prosecutor in court records.

Expect this to keep happening until you get sick enough of it to do something.


Tags: caught on tape,michigan,raid


http://www.tokeofthetown.com/2011/03/cops_charged_after_being_caught_on_tape_in_botched.php

Women of Thailand

Can you guess which ones are actually women?

Cyber Vigalantes/Hacktivists: Good or Bad?

This is a question that seems to be going around the country lately. With Anonymous completely owning security firm HBGary by releasing all their private emails to the world, several illegal plots were discovered. These are discussed further in depth in the article.

Revealing this is definitely a benefit to the public good especially since these corporations provide services to the Federal Government. But in the end, does having groups of vigilantes with different agendas lead to a better world? I personally think its greater. Anything spreading information and encouraging transparency is a good thing.

Anyway, heres the article. Tell me what you think:

Should we cheer or fear cyber vigilantes like Anonymous?

By InfoWorld Tech Watch

Created 2011-03-02 03:15AM

The ongoing drama starring hacker group Anonymous and beleaguered security company HBGary has taken a startling twist: In the wake of HBGary CEO Aaron Barr resigning [1], a group of House Democrats plans to use information gleaned from stolen electronic documents to launch an investigation of HBGary Federal along with two other federal tech contractors for plotting to attack and discredit pro-union opponents of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, according to reports.
The latest development once again raises the question of the role so-called hacktivists -- members of Anonymous, supporters and contributors to WikiLeaks, white-hats who publicly disclose security vulnerabilities -- play in our world. They seem to fit best in the category of "vigilante," pushing both legal and ethical boundaries for often subjective greater good. The question remains, however, just where the line is drawn between a cyber vigilante who is more like Batman, and one who is more like the Joker [2].
Dirty politics 2.0House Democrats are seeking to investigate an alleged plan by HBGary Federal, Berico Technologies, and Palantir Technologies, collectively dubbed Team Themis, to attack and discredit the Chamber's critics using unsavory and arguably illegal cyber-based techniques. These tactics are all laid out in the documents stolen and publicized by Anonymous.
The alleged tactics include planting false documents, such as fake financial information, for Chamber opponents to find. Were an opponent to make public the documents, the Chamber would prove them false, thus discrediting and embarrassing the opponent in the process.
Another tactic entails creating two fake online personas to infiltrate activist websites. One persona would achieve a trusted status by discrediting the other to gain access to insider information.
Yet another tactic, one the group allegedly engaged in already according to the stolen emails, is culling personal information about anti-Chamber activists, such as family and religious data.
Consider the source?This aforementioned -- and again, alleged -- plot is troubling, no question. But also troubling is how quickly some members of Congress seek to use illegally acquired information to further their own political agenda.
For example, a letter [PDF] [3] from lawmakers calling for the investigation of Team Themis describes the group's alleged plot as "deeply troubling," observing that "tactics developed for use against terrorists may have been unleashed against American citizens," according to The Washington Post.
The rhetoric is loaded, and the lawmakers who are shocked and appalled by Team Themis's alleged plan seem to conveniently ignore the fact that the same plan was revealed through tactics that also could be used against terrorists. Additionally, this plot was, in fact, unleashed against American citizens -- yet they were citizens who apparently were concocting naughty, naughty schemes.
Therein lies the ethical dilemma: Do the ends here justify the means? If there is an investigation and one or more people are indeed found guilty of plotting illegal activities, do we cheer for Anonymous?
Out of sight, out of mind?Also, do cyber vigilantes have more leeway than criminals who engage in nontechnological techniques, the way some people might not view downloading pirated music in the same light as stealing a physical CD from the store?
For example, would supporters of Anonymous view this situation differently if a group of masked men and women broke into HBGary, Berico, and Palanti in the dead of night, stole computers or drives containing the various damning files, and shipped them to a contact in the House of Representatives?
The same questions can be asked of the group's successful hacking of Westboro Baptist Church's website [4] over the weekend. The church arguably goaded Anonymous -- possibly as part of a publicity stunt -- to the point that Anonymous attacked. People who oppose the WBC -- notorious for adopting an offensive Web address -- will likely shed no tears; they may even cheer for Anonymous. But does that make Anonymous's actions, the defacement of a legitimate religious group's website, acceptable? Would supporters of the act view it differently if a group of men and women physically defaced the WBC's headquarters with spray paint?
These questions doesn't apply to Anonymous only, either. What about the group Goatse Security, that last June revealed thousands of email addresses of iPad users [5] it had mined via a hole in AT&T's website in order to punish to company for not notifying customers their information had been stolen? Or Google security engineer Tavis Ormandy, who made public a vulnerability in Windows XP [6] in an effort to get the company to fix the problem more quickly? What about the creators and defenders [7] of WikiLeaks [8], some of whom readily engage [9] in illegal activities in the name of freedom of speech?
Again, it's a complicated question, and there's no cut-and-dry answer. It's evident, however, that cyber vigilantes are out there, and they are proving themselves ready and willing to take drastic actions to further their causes. Whether or not you support their tactics, you almost certainly don't want to make enemies of them, a fact that has no doubt become entirely clear to now-former HBGary CEO Aaron Barr.
This story, "Should we cheer or fear cyber vigilantes like Anonymous? [10]," was originally published at InfoWorld.com [11]. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog [12]. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter [13].

http://infoworld.com/t/hacking/should-we-cheer-or-fear-cyber-vigilantes-anonymous-122

The Best Internet Connection

I ran across this article not to long ago. The summary of the story is that the Federal government did a study and created a map of internet connections throughout the country. It is useful for a couple different reasons, like showing how far we are behind the rest of the developed world in terms of internet connectivity. But it has other uses as well.

You can actually use it to find the best internet connection in your area. All the isps promise the world but never deliver. With this tool you can find the one that is the most likely to get you decent speeds.


Anyway, let me know what you think. I think this is going to save my ass when my contract expires with ShitBC.

How-to find the fastest wireless carrier or wired Internet where you live and work

February 23, 2011 —

 

Getting the best performance and coverage is a key part of choosing a wireless carrier. Yes, there are plenty of other important questions to consider. What phones, smartphones, tablets, USB modems, netbooks, or MiFi cards are available? What individual, family, and business plans are available? Is data use unlimited, pay-per-GB, or throttled after a cap has been reached? What are the international roaming charges?
Whether your phone or device will get coverage where you live, work, and frequently travel, however, is paramount. All the other decisions are secondary.
Up till now, all consumers have really had access to is the coverage maps that carriers provide. Most carriers do a decent job of including zip code and city/town locators that give relatively granular answers to whether or not a given location has coverage (as opposed to just showing a giant national or regional map on a brochure). They also typically illustrate where coverage is limited to voice and 2G data versus 3G or 4G.
What carriers don’t show is how well their data service performs in any given area where they have coverage. Sure, I can look at Verizon's site, for example, and see where 3G/EVDO coverage is and which metropolitan areas I can get 4G/LTE coverage (LTE is a great many miles from where I live in the Adirondack mountains of NY, by the way). What I can't see is how fast the 3G service around my house is likely to be. At best, I can ask my neighbors for their experience, provided they use the same carrier or even use a smartphone or other data-intensive device.
Thankfully, this state of affairs is no longer the case. In order for the FCC to tackle its mandate to create the National Broadband Plan, it had to get accurate information about the state of wired and wireless broadband access across the country. It needed to conduct a broadband census, if you will. Not only did the agency do that, it did it to a very granular level of detail. Then it put that information online for everyone to access. The result is the National Broadband Map.
The National Broadband Map has all manner of interesting statistics and information that you can view. For example, you can see which parts of the U.S. have access to varying types of high speed Internet and at what speeds each operates.
More importantly, you can enter and city/town, zip code, or address in the country and see what the average wired and wireless speed for broadband Internet access is at that location. The best part for consumers is that you can also see the average speeds for every wireless carrier's data service in that spot. That shows you not just if you have data coverage from a carrier, but how fast it is likely to be – and since you see every available carrier, it's a great comparison shopping tool.
Of course, since you can see wired Internet access options as well, it's equally great for choosing the fastest wired Internet connection. You may even find that there are wired providers you didn't even know about.
There are a couple of caveats, of course.
One is that the you see speed but not price. That means the average or potential speeds you see may be speeds you need to pay more to get (particularly for wired access, which is usually priced based on connection speed).
Another is that only the wireless carriers that own the towers and spectrum are listed. Any companies that rely on another carrier's network won't be listed. Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile, for example, won't appear because they use Sprint's network (though the Sprint information will apply to them). You may need to do a little homework if you don't see certain carriers to discover who's network they use.
Whatever opinions you might have about the FCC or the National Broadband Plan and its mandate, you have to acknowledge that the agency and program has created an immensely valuable tool for every American consumer.
Ryan Faas writes about personal technology for ITworld. Learn more about Faas' published works and training and consulting services at www.ryanfaas.com. Follow him on Twitter @ryanfaas.

http://www.itworld.com/personal-tech/138013/how-find-fastest-wireless-carrier-or-wired-internet-where-you-live-and-work

Pictures are worth a thousand words..

...especially when I have nothing particularly interesting to say.

More Stuff You Want Today

Here are a few I picked up since last post!

You know you want this.

Happy Sunday. I'm pretty busy at the moment. So here are some pictures to enjoy.

Incredible News: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators

You might think this sounds like some kind of crazy conspiracy theory. I know I did when I first read the title. But you would be wrong. Apparently our military was getting a bit antsy to fund the highly unpopular neverending war in Afghanistan.

Here it is the words of one soldier who refused the order: "My job in psy-ops is to play with people’s heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave," says Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, the leader of the IO unit, who received an official reprimand after bucking orders. "I’m prohibited from doing that to our own people. When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you’re crossing a line."

-Rollingstones 

Anyway, here is the story:

Another Runaway General: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators

The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in "psychological operations" to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war, Rolling Stone has learned – and when an officer tried to stop the operation, he was railroaded by military investigators.

The Runaway General: The Rolling Stone Profile of Stanley McChrystal That Changed History
The orders came from the command of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops – the linchpin of U.S. strategy in the war. Over a four-month period last year, a military cell devoted to what is known as "information operations" at Camp Eggers in Kabul was repeatedly pressured to target visiting senators and other VIPs who met with Caldwell. When the unit resisted the order, arguing that it violated U.S. laws prohibiting the use of propaganda against American citizens, it was subjected to a campaign of retaliation.
"My job in psy-ops is to play with people’s heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave," says Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, the leader of the IO unit, who received an official reprimand after bucking orders. "I’m prohibited from doing that to our own people. When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you’re crossing a line."

King David's War: How Gen. Petraeus Is Doubling Down on a Failed Strategy

The list of targeted visitors was long, according to interviews with members of the IO team and internal documents obtained by Rolling Stone. Those singled out in the campaign included senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Jack Reed, Al Franken and Carl Levin; Rep. Steve Israel of the House Appropriations Committee; Adm. Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Czech ambassador to Afghanistan; the German interior minister, and a host of influential think-tank analysts.

The incident offers an indication of just how desperate the U.S. command in Afghanistan is to spin American civilian leaders into supporting an increasingly unpopular war. According to the Defense Department’s own definition, psy-ops – the use of propaganda and psychological tactics to influence emotions and behaviors – are supposed to be used exclusively on "hostile foreign groups." Federal law forbids the military from practicing psy-ops on Americans, and each defense authorization bill comes with a "propaganda rider" that also prohibits such manipulation. "Everyone in the psy-ops, intel, and IO community knows you’re not supposed to target Americans," says a veteran member of another psy-ops team who has run operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. "It’s what you learn on day one."

The Insurgent's Tale: A Soldier Reconsiders Jihad

When Holmes and his four-man team arrived in Afghanistan in November 2009, their mission was to assess the effects of U.S. propaganda on the Taliban and the local Afghan population. But the following month, Holmes began receiving orders from Caldwell’s staff to direct his expertise on a new target: visiting Americans. At first, the orders were administered verbally. According to Holmes, who attended at least a dozen meetings with Caldwell to discuss the operation, the general wanted the IO unit to do the kind of seemingly innocuous work usually delegated to the two dozen members of his public affairs staff: compiling detailed profiles of the VIPs, including their voting records, their likes and dislikes, and their "hot-button issues." In one email to Holmes, Caldwell’s staff also wanted to know how to shape the general’s presentations to the visiting dignitaries, and how best to "refine our messaging."
Congressional delegations – known in military jargon as CODELs – are no strangers to spin. U.S. lawmakers routinely take trips to the frontlines in Iraq and Afghanistan, where they receive carefully orchestrated briefings and visit local markets before posing for souvenir photos in helmets and flak jackets. Informally, the trips are a way for generals to lobby congressmen and provide first-hand updates on the war. But what Caldwell was looking for was more than the usual background briefings on senators. According to Holmes, the general wanted the IO team to provide a "deeper analysis of pressure points we could use to leverage the delegation for more funds." The general’s chief of staff also asked Holmes how Caldwell could secretly manipulate the U.S. lawmakers without their knowledge. "How do we get these guys to give us more people?" he demanded. "What do I have to plant inside their heads?"
According to experts on intelligence policy, asking a psy-ops team to direct its expertise against visiting dignitaries would be like the president asking the CIA to put together background dossiers on congressional opponents. Holmes was even expected to sit in on Caldwell’s meetings with the senators and take notes, without divulging his background. "Putting your propaganda people in a room with senators doesn’t look good," says John Pike, a leading military analyst. "It doesn’t pass the smell test. Any decent propaganda operator would tell you that."

At a minimum, the use of the IO team against U.S. senators was a misue of vital resources designed to combat the enemy; it cost American taxpayers roughly $6 million to deploy Holmes and his team in Afghanistan for a year. But Caldwell seemed more eager to advance his own career than to defeat the Taliban. "We called it Operation Fourth Star," says Holmes. "Caldwell seemed far more focused on the Americans and the funding stream than he was on the Afghans. We were there to teach and train the Afghans. But for the first four months it was all about the U.S. Later he even started talking about targeting the NATO populations." At one point, according to Holmes, Caldwell wanted to break up the IO team and give each general on his staff their own personal spokesperson with psy-ops training.

It wasn’t the first time that Caldwell had tried to tear down the wall that has historically separated public affairs and psy-ops – the distinction the military is supposed to maintain between "informing" and "influencing." After a stint as the top U.S. spokesperson in Iraq, the general pushed aggressively to expand the military’s use of information operations. During his time as a commander at Ft. Leavenworth, Caldwell argued for exploiting new technologies like blogging and Wikipedia – a move that would widen the military’s ability to influence the public, both foreign and domestic. According to sources close to the general, he also tried to rewrite the official doctrine on information operations, though that effort ultimately failed. (In recent months, the Pentagon has quietly dropped the nefarious-sounding moniker "psy-ops" in favor of the more neutral "MISO" – short for Military Information Support Operations.)

Under duress, Holmes and his team provided Caldwell with background assessments on the visiting senators, and helped prep the general for his high-profile encounters. But according to members of his unit, Holmes did his best to resist the orders. Holmes believed that using his team to target American civilians violated the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which was passed by Congress to prevent the State Department from using Soviet-style propaganda techniques on U.S. citizens. But when Holmes brought his concerns to Col. Gregory Breazile, the spokesperson for the Afghan training mission run by Caldwell, the discussion ended in a screaming match. "It’s not illegal if I say it isn’t!" Holmes recalls Breazile shouting.

In March 2010, Breazile issued a written order that "directly tasked" Holmes to conduct an IO campaign against "all DV visits" – short for "distinguished visitor." The team was also instructed to "prepare the context and develop the prep package for each visit." In case the order wasn’t clear enough, Breazile added that the new instructions were to "take priority over all other duties." Instead of fighting the Taliban, Holmes and his team were now responsible for using their training to win the hearts and minds of John McCain and Al Franken.

On March 23rd, Holmes emailed the JAG lawyer who handled information operations, saying that the order made him "nervous." The lawyer, Capt. John Scott, agreed with Holmes. "The short answer is that IO doesn’t do that," Scott replied in an email. "[Public affairs] works on the hearts and minds of our own citizens and IO works on the hearts and minds of the citizens of other nations. While the twain do occasionally intersect, such intersections, like violent contact during a soccer game, should be unintentional."

In another email, Scott advised Holmes to seek his own defense counsel. "Using IO to influence our own folks is a bad idea," the lawyer wrote, "and contrary to IO policy."
In a statement to Rolling Stone, a spokesman for Caldwell "categorically denies the assertion that the command used an Information Operations Cell to influence Distinguished Visitors." But after Scott offered his legal opinion, the order was rewritten to stipulate that the IO unit should only use publicly available records to create profiles of U.S. visitors. Based on the narrower definition of the order, Holmes and his team believed the incident was behind them.

Three weeks after the exchange, however, Holmes learned that he was the subject of an investigation, called an AR 15-6. The investigation had been ordered by Col. Joe Buche, Caldwell’s chief of staff. The 22-page report, obtained by Rolling Stone, reads like something put together by Kenneth Starr. The investigator accuses Holmes of going off base in civilian clothes without permission, improperly using his position to start a private business, consuming alcohol, using Facebook too much, and having an "inappropriate" relationship with one of his subordinates, Maj. Laural Levine. The investigator also noted a joking comment that Holmes made on his Facebook wall, in response to a jibe about Afghan men wanting to hold his hand. "Hey! I’ve been here almost five months now!" Holmes wrote. "Gimmee a break a man has needs you know."

"LTC Holmes’ comments about his sexual needs," the report concluded, "are even more distasteful in light of his status as a married man."

Both Holmes and Levine maintain that there was nothing inappropriate about their relationship, and said they were waiting until after they left Afghanistan to start their own business. They and other members of the team also say that they had been given permission to go off post in civilian clothes. As for Facebook, Caldwell’s command had aggressively encouraged its officers to the use the site as part of a social-networking initiative – and Holmes ranked only 15th among the biggest users.

Nor was Holmes the only one who wrote silly things online. Col. Breazile’s Facebook page, for example, is spotted with similar kinds of nonsense, including multiple references to drinking alcohol, and a photo of a warning inside a Port-o-John mocking Afghans – "In case any of you forgot that you are supposed to sit on the toilet and not stand on it and squat. It’s a safety issue. We don’t want you to fall in or miss your target." Breazile now serves at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where he works in the office dedicated to waging a global information war for the Pentagon.

Following the investigation, both Holmes and Levine were formally reprimanded. Holmes, believing that he was being targeted for questioning the legality of waging an IO campaign against U.S. visitors, complained to the Defense Department’s inspector general. Three months later, he was informed that he was not entitled to protection as a whistleblower, because the JAG lawyer he consulted was not "designated to receive such communications."

Levine, who has a spotless record and 19 service awards after 16 years in the military, including a tour of duty in Kuwait and Iraq, fears that she has become "the collateral damage" in the military’s effort to retaliate against Holmes. "It will probably end my career," she says. "My father was an officer, and I believed officers would never act like this. I was devastated. I’ve lost my faith in the military, and I couldn’t in good conscience recommend anyone joining right now."
After being reprimanded, Holmes and his team were essentially ignored for the rest of their tours in Afghanistan. But on June 15th, the entire Afghan training mission received a surprising memo from Col. Buche, Caldwell’s chief of staff. "Effective immediately," the memo read, "the engagement in information operations by personnel assigned to the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan and Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan is strictly prohibited." From now on, the memo added, the "information operation cell" would be referred to as the "Information Engagement cell." The IE’s mission? "This cell will engage in activities for the sole purpose of informing and educating U.S., Afghan and international audiences…." The memo declared, in short, that those who had trained in psy-ops and other forms of propaganda would now officially be working as public relations experts – targeting a worldwide audience.

As for the operation targeting U.S. senators, there is no way to tell what, if any, influence it had on American policy. What is clear is that in January 2011, Caldwell’s command asked the Obama administration for another $2 billion to train an additional 70,000 Afghan troops – an initiative that will already cost U.S. taxpayers more than $11 billion this year. Among the biggest boosters in Washington to give Caldwell the additional money? Sen. Carl Levin, one of the senators whom Holmes had been ordered to target.

 

Libya Violence Escalating

If you are anything like me, you should be watching this. With the recent popular pro-democracy uprsings in the middle east, no one knows what to expect anymore. Gadhafi was a strange often eccentric dictator, and not to mention a general asshole. He recently reacted differently then other modern 21st century dictators in his willingness to openly slaughter his citizens with mercenaries, snipers, and jets.

That is a final desperate act. His army is splitting into factions, his fighters are flying his jets into foreign countries and surrendering his weaponry. He has lost control of parts of Libya. His own diplomats in the UN and in the US are calling this a genocide and asking for intervention. He can't even trust his own security forces. He is pretty close to fucked.

Anyway, these recent events are a lesson to totalitarianism leaders across the world. People will only deal with being stepped on for so long. If the only way you can hold you country together is through fear, then what do you do now? Popular uprisings have successfully overthrown two dictatorships and are in the midst of taking down a third. There is just not any fear to keep the little people from proving that they are more powerful than their governments.

I have great hopes for the future. This is truly an exciting time to live.


Check out these articles on the subject if you are interested:


Obama faces pressure to intervene in Libya

Gadhafi vows to ‘cleanse’ Libya or die trying

In Libya, increasingly divergent views of Gaddafi

100 Followers?!?

I somehow managed to miss that I hit over a 100 followers.

Thanks for all the support, you sexy sexy people.

We shall celebrate in drinking and merriment.

Employer Demands Facebook Login From Job Applicants

Employers demanding access to employees online personal accounts. Does anyone honestly believe that an employer, regardless of the position, deserves such intimate access to your personal life? Certainly not for a shitty Department of Corrections job. Perhaps for a job in something like the Secret Service, CIA, or NSA this could be justifiable but nothing in private corporations or in basic civil service jobs.

I know this is probably going to be a shitstorm if it hits bigger media.

So let me know what you think.

Should Employers Be Allowed to Ask for Your Facebook Login?

By Alexis Madrigal

The American Civil Liberties Union has taken up the cause of a Maryland man who was forced to cough up his Facebook password during a job interview with the Department of Corrections in that state. 
According to an ACLU letter sent to the Maryland Department of Corrections, the organization requires that new applicants and those applying for recertifications give the government "their social media account usernames and personal passwords for use in employee background checks."
The ACLU calls this policy "a frightening and illegal invasion of privacy" and I can't say that I disagree. Keep in mind that this isn't looking at what you've posted to a public Twitter account; the government agency here could look through private Facebook messages, which seems a lot like reading through your mail, paper or digital.
While it's not surprising that some employers might want to snoop in your social media life, it strikes me as a remarkable misapprehension of what Facebook is to think that it should be wholly open for background investigations. Legally, things are probably more complex, but it seems commonsensical that carte blanche access to your communications should be off-limits.
The case also shows a downside to Facebook's scale. It stands to reason that the bigger they get, the more that employers and others concerned with the age-old enterprise of covering their asses will feel the need to know what their employees are up to on the service. That alone isn't going to derail the Facebook juggernaut, but it might slow down people's engagement on the site as they realize maybe a private, unknown e-mail account is a better way of sending sensitive messages.
Here's the Maryland man, Officer Robert Collins, describing what happened in his specific case:
See web-only content:
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/02/should-employers-be-allowed-to-ask-for-your-facebook-login/71480/
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/02/should-employers-be-allowed-to-ask-for-your-facebook-login/71480/

Dead Island Trailer

Holy shit this is a good cinematic piece. Even if you aren't interested in video games, you should check this trailer out. It is a work of art.

It isn't very often that a  game trailer can grab me like this. The Dead Island release date has yet to be announced but I have heard that it is to be released on Xbox 360.

More Dead Island Videos

Further Protests Erupt in the Middle East

After the successful revolutions started by popular uprising in Tunisia and Egypt, people are starting to grow ballsier. They are challenging autocratic leaders left and right in the Middle East and Northern Africa. Add Bahrain to the list of countries with rebelling populaces. The list of countries with widespread protests now include Yemen, Algeria, Jordan, Syria, Gabon, Iran, Libya, Syria, Sudan, and Iraq.

After Egypt, people power hits like a tsunami

(CNN) -- It began with the self-immolation of an unemployed college graduate in Tunisia. Now, newfound people power in the Middle East and North Africa is spreading fast.
Bolstered by the toppling of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, popular uprising has now taken root in a part of the world where it has not been a part of the trajectory of change. On Tuesday, the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed, parts of the Muslim world were on fire, the people clamoring for change.
Fierce demonstrations erupted in Bahrain, where people have organized themselves through social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter, the same forums used by their Egyptian and Tunisian counterparts.
Human rights activists said Bahrainis initially demanded reform, but some are now calling for the removal of the royal family.
In Yemen, pro- and anti-government protesters clashed for a fifth day in the capital city of Sanaa.
"This is against the Yemeni constitution, and people have the right to peacefully protest," said human rights activist Abdel Rahman Barman.
And, as Cairo's Tahrir Square slowly emptied, Tehran's Azadi Square swelled with people. Both names mean freedom and despite a security crackdown, tens of thousands of demonstrators marched in the Iranian capital Monday.
Algeria, Jordan and Syria have also been a part of the domino effect.
"We really are facing a tsunami in Arab politics," said Bruce Riedel, senior fellow for foreign policy at Brookings' Saban Center for Middle East Policy.
"I don't think there is any country -- except the very small and very rich and oil-rich countries like Qatar and Abu Dhabi -- that is immune," Riedel said. "All of these countries have the potential for unrest in a way they've never had it before."
If only Mohammed Bouazizi, the 26-year-old unemployed man who was beaten by police and then set himself on fire, had lived to see what he began. But Bouazizi died in January, a catalyst for the events that unfolded rapidly after his death.
Tunisian dictator Zine El Abedine Ben Ali fell on January 14 and fled the country. Just days later, Egyptians began massing at Tahrir Square. After 18 short days, Mubarak was gone, as abruptly as he had risen to power three decades ago.
"The yearning for change has been there for at least a decade, if not more, but it took the events in Tunisia and now Egypt to break the barrier of fear that people had," Riedel said. "Fear that the army would shoot them, fear that the army would crack down on them. What it did was it broke that barrier of fear."
The region -- where people are divided between fabulously wealthy "haves" and desperately poor "have-nots," a region split between those who can and those who cannot participate in government -- sits like a tinderbox, ready to explode.
"There's a common thread there," said David Pollock, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
"Yes, they do want freedom in the sense of not national independence -- they have that -- but freedom from oppressive internal security, authoritarian political controls and the freedom to participate in a more democratic government," he said.
There are also economic concerns.
"People are very upset, and in many cases I think with good reason, about poverty and unemployment," Pollock said.
Aaron Miller, a Middle East expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said the divide between the "cans" and the "cannots" is, in some ways, more dangerous than the gap between rich and poor.
These are no peasant revolts, Miller said. The people on the streets include huge numbers of under- and unemployed people, "sometimes affluent individuals who feel humiliated and powerless."
"That's one of the driving psychological factors that powered Egypt's uprising," Miller said.
There is also a vast generational gap that some governments may not be able to bridge, said Ken Gude, managing director for national security at the Center for American Progress.
"Most of these entrenched regimes throughout the region are governed by an old elite establishment that has grown more and more out of touch with the younger generations of its population," Gude said.
"Consequently, we're seeing -- perhaps sparked by what transpired in Egypt and Tunisia -- a stronger push among those younger generations for greater influence and a larger political voice in their country."
The potential for uprisings exists in those places where all the gaps are widest, though it's impossible to predict whether other dictators or entrenched regimes will fall as they did in Tunisia and Egypt.
Beyond the overarching commonalities, each nation faces specific challenges.
Yemen must deal with regional and tribal rivalries. Bahrain faces simmering tension between Sunnis, who form the ruling class, and Shiites, who form a slight majority.
Pollock said Saudi Arabia, too, could possibly see unrest, but probably on a small scale. And in Syria, "people are just too scared, too intimidated" by Bashar al-Assad's iron hand.
Algeria, he said, also bears watching because it shares many of Egypt's underlying issues of high numbers of young people, unemployment, corruption and a leadership that has been in power for a while.
Other countries, like Morocco, have been "surprisingly quiet," Pollock said.
In Morocco, the king has only been around for a decade, and Pollock said perhaps people are still willing to give him a chance. There have also been some "safety valves," such as a parliament.
The United Arab Emirates, Pollock said, is a wealthy nation that can afford to take care of its citizens, if necessary, in pretty lavish style. And about 75% of the people are guest workers from other nations "who don't have any rights at all," Pollock said.
And then there is Iran. It's no stranger to mass demonstrations -- the Islamic regime itself came to power through revolution.
But the regime has already shown the world that it will not hesitate to suppress street demonstrations and the opposition there has not yet been able to coalesce around common goals, said Karim Sajadpour, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The other problem in Iran, Sajadpour said, is that the international media have been banned from covering the demonstrations. The world cannot see what is happening in Azadi Square as they did in Tahrir Square.
But Pollock predicted protests will continue in Iran.
"We saw yesterday that despite the most severe kind of internal repression, you had thousands of demonstrators out on the streets, and that's the tip of the iceberg," Pollock said. "I think this probably foreshadows a long period of cat-and-mouse games continuing between the opposition and the regime at kind of a simmer."
Pollock did not see another government's ouster on the horizon.
"But it's important to note that after Tunisia it took a while, it took a few weeks for the protests to really start gathering steam in Egypt," he said. "Right now, we're just a few days after Mubarak was finally tossed out in Egypt. It's too soon to be very confident about where this might go next."
It's hard to say what will happen next, but almost every observer agrees that this part of the world will never be the same.
Miller, of the Woodrow Wilson center, quoted Dorothy in the "Wizard of Oz" to put events in perspective. "We're not in Kansas anymore," he said. The United States and its allies, he added, need to understand that.
"This is a transformative event in Middle East politics," Miller said. Enough, perhaps, to change dark perceptions of a region mired in extremism and bloodshed.
Two powerful messages are echoing through the region, he said.
To al Qaeda, the protesters have said: Change does not have to occur through an adherence to radical ideology or violence.

And to autocrats and dictators: "You better start looking in the mirror and making changes or you're going to be looking in the rear view mirror," Miller said. Those "footsteps" you hear are "coming for you."

CNN's Ashley Hayes, Sarah Aarthun and Alan Silverleib contributed to this report.

Find this article at: http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/02/15/muslim.world.unrest/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn

A New Egypt

 

Mubarak has finally stepped down. He has ceded power to the upper level of the military. This is the second successful uprising in the Arab world in the last few months. The rest of the repressive and totalitarian leaders are probably watching their own populations very closely.

Egypt, along with Tunisia, has been an overwhelming success for the power of the general public. Arab leaders will be more cautious in the future. The fact that an uprising can appear so spontaneously and unseat the most entrenched leaders in weeks has to give them a little caution in their decision making.

This is a positive force for good in the region, regardless how their government turns out.

Noise Canceling Headphones

So, I've been looking for a pair of headphones for awhile now. My budget is limited, as I am quite willing to sell my extra organs to pay next semester's tuition. Despite that limitation, I fucking love listening to music. It honestly makes my life better and makes hours and hours of engineering homework bearable. This being said, I have a couple problems with headphones I usually buy.

SORRY, I CAN'T HEAR YOU. I AM A BLEEDING ALBINO

1) I am screwing with my future self's hearing.

Fuck people. Who really wants to give in and walk away from assholes being loud in the library?

Life is full of distractions and I'm not the the kind of guy to relocate or otherwise deal with them like a responsible adult. I'd rather bleed out my ears than move from my favorite spot.

Why must you taunt me, copper wiring?

2) Headphones just don't work very long. This is true of any pair that you buy on a college student budget. They just don't last long enough. It's a mixed bag though. I've had some last for months while some last for weeks.Still, I'd prefer a little reliability in something I depend on.

This however, dear followers, is the past. I have finally found the headphones that won't make me shit blood in frustration.

I have problems

The Sony MDRNC7 Noise Canceling headphones. My best and most trustworthy friend recommended me these headphones and I love them. They run about 35-40$ which is a little more pricey than I normally would go, but these are well worth the investment.

 These headphones are all around amazing. The noise quality is fantastic. The music doesn't have a metallic, tunnely, or muffled sound you sometimes get with headphones (like the somewhat cheaper Colby Noise Canceling I tried once). Another neat little factoid about them is that they fold up very intelligently into a tiny pouch. I took these to Mexico on my recent trip and it was very convenient. I had also treated them slightly rougher being in a carry-on bag than I normally would have and luckily they are pretty damn sturdy.

If this sounds nice to you, go ahead and check them out here:



This is actually the first pair of headphones I've ever owned that I am completely satisfied with. If you're in the market, I highly recommend.

Make Your Life Complete Part 2

So my classes are in full swing after a week of snow days. So while I'll catch up, enjoy some pictures while I think of real content to entertain you.

I'm not going to lie, I was thinking about being surprised by zombies more than anything

Ending your life is similar to making it complete, right?

Make Your Life Complete

Most of the time, the stuff you buy is just a variation of a theme. Nothing unique, nothing especially different, and you get it because that's what everyone does. You buy a bed because you want to sleep. You buy a toaster because you want to toast shit. It's just  to get something done, to meet some need.

I'd like to show you some stuff that goes above and beyond that.

This is what you will say when you look at the greatness I found.

 For example look at this fucking bed/desk/stairs/closet. I don't even have words (except those above).

Enjoy the rest also.

This is a calender uses timed the ink penetration in order to tell the date.

The only downside to this bed is how easy it is to murder you.

 The only watch I can read without a long awkward silence as I figure out the time.

Used to lure your prey out so you can shove a needle in their neck and righteously kill them in a room covered in plastic sheeting.