US seizes top Bitcoin exchange as crackdown begins

http://rt.com/usa/bitcoin-exchange-seized-crackdown-begins-334/

The US Department of Homeland Security seized a payment processing account Tuesday belonging to Mt. Gox, the largest international Bitcoin trader, claiming the monetary exchange service falsified financial documents.

The American government has previously made it clear that officials are watching Bitcoin, a decentralized economic currency that international regulators have not yet been able to control. Many of those who favor Bitcoin use Dwolla, an Iowa-based startup that allows customers to transfer their dollars into Bitcoins.

Unfortunately for those consumers, the Department of Homeland Security issued a warrant Tuesday effectively shutting down Dwolla’s ability to process Bitcoin payments, as reported by CNET. Whether because of the DHS’ charge of operating an “unlicensed money transmitting business,” the sudden timing of the allegations, or another reason, Dwolla and Mt. Gox officials have been reluctant to comment.

“In order not to compromise this ongoing investigation being conducted by ICE Homeland Security Investigations Baltimore, we cannot comment beyond the information in warrant, which was filed in the District of Maryland [Tuesday],” said Nicole Navas, a representative for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The warrant claims Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles did not disclose he operated a financial transfer site when he opened a new bank account for the business. Money transmitting services, according to Gawker, are required to register with the Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen). Mt. Gox, which is involved in roughly 63 per cent of all Bitcoin purchases, has not done so.

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as some predicted..here comes the crackdown..and next will be the huge losses..and the loss of confidence in schemes like this..driving people back to the currencies and old school exchanges..seems to be happening doesn’t it?

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The Times of Israel: Jews DO control the media

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/jews-do-control-the-media/

We Jews are a funny breed. We love to brag about every Jewish actor. Sometimes we even pretend an actor is Jewish just because we like him enough that we think he deserves to be on our team. We brag about Jewish authors, Jewish politicians, Jewish directors. Every time someone mentions any movie or book or piece of art, we inevitably say something like, “Did you know that he was Jewish?” That’s just how we roll.

We’re a driven group, and not just in regards to the art world. We have, for example, AIPAC, which  was essentially constructed just to drive agenda in Washington DC. And it succeeds admirably. And we brag about it. Again, it’s just what we do.

But the funny part is when any anti-Semite or anti-Israel person starts to spout stuff like, “The Jews control the media!” and “The Jews control Washington!”

Suddenly we’re up in arms. We create huge campaigns to take these people down. We do what we can to put them out of work. We publish articles. We’ve created entire organizations that exist just to tell everyone that the Jews don’t control nothin’. No, we don’t control the media, we don’t have any more sway in DC than anyone else. No, no, no, we swear: We’re just like everybody else!

Does anyone else (who’s not a bigot) see the irony of this?

Let’s be honest with ourselves, here, fellow Jews. We do control the media. We’ve got so many dudes up in the executive offices in all the big movie production companies it’s almost obscene. Just about every movie or TV show, whether it be “Tropic Thunder” or “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” is rife with actors, directors, and writers who are Jewish. Did you know that all eight major film studios are run by Jews?

But that’s not all. We also control the ads that go on those TV shows.

And let’s not forget AIPAC, every anti-Semite’s favorite punching bag. We’re talking an organization that’s practically the equivalent of the Elders of Zion. I’ll never forget when I was involved in Israeli advocacy in college and being at one of the many AIPAC conventions. A man literally stood in front of us and told us that their whole goal was to only work with top-50 school graduate students because they would eventually be the people making changes in the government. Here I am, an idealistic little kid that goes to a bottom 50 school (ASU) who wants to do some grassroots advocacy, and these guys are literally talking about infiltrating the government. Intense.

Now, I know what everyone will say. That everyone tries to lobby. Every minority group and every majority group. That every group has some successful actors and directors. But that’s a far call from saying that werun Hollywood and Madison Avenue. That the Mel Gibsons of the world are right in saying we’re deliberately using our power to take over the world. That we’ve got some crazy conspiracy going down.

Okay. Fine. So some of that is kooky talk.

But let’s look at it a bit deeper.

Continue here: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/jews-do-control-the-media/

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this isnt written by anti semites..its written by jews..about jews..and it speaks truth..it is not a conspiracy..its a hard cold fact..you can make up your own mind if its a good thing or a bad thing..

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Why the FBI will love Google Glass

http://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/why-the-fbi-will-love-google-glass

According to Google’s Transparency Report, the company received 14,201 government requests for user data in 2010 and complied with 76% of them. In 2012, Google complied with only 66%, but due to the growing number (21,389 in 2012) of requests, Google actually forfeited user data thousands more times.

Google, and other tech giants, have been fighting back, but the trend is clear: Every year, more data is flowing from tech companies to the government.

During this same period, Google conceived of and announced its next big product: Google Glass, a wearable, connected device with a camera.

Now, imagine for a moment that wearable computing finally has its breakthrough moment. That a cheap version of Google Glass, after it becomes available to the masses, turns millions of users into full-time documentarians — of any and all things.

Then, imagine the FBI has access to that information.

Public reception of Glass has been mixed. The vast majority of people haven’t tried it, or anything like it, but the concept is new and discomforting. For many, concerns center around Glass’ inconspicuous ability to outwardly surveil the unsuspecting. With Glass there is no “point and shoot” — there’s just “shoot.”

Two decades ago, the FBI lobbied aggressively for Congress to pass the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), mandating that all telephone switches be “wiretap friendly” in the event that the FBI needed to listen in on phone lines. In 2004, CALEA was extended to some broadband providers, like colleges, but larger web companies were not included.

CALEA set the stage for what’s known as the FBI backdoor, the idea that the government — with legal authorization — can monitor communications through connected devices, often times without the user’s knowledge.

Last year, one federal judge estimated there are probably around to 30,000 secret electronic surveillance orders issued by federal courts every year. Similarly, Wiredreported the FBI was lobbying big tech companies like Yahoo, Facebook, and Google to request cooperation with backdoors for surveillance.

As with most surveillance, it’s hard to know just how easy it is to gain access to user information. In 2012, Ars Technica found that it is highly unlikely that Apple could surrender encrypted data on an iPhone to authorities but noted that information in the cloud was much easier to obtain. (Since then, Apple, like Google, has actively encouraged users to migrate their iPhone’s contents to the cloud.)

What makes Google Glass different — or at least seem different compared to smartphones — is intimacy. Wiretapping Glass doesn’t just allow the government in your life, it allows it inside your head.

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“Wiretapping Glass doesn’t just allow the government in your life, it allows it inside your head.”

data and access to your mind..in one neat package..

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TEPCO seeks permission to dump groundwater from Fukushima plant into ocean

http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/tepco-seeks-permission-to-dump-groundwater-from-fukushima-plant-into-ocean?utm_campaign=jt_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_source=jt_newsletter_2013-05-14_AM

Officials from Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) on Monday met with a Fukushima fisheries cooperative to seek its members’ permission to dump groundwater from the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the ocean.

The contaminated water storage has been a problem since early in the accident. TEPCO officials acknowledged last month that a lack of storage space has become a “crisis.” TEPCO has promised to speed up building more reliable steel tanks and eventually empty the underground tanks.

Runoff from the three reactors melted in the aftermath of the March 2011 quake-tsunami and a steady inflow of groundwater seeping into the basement of their damaged buildings produce about 400 tons of contaminated water daily at the plant.

TEPCO says 280,000 tons of contaminated water has been stored in tanks on the plant, and the amount would double within a few years.

At Monday’s meeting, TEPCO officials outlined their plan to the fishermen’s cooperative in which it hopes to divert groundwater into the ocean, TV Asahi reported. TEPCO said only water with low radioactivity would be dumped.

A spokesman for the fishermen was quoted by TV Asahi as saying it would be difficult to give approval to such a plan but added that the cooperative will study the plan.

TEPCO also needs the central government’s approval to implement such a plan.

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seriously..how do you spell “NO”..are these people insane?

“only water with low radioactivity would be dumped” <– oh..so we die over 15 years not 5..cool..

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Wall Street: How much does Bloomberg know? Journalists spied on Bernanke and Geithner

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100729453

The escalating controversy over Bloomberg reporters accessing private information on Wall Street through the company’s terminals puts the data and media empire founded by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg into strange, new territory. It is now in the rare position of having to explain its actions to an industry that puts billions of dollars into its coffers every year.

Since news of the privacy breach broke on Friday, some of Bloomberg LP’s biggest customers on Wall Street are re-examining their agreements with the company to see how much information the company can access from desktop terminals, say sources at those firms. Goldman Sachs Group and JP Morgan Chase so far have complained about the practice of Bloomberg reporters being able to see when one of their employees is signed on and what kinds of functions they use through keystrokes on the terminal.

“It’s pretty surprising that an organization this big has given that kind of open access to user information,” said Larry Tabb, founder of Tabb Group, a financial markets research and advisory firm. “This is going to be a challenge for Bloomberg. This hole should have been locked down.”

“This industry is all about confidentiality,” Tabb continued. “When you give access to information about when a user is logged in and what they are doing with their terminal, that violates a confidence. That could be an issue.” He added he wouldn’t be surprised if subscriber agreements would be reworked to ensure more guarantees against breaches, especially as Wall Street firms have beefed up compliance departments and measures.

http://rt.com/news/bloomberg-spying-scandal-bernanke-geithner-180/

In a new twist of the Bloomberg spying scandal a former company employee has revealed journalists allegedly spied on the Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner through the news terminals.

Bloomberg journalists had access to what both Bernanke and Geithner were using the private company’s business terminals for: information regarding news, equity markets and bonds.

Though, the former Bloomberg employee told CNBC the information was general rather than specific, although knowing how often a user logged on and what information they were searching for could provide valuable insight into their concerns.

The former Bloomberg employee, who used to work for the editorial section, didn’t say specifically what he was looking at, but added that he and some of his colleagues also used to call up information on the officials “just for fun”, showing newcomers “how powerful” their terminals were.

The source also added that all Bloomberg journalists who knew of this capability of the terminal would have had access to the usage information of the officials. However, CNBC has no information that the data were either used by the employees for journalism or shared inappropriately.

“What you are reporting is untrue,” a Bloomberg spokesman told CNBC, but declined to name specific inaccuracies. The US Federal Reserve announced that it would look into the situation but the spokeswoman declined to comment further.

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who watches the watchers?

spying and leaking information coming out of everywhere right now..whistleblowing..secrets revealed..its all exploding in a cacophony of truth? IRS, AP and now this..

bloomberg owned them..i wonder how long this has been going on?..sachs and morgan cant complain..the thieves have been thieved!

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UN’s FAO: Bugs are food of the future

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/2013/05/14/03/09/bugs-are-food-of-the-future-un-agency

Beetles, caterpillars and wasps could supplement diets around the world as an environmentally friendly food source if only Western consumers could get over their “disgust”, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says.

“The main message is really: ‘Eat insects’,” Eva Mueller, director of forest economics at the FAO, told a press conference in Rome on Monday.

“Insects are abundant and they are a valuable source of protein and minerals,” she said.

“Two billion people — a third of the world’s population — are already eating insects because they are delicious and nutritious,” she said.

Also speaking at the press conference was Gabon Forestry Minister Gabriel Tchango who said: “Insect consumption is part of our daily life.”

He said some insects — like beetle larvae and grilled termites — were delicacies.

“Insects contribute about 10 per cent of animal protein consumed by the population,” he said.

The report said insect farming was “one of the many ways to address food and feed insecurity”.

“Insects are everywhere and they reproduce quickly, and they have high growth and feed conversion rates and a low environmental footprint,” said the report, co-authored by the FAO and Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

But the authors admitted that “consumer disgust remains one of the largest barriers to the adoption of insects as viable sources of protein in many Western countries”.

It suggested that the food industry could help in “raising the status of insects” by including them in recipes and putting them on restaurant menus.

The report also called for wider use of insects as feed for livestock, saying that poor regulation and under-investment currently meant it “cannot compete” with traditional sources of feed.

“The use of insects on a large scale as a feed ingredient is technically feasible, and established companies in various parts of the world are already leading the way,” it added, highlighting in particular producers in China, South Africa, Spain and the United States.

“Insects can supplement traditional feed sources such as soy, maize, grains and fishmeal,” it said, adding that the ones with most potential were larvae of the black soldier fly, the common housefly and the yellow mealworm.

The report also said the insects most commonly consumed by humans are beetles (31 per cent), caterpillars (18 per cent) and bees, wasps and ants (14 per cent), followed by grasshoppers, locusts and crickets (13 per cent).

It said trade in insects was thriving in cities such as Bangkok and Kinshasa and that a similar culture of insect consumption — entomophagy — should be established elsewhere, stressing that it was often cheaper to farm insects.

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are they prepping us for the coming starvation?

get used to eating insects..really? tastes as good as “normal” food..really? how does “FUCK OFF” grab ya?

insect farms to provide food for us..no thanks..

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Age of consent should be 13 says barrister..Germany’s Greens probe “paedophile links”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22459815

A prominent barrister specialising in reproductive rights has called for the age of consent to be lowered to 13.

Barbara Hewson told online magazine Spiked that the move was necessary in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal to end the “persecution of old men”.

She also said that complainants should no longer receive anonymity.

The NSPCC called her views “outdated and simply ill-informed” and said to hear them “from a highly experienced barrister simply beggars belief”.

Her remarks come after a number of high-profile arrests over allegations of historical sexual offences in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal.

Among those to have been convicted is former BBC broadcaster Stuart Hall, who admitted 14 charges of indecently assaulting girls, including one aged nine, between 1967 and 1985.

Ms Hewson described Hall’s crimes as “low-level misdemeanours” which “ordinarily… would not be prosecuted”.

“What we have here is the manipulation of the British criminal justice system to produce scapegoats on demand. It is a grotesque spectacle,” she said.

“It’s time to end this prurient charade, which has nothing to do with justice or the public interest.”

She argues for an end to complainant anonymity, a strict statute of limitations to prevent prosecutions after a substantial amount of time has passed and a reduction in the age of consent to 13.

She said that “touching a 17-year-old’s breast, kissing a 13-year-old, or putting one’s hand up a 16-year-old’s skirt” are not crimes comparable to gang rapes and murders and “anyone suggesting otherwise has lost touch with reality”.

The NSPCC described crimes such as Hall’s as “incredibly serious” and said that “to minimise and trivialise the impact of these offences for victims in this way is all but denying that they have in fact suffered abuse at all.

“Any suggestion of lowering the age of consent could put more young people at risk from those who prey on vulnerable young people.”

It also argued that complainant anonymity should be maintained and that historical prosecutions should be allowed as “many who are abused are bullied, blackmailed and shamed into staying silent, often well into adulthood”.

The Hardwicke chambers, where Ms Hewson works in London, said it dissociated itself from her comments.

http://www.spiked-online.com/site/article/13604/

I do not support the persecution of old men. The manipulation of the rule of law by the Savile Inquisition – otherwise known as Operation Yewtree – and its attendant zealots poses a far graver threat to society than anything Jimmy Savile ever did.

Now even a deputy speaker of the House of Commons is accused of male rape. This is an unfortunate consequence of the present mania for policing all aspects of personal life under the mantra of ‘child protection’.

We have been here before. England has a long history of do-gooders seeking to stamp out their version of sexual misconduct by force of the criminal law. In the eighteenth century, the quaintly named Society for the Reformation of Manners funded prosecutions of brothels, playwrights and gay men.

In the 1880s, the Social Purity movement repeatedly tried to increase the age of consent for girls from 13 to 16, despite parliament’s resistance. At that time, puberty for girls was at age 15 (now it is 10). The movement’s supporters portrayed women as fragile creatures needing protection from men’s animal impulses. Their efforts were finally rewarded after the maverick editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, WT Stead, set up his own secret commission to expose the sins of those in high places.

After procuring a 13-year-old girl, Stead ran a lurid exposé of the sex industry, memorably entitled ‘The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’. His voyeuristic accounts under such titles as ‘Strapping girls down’ and ‘Why the cries of the victims are not heard’ electrified the Victorian public. The ensuing moral panic resulted in the age of consent being raised in 1885, as well as the criminalisation of gross indecency between men.

By contrast, the goings-on at the BBC in past decades are not a patch on what Stead exposed. Taking girls to one’s dressing room, bottom pinching and groping in cars hardly rank in the annals of depravity with flogging and rape in padded rooms. Yet the Victorian narrative of innocents despoiled by nasty men endures.

What is strikingly different today is how Britain’s law-enforcement apparatus has been infiltrated by moral crusaders, like the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) and the National Association for People Abused in Childhood (NAPAC). Both groups take part in Operation Yewtree, which looks into alleged offences both by and not by Savile.

These pressure groups have a vested interest in universalising the notion of abuse, making it almost as prevalent as original sin, but with the modern complication that it carries no possibility of redemption, only ‘survival’. The problem with this approach is that it makes abuse banal, and reduces the sympathy that we should feel for victims of really serious assaults (1).

But the most remarkable facet of the Savile scandal is how adult complainants are invited to act like children. Hence we have witnessed the strange spectacle of mature adults calling a children’s charity to complain about the distant past.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/germanys-greens-probe-paedophile-links-20130514-2jiu1.html

Germany’s opposition Greens party has decided to designate an independent researcher to shed light on the influence a pro-paedophilia group had within the party in the 1980s, a leading party member says.

The advocates of legalising sex with children were part of a group also pushing for gay, lesbian and transsexual rights in the early days of the party that grew out of the 1970s peace, anti-nuclear and ecologist movements.

Juergen Trittin, the party’s parliamentary leader and one of two top candidates in September elections, announced the move at a media conference, acknowledging the party had made “bad decisions” on the issue of paedophilia.

He referred in particular to a 1985 decision at a regional party conference when delegates argued in favour of sexuality between adults and children to be exempt from punishment.

The Greens, a party established in then-West Germany in 1980, subsequently failed to win any seats in the region’s parliament.

The party went on to govern Germany in coalition with the Social Democrats between 1998 and 2005.

The researcher, who has yet to be assigned, will be tasked with examining how long and to what extent advocates of legalising sex with minors may have influenced the party.

A report by news weekly Der Spiegel in its latest edition on Monday, based on the party’s archives, said the Greens leadership in the 1980s had financed a working group in favour of legalising sex between adults and children.

“Protecting children from sexual abuse was and remains a central concern,” Spiegel Online quoted party co-chairman Cem Ozdemir as saying.

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this is where its all heading..people have been warning of this for years and have been howled down..but inch by inch they push an agenda..”those poor old guys who have been fondling kids”..sure they should be allowed to get away with it and lets make it legal..wtf?

“advocates of legalising sex with children were part of a group also pushing for gay, lesbian and transsexual rights in the early days of the party that grew out of the 1970s peace, anti-nuclear and ecologist movements”

see how a cause thats quite acceptable gets tagged onto a cause that is totally intolerable..and if you stand against it you are labelled a conservative nutcase..wedged..

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