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It’s been known for some time that Skype, the popular standalone peer-to-peer application specializing in providing video chat and voice call services was initially developed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), contrary to the official story regarding its origins. Marketed for its groundbreaking proprietary Internet telephony (VoIP) protocol, its real purpose was data mining and domestic surveillance.
In retrospect, this should not be surprising; in post-Edward Snowden America, even publications like The New York Times have reported on tech companies like Yahoo, Google, Facebook, YouTube, AOL, Apple and many others as having cooperated with an increasingly intrusive (and in some cases criminal) government in crafting its Internet surveillance programs.
How surprised Silicon Valley and the government must have been to discover that through social media, most people were willing to simply give away just the kind of information in which these entities were interested! And we probably don’t have to tell you that the current administration has stretched the limits of intrusion upon personal privacy to criminal proportions…
The data that has been collected through these and other means (such as illegal NSA domestic surveillance programs brought to light in recent years) has been used to harass and persecute private organizations, political organizations, businesses, and private citizens.
The bottom line is that your Skype conversations are anything but private; if you’ve heard names like Max Kelly, Project Chess, or Prism, you know this to be true. And since government agencies build networks and databases based upon nodes of activity and the online routines of groups of people, engaging in unsecure online communications is comparable to a person having indiscriminate, frequent, unprotected sex.
So… what’s a user to do?
Product Information
Knowing what we know today, would you have indiscriminate, unprotected sex? Probably not. So when you make a phone call, do you discuss private information of a personal nature, or business, or your investments, or your credit card info?
Did you know how easy it was for someone to listen in to your Skype calls?
Protect yourself with the only product that the world’s real whistleblowers believe in – You might know their names – Julian Assange of Wikileaks, former CIA agent and whistleblower extraordinaire Scott Bennett, and the guy with all the information – Edward Snowden. If these fellows want protection they go to one place in Canada (of all places) for it – The Pink Pagoda.
What is it?
The Pink Pagoda is proprietary to the Bethune Institute of Canada and China, and was developed by people in the fields of intelligence and communications. Can’t ask for more expertise than that…
Click image to see Breitbart article
Why is Canada a good place to hide stuff?
Because American law doesn’t apply. Your goodies are safe from the prying eyes of an ever-intrusive government which has already proven that it has no respect for your privacy.
How does it work?
Well, if we told you that, we’d have to kill you. But seriously – if we were to disclose that, it would compromise our ability to protect you and ensure your online privacy. The method is proprietary, but works much in the same way other online services to which customers subscribe work – with a little other technology thrown in to detect when you are engaged in digital voice or video communications on any of your devices.
What does it do for you?
It renders your video chat and voice calls private (nobody can listen in). Our main concentration and launch was to be America only, but people talk and the need for personal communications privacy is life or death for folks in some foreign lands. We had no idea our utility was going to strike a nerve such as it has. Our capacity at the moment is unlimited, so we are not surprised at the number of foreign inquiries we are receiving. Ask Edward Snowden if he feels that his life might be in jeopardy; the answer is obviously ‘yes,’ and you see where he is putting his trust.
How do I get it?
The Pink Pagoda is now offering access to its secure calling utility at an annual introductory rate of $100.00 in one payment, or via monthly payments of $10.00.
Here is a remarkably biased, slanted, sarcastic, and snarky chapter from England. Evidently, Colombus was not an evangelist for Isabella and Fernando's Catholic mission but was obsessed with gold. Well, to be fair, so was the Church.
"Today, Friday 31 July 2015, 9am CEST, WikiLeaks publishes "Target Tokyo", 35 Top Secret NSA targets in Japan including the Japanese cabinet and Japanese companies such as Mitsubishi, together with intercepts relating to US-Japan relations, trade negotiations and sensitive climate change strategy.
The list indicates that NSA spying on Japanese conglomerates, government officials, ministries and senior advisers extends back at least as far as the first administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, which lasted from September 2006 until September 2007. The telephone interception target list includes the switchboard for the Japanese Cabinet Office; the executive secretary to the Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga; a line described as "Government VIP Line"; numerous officials within the Japanese Central Bank, including Governor Haruhiko Kuroda; the home phone number of at least one Central Bank official; numerous numbers within the Japanese Finance Ministry; the Japanese Minister for Economy, Trade and Industry Yoichi Miyazawa; the Natural Gas Division of Mitsubishi; and the Petroleum Division of Mitsui."
Today, 15 September 2014, WikiLeaks releases previously unseen copies of weaponised German surveillance malware used by intelligence agencies around the world to spy on journalists, political dissidents and others.
FinFisher (formerly part of the UK based Gamma Group International until late 2013) is a German company that produces and sells computer intrusion systems, software exploits and remote monitoring systems that are capable of intercepting communications and data from OS X, Windows and Linux computers as well as Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Symbian and Windows Mobile devices. FinFisher first came to public attention in December 2011 when WikiLeaks published documents detailing their products and business in the first SpyFiles release.
https://www.gammagroup.com/default.aspx
https://wikileaks.org/spyfiles3
"Documents in Spy Files #3 include sensitive sales brochures and presentations used to woo state intelligence agencies into buying mass surveillance services and technologies. Spy Files #3 also includes contracts and deployment documents, detailing specifics on how certain systems are installed and operated.
Internet spying technologies now being sold on the intelligence market include detecting encrypted and obfuscated internet usage such as Skype, BitTorrent, VPN, SSH and SSL. The documents reveal how contractors work with intelligence and policing agencies to obtain decryption keys.
The documents also detail bulk interception methods for voice, SMS, MMS, email, fax and satellite phone communications. The released documents also show intelligence contractors selling the ability to analyse web and mobile interceptions in real-time."
[The site IS safe. Google is warning because authorities have warned Google to make this material unavailable by posting a warning. If you click "more details" there is an open link to the material there, which is entirely safe, but which they want to scare you about. Doubtless, your visit to that link will be reported to the NSA.]
If you trust the USG, the ATF, the IRS, etc., you still might not like that customers of FinFisher could be ANY government anywhere in the world including Mongolia, Oman, Dubai, Estonia, Pakistan, Vietnam, and even Nigeria. Everyone in Nigeria is part of a criminal enterprise or two so your data could go into the hands of such crooks. If you think Nigeria wouldn't allow that to happen, ask yourself "how many arrests have ever been made in Nigeria for the infamous 419 Advance Fee Fraud racket.
I have known Carly for over 25 years -- I am honored to have worked with Carly at AT&T, and then at Lucent Technologies when it began in 1995. As someone who worked for her, I always respected how she could at once put people at ease so that they felt heard and valued, but also be gently pushing the group toward a consensus on vital issues. Because of her ability to listen, build teams, work hard and make smart choices, Carly rose through the ranks easily. She was determined to do things and do them well.
As someone that has worked for and known Carly for more than two decades I can tell you that she has unmatched intellect, integrity and leadership abilities.
I've continued to watch Carly grow. I've watched her manage through flush times and lean times; her approach to solving problems never changed. Her natural ability to lead continuously impresses me: she surrounds herself with competent people, empowers them to find solutions and she works collaboratively with them in implementation. She never avoids the tough decisions and always takes responsibility for those she has made.
I believe it would be refreshing to have Carly lead our nation -- we have enormous problems facing us right now. The old, professional political class isn't working anymore. We need a leader with the skill to find solutions to problems, the courage to make tough decisions and the integrity not to blame someone else when things go wrong. I know from personal observation that Carly is that leader and am confident she will introduce Americans to a new era of leadership.
There is much about Carly’s career that people don’t know. Please visit FromSecretarytoCEO.com to learn more and please be sure to share it with your friends, colleagues and neighbors.
The following essay was written by Jerry Bowyer for Forbesin 2008. We were warned. -- Gary DeMar
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Barack Obama is a Fabian socialist. I should know; I was raised by one. My Grandfather worked as a union machinist for Ingersoll Rand during the day. In the evenings he tended bar and read books. After his funeral, I went back home and started working my way through his library, starting with T.W. Arnold’s The Folklore of Capitalism. This was my introduction to the Fabian socialists.
Fabians believed in gradual nationalization of the economy through manipulation of the democratic process. Breaking away from the violent revolutionary socialists of their day, they thought that the only real way to effect “fundamental change” and “social justice” was through a mass movement of the working classes presided over by intellectual and cultural elites. Before TV it was stage plays, written by George Bernard Shaw and thousands of inferior “realist” playwrights dedicated to social change. John Cusack’s character in Woody Allen’s “Bullets Over Broadway” captures the movement rather well.
Arnold taught me to question everyone–my president, my priest and my parents. Well, almost everyone. I wasn’t supposed to question the Fabian intellectuals themselves. That’s the Fabian MO, relentless cultural and journalistic attacks on everything that is, and then a hard pitch for the hope of what might be.
That’s Obama’s world.
He’s telling the truth when he says that he doesn’t agree with Bill Ayers’ violent bombing tactics, but it’s a tactical disagreement. Why use dynamite when mass media and community organizing work so much better? Who needs Molotov when you’ve got Saul Alinski?
So here is the playbook: The left will identify, freeze, personalize and polarize an industry, probably health care. It will attempt to nationalize one-fifth of the U.S. economy through legislative action. They will focus, as Lenin did, on the “commanding heights” of the economy, not the little guy.
As Obama said, “the smallest” businesses will be exempt from fines for not “doing the right thing” in offering employer-based health care coverage. Health will not be nationalized in one fell swoop; they have been studying the failures of Hillary Care. Instead, a parallel system will be created, funded by surcharges on business payroll, which will be superior to many private plans.
The old system will be forced to subsidize the new system and there will be a gradual shift from the former to the latter. The only coercion will be the fines, not the participation. A middle-class entitlement will have been created.
It may not be health care first; it might be energy, though I suspect that energy will be nationalized much more gradually. The offshore drilling ban that was allowed to lapse legislatively will be reinstated through executive means. It may be an executive order, but might just as well be a permit reviewing system that theoretically allows drilling but with endless levels of objection and appeal from anti-growth groups. Wind and solar, on the other hand, will have no permitting problems at all, and a heavy taxpayer subsidy at their backs.
The banking system has already been partially nationalized. Bush and Paulson intend for their share purchases to be only non-voting preferred shares, but the law does not specify that. How hard will it be for Obama, new holder of $700 billion in bank equity, to demand “accountability” and a “voice” for the taxpayers?
The capital markets are not freezing up now, mostly because of what has happened, although community organizers’ multidecade push for affirmative-action mortgages has done enormous harm to the credit system. Markets are forward looking.
A quick review of the socialist takeovers in Venezuela in 1999, Spain in 2004 and Italy in 2006 show the same pattern–equity markets do most of their plummeting before the Chavez’s of the world take power. Investors anticipate the policy shift in advance; that’s their job.
It’s not just equity markets, though; debt markets do the same thing. Everywhere I turn I hear complaints about bankers “hoarding” capital. “Hoarding” is a word we’ve heard often from violent socialists like Lenin and Mao. We also hear it from the democratic left as we did during the 1930s in America. The banks, we’re told, are greedy and miserly, holding onto capital that should be deployed into the marketplace.
Well, which is it, miserly or greedy? They’re not the same thing. Banks make money borrowing low and lending high. In fact, they can borrow very, very low right now, as they could during the Great Depression.
So why don’t they lend? Because socialism is a very unkind environment for lenders. Some of the most powerful members of Congress are speaking openly about repudiating mortgage covenants. Local officials have already done so by simply refusing to foreclose on highly delinquent borrowers. Then, there’s the oldest form of debt repudiation, inflation. Even if you get your money back, it will not be worth anything. Who would want to lend in an environment like this?
Will Obama’s be the strong-man socialism of a Chavez, or the soft socialism that Clement Atlee used to defeat Churchill after WWII? I don’t know, but I suspect something kind of in between. Despite right-wing predictions that we won’t see Rush shut down by Fairness Doctrine fascists. We won’t see Baptist ministers hauled off in handcuffs for anti-sodomy sermons. It will more likely be a matter of paperwork. Strong worded letters from powerful lawyers in and out of government to program directors and general mangers of radio stations. Ominous references to license renewal.
The psychic propaganda assault will be powerful. The cyber-brown-shirts will spew hate, the union guys will flood talk shows with switchboard-collapsing swarms of complaint calls aimed at those hosts who “go beyond the pale” in their criticisms of Obama. In concert with pop culture outlets like The Daily Show and SNL, Obama will use his podium to humiliate and demonize those of us who don’t want to come together and heal the planet.
You’ve heard of the bully pulpit, right? Well, then get ready, because you’re about to see the bully part.
Read more at http://godfatherpolitics.com/20609/barack-obama-fabian-socialist/#fzBHPtvm75muSQ9h.99
France waves discreet goodbye to 75 percent super-tax
(Reuters) - When President Francois Hollande unveiled a "super-tax" on the rich in 2012, some feared an exodus of business, sporting and artistic talent. One adviser warned it was a Socialist step too far that would turn Franceinto "Cubawithout sun"....
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Winner Mucho Grande Hugee Hero
[F]ormer French president Nicolas Sarkozy, his wife Carla Bruni, and Bernard Arnault—“France’s Richest Man”—are reportedly also considering leaving their homeland in response to the country’s proposed “millionaire’s tax.” The Times of London reports that Sarkozy is “sounding out investors” for a private-equity fund he would like to establish in Britain. Sarkozy has previously revealed that after his political career, he’d like to concentrate on personal-wealth building. “I’m going to do this for five years and afterwards I’m going off to make dosh like Clinton,” the former French leader said in 2008. According to Forbes, taxes in London may be 50 percent, compared with a proposed 75 percent tax for the wealthy in France. While a spokesman for Sarkozy has denied that the former president is moving to London, she would not comment on the report that Sarkozy is attempting to establish a private-equity fund there.
In other France-fleeing rumors, the Guardian reports that French business magnate Bernard Arnault—who is estimated to be the world’s 14th richest person with a $29.5 billion net worth—has applied for Belgian nationality. The head of the luxury-goods company Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy, Arnault is also believed to have transferred his stake in the family group that controls L.V.M.H “to a firm set up for the purpose in Belgium, where taxes are lower.” A spokesman for the 63-year-old billionaire claims that Arnault was not trying to evade the potential tax but simply wanted to “preserve the company in case he died suddenly.”
[Source: Vanity Fair http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2013/01/gerard-depardieu-tax-evasion-france-nicolas-sarkozy-bernard-arnault Message to LEFT: You can't make this stuff up.]
"Marketplace Fairness" is the cynically coined title of a bill that denies fairness and manipulates the market.
Markets need to be free, not encumbered by price and quota loopholes devised by a greedy, economically illiterate government. Sales tax is imposed by most states at the cash register. If the cash register is in another state, they cannot impose or collect sales tax. That is NOT a loophole. That's fairness.
By renaming "Sales Tax" as "Sales and Use Tax" they try to assert that the tax is due from the consumer well separated and apart from the cash register. It's crooked.
Where I live, the state sales tax is 9.75% until last year when the county added 2% sales tax to food. I'm not talking fine upscale restaurant food. I'm talking bread, milk, baby formula, vitamins, cough drops, rice, flour, beans, your family's GROCERIES!
Sales Tax is justified if at all by the infrastructure, services, and facilities furnished by the local government. That means that the brick and mortar retailers in town get: Police and fire services, meat, kitchen, elevator, deli scale, building, fire marshal inspections, courts, prosecutors, public defenders, jails, and probation officers to identify, apprehend, detain, try, incarcerate, and rehabilitate offenders who shoplift, embezzle, steal, purse grab, armed rob the retailer or his customers. It enables street cleaning, pothole repair, sewers, water supply, traffic signals, snow removal, accident response and ambulance service, tornado sirens, early disaster responders, and on and on. All very expensive services for the benefit and protection of the local retailers. Not one of those benefits accrue to the interests of the out-of-state merchant. None, bubkis, nada, zilch, zero! "Marketplace Fairness?" I think not.
Doctors, lawyers, chiropractors, accountants, therapists, UPS, FedEx, the post office, storage spaces, veterinarians (except for pet food) are not required to collect sales tax, and we users of those services are not required to tally and pay tax for their use.
We consumers-tax payers have been struggling more and more every pay period to make our ends meet since 2008. Internet merchants enable us to find bargains and broaden our choices. It is a trade off: We have to pay shipping. The state tax authority will want sales tax on the shipping, you can depend upon it. Each state, I suggest will need to hire two additional people, with offices, parking spaces, and generous benefits to administer the sales tax collections from each of the 50 states and several territories subject to US law. That's 50 times 50 more tax collectors! They want every resident to file a Sales & Use Tax Return? An army of new auditors on our state's payrolls making government yet even that much bigger than the productive working sector. How are they going to deal with creative merchants who take their fulfillment to Canada, Mexico, France, Hong Kong, or Antigua?
What about the five states that have NO sales tax? Is my state going to put 11.75% sales tax on any maple syrup I bring in from New Hampshire, crab legs from Delaware, rocky mountain oysters from Montana, or granola from Oregon. "Fairness?" Hardly. It is favoritism paid off to the legislators with billions for new spending. That's what it is--a sweetheart deal! The mobsters in Brooklyn were less rapacious as this.
This proposal is an unmitigated outrage and insult to the taxpayers and consumers of this entire nation. How Senator Lamar Alexander, Bob Corker, and other Republican senators could support this just shows how badly we need Tea Party, low tax, shrink government leaders now. These "Marketplace Fairness" Republicans are sellouts with no right to our vote.
More than sixty years after Whittaker Chamber's devastating review of Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged,' it's time to reconsider writing her out of conservatism.
Now, if that’s what Rand says, then line her up with Adolf Hitler for history’s all-star firing squad. But is that what she said or intended? Does she deserve the condemnation heaped upon villains with vile philosophies? Perhaps there is a more charitable way to read the tales of Roark, Taggart, Rearden, and Galt.
Christians, in particular, have a deep ambivalence about Ayn Rand that probably draws as deeply from the facts of her biography as from her famous novels. When the refugee from the old Soviet Union met the Catholic William F. Buckley, she said, “You are much too intelligent to believe in God.” Her atheism was militant. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t believe in God as she was actively against the whole idea. If God existed, she felt, man suffered a degradation. Her heroic man, who tamed fire at his fingertips with a stylish and pleasure-giving cigarette, stood on top of creation and didn’t kneel for anyone. Rather than venerating the cross, Rand took the dollar sign as her holy symbol. Why? Because the dollar was a proxy for economic value. And for her, economic value was the primary pursuit of a life properly lived.
Critiquing the Whittaker Chambers Takedown
One of Buckley’s missions in politics was to police the boundaries of the conservative movement. He has been credited with delegitimizing the John Birch Society as a representative organization of the Right. In the case of Rand, he gave Whittaker Chambers the job of reviewing “Atlas Shrugged”for National Review. Chambers was a phenomenally gifted writer. We remember him for “Witness,” which may be one of the greatest memoirs ever written and certainly one of the best of the twentieth century. So great was his talent that he had earlier reached the elite ranks of Time where he had been paid like a star at a magazine that awarded no bylines. He was one of publisher Henry Luce’s favorites. Chambers hated Rand’s book. He thought her philosophy logically led to the extinction of the less fit. The piece characterized Rand’s message as, “To a gas chamber, go!” Chambers wasn’t impressed with her prose style, either. His take-down of “Atlas Shrugged” effectively read Rand and the Objectivists out of the conservative movement.
Whittaker Chambers hated Ayn Rand’s book. He thought her philosophy logically led to the extinction of the less fit.
In truth, the great Chambers probably treated Rand’s work unfairly in terms of the content if not with regard to writerly craft. Rand did have disdain for some people, but her lack of respect was not based on physical weakness, class, or color so much as it was aimed at those she thought lacked virtue. Contempt may have its place if it aims at a form of evil. The author certainly saw herself as wielding scorn in exactly that fashion.
One of the worst villains in the novel is Dagny Taggart’s brother, James. He is a rich man who refuses to run his (inherited) company on legitimate competitive terms. Instead, he prefers crony capitalism married to vague notions of social responsibility. Instead of out-competing his rivals, Jim Taggart hopes to have them outlawed. He courts politicians rather than excellence. By Rand’s reckoning, Taggart’s outlook and actions rank him with the lowest of the low. He is a powerful leech.
Productivity: The Great Life-Affirming Activity
The good society for an Objectivist is one in which a man stands or falls on his productivity. As Rand explained in her lectures on ethics, she saw production as the one great life-affirming activity. Man does not automatically or instinctively derive his sustenance from the earth or the sun. He must labor and produce. This was Rand’s bedrock and explains why she had such disdain for those who try to gain wealth through political arrangements. She saw this parasitism on multiple points of the economic spectrum from the beggar to the bureaucrat to the purveyor of incestuous corporatism. In the Randian view, a person with integrity creates value and exchanges it with others in an open and honest way. One does not cleverly reserve either a wage or a market. One earns them.
In Rand’s economy, a shiftless man of wealth would rank well below a blue-collar welder who performs his craft with excellence.
At this point it makes sense to return to the famous scene from “Dirty Dancing” in which Rand’s accusers put words in her mouth and leave no room for response. “Some people count and some don’t.” The implication, given the class dynamics in the film, is that the rich have worth and the poor do not. But Rand would have been outraged at the thought. In her economy, a shiftless man of wealth would rank well below a blue-collar welder who performs his craft with excellence (and probably also a talented dancer at a resort).
Her point of view is far more defensible if properly understood. Rand extols the captains of industry, the men and women who have a drive to change the world for the better and to get rich in the bargain. That much is certain. But the novels also make clear her love for any man or woman who performs a job well. She sees dignity, joy, and love in work rather than in wealth per se.
Ayn Rand Versus Christianity
The critical tension between Rand and Christian theology is on human worth. Christians affirm the inherent and very high value of individuals because of their creation in the image of God. Rand values human beings primarily for their achievements. A person who does not offer value (specifically, economic value) gets dubbed a “moocher” and “looter.” The language is inflammatory to most people, but rankles Christians even more so due to their devotion to the idea of the human being as a bearer of God’s image.
Rand was an atheist and clearly had an insufficient appreciation for (and accounting of) human solidarity, but she loved freedom and she understood the importance of work for human flourishing.
Rand’s atheism, materialism, and reduction of the human being’s value to economic productivity are all reasonable targets of critique for a variety of good reasons. Let those arguments continue to be made, though perhaps with less rancor. But it is important to be clear about the charges for which Rand should not have to answer. She was an atheist and clearly had an insufficient appreciation for (and accounting of) human solidarity, but she loved freedom and she understood the importance of work for human flourishing. And finally, although some accused her of fascism, she ardently opposed the cut-rate philosophy that makes an idol of the state.
Ayn Rand deserves some of the opposition she has received from Christians and many others. But she also deserves better.
Knowing what we know today, would you have indiscriminate, unprotected sex? Probably not. So when you make a phone call, do you discuss private information of a personal nature, or business, or your investments, or your credit card info?
