text:
Two thirds of the world's school-age children have no internet access at home, UN report says
Diplomatic Correspondent
1st December, 2020 06:09:02
A staggering two-thirds of world's school-aged children – 1.3 billion children aged 3-17 – do not have internet connection in their homes, preventing them from learning vital skills needed to compete in the modern economy, a new UN report has revealed.
The UNICEF-ITU report How Many Children and Youth Have Internet Access at Home? also found a similar lack of access for young people aged 15-24, with 759 million or 63 per cent unconnected at home.
The massive number "is more than a digital gap – it is a digital canyon", said Henrietta Fore, UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) Executive Director.
The lack of connectivity, she continued, doesn't just limit children and young people's ability to connect online, it isolates them from the work and prevents them from competing in the modern economy, said the joint report from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on Tuesday (Dec 1).
"And in the event of school closures, such as those currently experienced by millions due to COVID-19, it causes them to lose out on education. Put bluntly: Lack of internet access is costing the next generation their futures," Ms. Fore added.
According to the Multiple-Indicator Cluster Survey by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics in 2019, 62 per cent of the households in Bangladesh do not have internet access at home. At the same time, this is a national average, and there is a large difference in internet access depending on the households' socioeconomic backgrounds.
Only 8.7 per cent of the poorest 20 per cent households in Bangladesh have internet access at home as compared with 75.3 per cent of the richest 20 per cent households. When it comes to television – another main medium for distance learning – the percentage of households owning a television is 51 per cent nationally.
At the same time, only 4.8 per cent for the poorest 20 per cent households own a television as compared with 90.2 per cent of the richest 20 per cent households.
"Children without access to these means of distance learning are bearing the brunt of the digital divide and inequity. They have less access to learning opportunities during the pandemic, putting their education and future in jeopardy. This divide exacerbates the pre-existing inequalities. It can perpetuate the vicious cycle of poverty and disparity from one generation to the next, with children becoming its transmission belt," said Tomoo Hozumi, UNICEF Representative in Bangladesh.
Around 42 million children are affected by COVID-19 school closures in Bangladesh. For those with no access to internet or TV, education can effectively be out of reach. Even before the pandemic, a growing cohort of young people needed to learn foundational, transferable, digital, job-specific and entrepreneurial skills to compete in the 21st century economy.
The digital divide is perpetuating inequalities that already divide countries and communities, the report notes. Children and young people from the poorest households, rural and lower income states are falling even further behind their peers and are left with very little opportunity to ever catch up.
According to UNICEF, a quarter of a billion students worldwide are still affected by COVID-19-related school closures, forcing hundreds of millions of students to rely on virtual learning.
For those with no internet access, education can be out of reach. Even before the pandemic, a growing cohort of young people needed to learn foundational, transferable, digital, job-specific and entrepreneurial skills to compete in the 21st century economy.
Houlin Zhao, International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Secretary-General, outlined that connecting rural populations remains a formidable challenge.
"Large parts of rural areas are not covered with a mobile-broadband network, and fewer rural households have access to the internet. The gap in mobile broadband adoption and internet use between developed and developing countries is especially wide," he said.
The report also revealed that the digital divide is perpetuating inequalities between countries and communities. According to the report, globally, 58 per cent school-age children from richest households have internet connection at home, compared with only 16 per cent from the poorest households.
The situation is similar between urban and rural populations and between high-income and low-income countries: around 60 per cent of school-aged children in urban areas do not have internet access at home, compared with around 75 per cent in rural households. School-aged children in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are the most affected, with around 9 in 10 children not connected.
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Select the format to use for exporting the citation.
1 Title = 3 Formats?
Arrangements by which politically connected firms receive economic favors are a common feature around the world, but little is known of the form or effects of influence in business–government relationships. We present a simple model in which influence requires firms to provide goods of political value in exchange for economic privileges. We argue that political influence improves the business environment for selected firms, but restricts their ability to fire workers. Under these conditions, if political influence primarily lowers fixed costs over variable costs, then favored firms will be less likely to invest and their productivity will suffer, even if they earn higher profits than non-influential firms. We rely on the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys of approximately 8000 firms in 40 developing countries, and control for a number of biases present in the data. We find that influential firms benefit from lower administrative and regulatory barriers (including bribe taxes), greater pricing power, and easier access to credit. But these firms also provide politically valuable benefits to incumbents through bloated payrolls and greater tax payments. Finally, these firms are worse-performing than their non-influential counterparts. Our results highlight a potential channel by which cronyism leads to persistent underdevelopment.
Copyright © 2019 now publishers inc.


3 days ago, went to Vet 1 for emergency blood in the urine treatment. Seldom has this problem for past months.
Abdominal palpation - the dog arches his back when the bladder area is palpated. No obvious signs of pain. X-rays show no bladder stones but an enlarged prostate.
Likely a benign prostate hyperplasia with infection --- blood in the urine. Urine test showed blood.
A change to a Prescription C/D diet. Neuter is advised.


We know that the world of SEO can sometimes be confusing. If you are just beginning to optimise your website for the search engines, it's often really useful to know that there are some great tools available online which can help to get your website really working well for your business. Whether you are looking to understand where your page ranks in the search engines, to discover which keywords would work best for your products or services, or to find out how you could benefit from running a paid campaign on Google, there's a site that can help. You can even get support with keeping on top of your social media and content sharing.
For small businesses, it is often vital to keep costs down when they are just starting out and so it's reassuring to know that lots of these tools offer a free basic service or will let you take advantage of a free trial for a limited period of time. Many SEO sites offer a starter package that you can use to begin with and, once you are confident that it is adding value to your business, you can then choose to upgrade to the paid for package. But which tools will give you the most help? We've come up with a selection of our favourites to help you begin to boost your search engine rankings without shelling out a fortune.
One of the first things that you will need to do when you start your website optimisation strategy is to find out how your website is perceived by Google and where it ranks in the search engines. This can often be quite difficult as Google is continually changing and refining its algorithms and search engine rankings move on a regular basis. However a very simple place to start is by checking your website's PageRank. You can do this via the Page Rank Checker tool which is free. Pages are ranked from 0 – 10. The larger the number the better Google ranks your website. As an example, one of the largest and most used websites, Amazon, ranks as an 8 so for a small business a Page Rank of 2-3 would be great.
However, PageRank only gives a very general overview and it is often useful to drill down further to enable you to really understand your page and site authority. To do this we often use Open Site Explorer which enables you to check the domain authority of your website and that of your competitors. This tool from SEO experts Moz will rank your website with a scoring algorithm from one to 100. The higher the score the more likely your site is to rank in the search engines. It's a really useful way to check on the progress of your website and to see how you are faring compared to direct competitors too. This is a vital tool and you can view it on MozBar which is a free Chrome extension or on Open Site Explorer.
If you've been doing research on optimising your website you'll probably be aware that getting the right keywords that will ensure that you rank well for your services and products is vital. But there can be a bewildering range of both keywords and long tail keyword phrases out there, so you may be wondering how you can find the keywords that will work for your website. This is where a tool such as SEMrush can be really useful to you. This tool enables you to get keyword ideas and groups from just one keyword and also allows you to see the click potential of any given word or phrase. It also lets you compare yourself against other competitors for different keywords which is a great tool if you are performing a competitor analysis. They offer a free 7-day trial so you can test it out before you commit to paying for it.
Social media is an integral part of any marketing strategy but it can often be hard to keep on top of it and many small businesses struggle to find the time to post on a daily basis. It is really important to use social media to share content and build connections with online influencers and so we recommend you take advantage of a tool such as Hootsuite. This site allows you to view all of your social media channels in once place, to schedule posts in advance and to access analytics to find out how people are reacting to and engaging with your posts. Hootsuite has a free basic version and you can choose to upgrade to a more detailed package as and when you are ready. It will help you to feel in control of your social media even when you are busy with other aspects of your business.
Google AdWords is a great way to get your business seen, drive clicks, push traffic to your website and give your website optimisation a boost particularly if you are a new business. The Google AdWords Planner is a handy free tool which gives you an estimate of the traffic you will get from a potential campaign. You can also utilise it to understand how relevant certain keywords are to your business and to work out how popular these search terms are. As this tool is free to use before you decide to set up your campaign, you don't lose anything if you decide not to run with it or if you feel the campaign won't be of value to your business.
As you can see there are some great tools out there to help you with your digital marketing and search engine optimisation strategy. They can help you understand where your website sits within the search engine rankings, let you run effective Google AdWords campaigns and allow you to track the success of your website and digital marketing over time. You can even manage your social media channels from one handy platform. We definitely recommend you make use of all these tools, but if you feel you need the human touch for your digital marketing then come and talk to us at Wagada HQ. We can help you make sense of SEO and digital marketing and can also provide help and training with using and understanding the online tools that are available to you.


text:
in: Dead, Shattered Glass characters, SG-Autobots
Scoop (SG)
Scoop is an evil Autobot from the "Shattered Glass" universe.
Guns are supposed to make you feel invincible, Scoop!
Scoop was an absolute mess. Constantly shaking in fear, holding his fingers nervously in front of his quaking optics, he wasn't be doing his fellow Autobots a favors on or off the battlefield. His partner, Holepunch, tried to keep him from being a total wreck, but Scoop just didn't have it all together, from his creation to his death at the hands of the Old One.
He transformed into a green wheeled front loader with a rear-mounted pile driver.
1.1 Shattered Glass
2 OOC
2.1 Transformers (2007)
As part of his plan to prevent the Decepticons from following the Autobots into space, Ricochet gathered Scoop and Crosshairs and gave them each a partner. While based in the remains of Boltax's temples, however, he was ambushed by the Old One, and was killed along with the other Autobots there.
After being killed by Alpha Trion, his body was found by the main-universe Autobots, still residing in the Temple of Knowledge. He was briefly resurrected by Wreck-Gar as a Junkion, but his body was both melted and shreaded by Wheeljack's exploding doomsday device.
Scoop (Deluxe Class, 2008)
Accessories: Launcher, missile, Autobot Cybertron-type Cyber Planet Key
Note: Scoop was repurposed from Grindcore.
A Walmart exclusive, Grindcore is a redeco of Cybertron Landmine, transforming into a green wheeled front loader with a rear-mounted pile driver. His bucket shovel can be raised up and down, while his gimmick is unusual in that the Cyber Planet Key slot is in his rear wheels. To configure him into attack mode, one flips up the rear wheels (there are smaller wheels to support the rear end of the vehicle to compensate), inserts the Cyber Key into the wheel-hub slots, and twists, deploying blades around the circumference of each tire.
More information on Movie Grindcore at TFU.info
This page uses content from Transformers Wiki. The original article was at Scoop (SG).
The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Transformers Universe MUX, the text of Transformers Wiki is available under the Creative Commons License.
Shattered Glass characters
SG-Autobots

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The most intimidating thing about traveling to Japan is the language barrier. After taking four years of Japanese in school, we were so happy to finally put that knowledge to use during our trip to Tokyo, Japan. But during the trip, much less Japanese was required than expected. Good news! You don't need to know much Japanese to get around in Japan!
Over the years, Japan has become more tourist friendly. Most restaurants will have an English menu or at least pictures for you to see what the dish looks like so you're not ordering blindly. At most attractions you'll find signs directly translated into English or multiple languages, and all transportation signs have the Japanese words romanized as well.
If you need to ask someone for directions, Japanese people are super helpful and will typically go out of their way to assist you even if they don't understand English. But knowing a few useful Japanese phrases will go a long way. Here are 15 useful Japanese phrases to know before traveling to Japan!
We'll start with the basics and move onto the more difficult stuff.
Treat letters that are in parenthesis as silent.
I like _________. // I like ice cream.
_________, please. // Ice cream, please.
Where is _________? // Where is the toilet?
_________ wa doko desu ka? // Toire wa doko desu ka?
_________ wa do-ko des(u) ka? // Toi-re wa do-ko des(u) ka?
If you use this term, Japanese people will love you. There really isn't a direct translation of yoroshiku onegaishimasu, but please and thank you sums it up fairly well. Use this phrase to formally thank someone, or even as a formal "nice to meet you" after introducing yourself.
Consider taking a language lesson while visiting Tokyo, Japan! We had the chance to check out EBISU Japanese Language School and did a brief 1-hour level one lesson. Even though we already knew some Japanese, it was quite refreshing to review! We recommend doing the lesson at the beginning of your trip so that you have the chance to apply and use what you learned during the reminder of your trip. For more information, visit their website.
Did you find these phrases useful?


Click here to see what brides say about Jim Nelson Photography.
Contact me for Military packages.
Approximately 100 photographs per hour.
Any photograph can be printed in B&W or sepia for no additional charge.
Reserve your wedding date today.
Your wedding date is reserved when the wedding contract is returned with a non-refundable retainer of $500 or 50% of the package, whichever is less, that you choose. Before sending your contract and retainer please call to be sure that date is open. I accept personal checks. Wedding dates are booked on a first-come, first-serve basis. We hold your wedding day and time for one week to get your retainer and contract sent in.
Deluxe 8×8 Flush Mount (16 sides) album. Deduct $100 if you don't need a album.
Includes 1 – 8×10, 1 – 5×7 and 5 – 4x6s with basic retouching.
Wedding package includes a DVD of your wedding photographs with a Authorization to Reproduce.
Online proofs in one week for your family and friends to view and purchase.
Add a proof book with a photo on the cover plus three lines of text for $50.
One hour ceremony and reception coverage.
A DVD of all your wedding photographs with a Authorization to Reproduce.
5 – 5×7 custom photographs with basic retouching.
One hour of unlimited photography.
DVD with an Authorization to Reproduce of all your photographs.
One 8×10 and 2 -5x7s color photographs with basic retouching.
Enhancements are available and protective coating.
All photographs can be printed in Black & White and Sepia for no additional charge.
Deluxe albums are flush mount and have 16 sides, made with a leatherette cover and available in Black or Ivory. The cover can have three lines of text, photos on the pages are printed on Metallic paper and have a protective coating applied.
**Collections and pricing is subject to change without notice.
Call 1-231-537-2925 today to book your wedding!


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text:
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Reflection;
using CuttingEdge.Conditions;
using Xyperico.Base;
using log4net;

namespace Xyperico.Agres.MessageBus
{
  public class MessageDispatcher
  {
    private static ILog Logger = LogManager.GetLogger(typeof(MessageDispatcher));

    public IObjectContainer ObjectContainer { get; set; }

    private List<MessageHandlerRegistration> MessageHandlers { get; set; }
    private Dictionary<Type, List<MessageHandlerRegistration>> MessageHandlerIndex { get; set; }

    public MessageDispatcher(IObjectContainer objectContainer)
    {
      Condition.Requires(objectContainer, "objectContainer").IsNotNull();
      ObjectContainer = objectContainer;
      MessageHandlers = new List<MessageHandlerRegistration>();
      MessageHandlerIndex = new Dictionary<Type, List<MessageHandlerRegistration>>();
    }

    public void RegisterMessageHandlers(IEnumerable<Assembly> assemblies)
    {
      RegisterMessageHandlers(assemblies, new DefaultMessageHandlerConvention());
    }

    public void RegisterMessageHandlers(IEnumerable<Assembly> assemblies, IMessageHandlerConvention messageHandlerConvention)
    {
      Condition.Requires(assemblies, "assemblies").IsNotNull();
      Condition.Requires(messageHandlerConvention, "messageHandlerLocator").IsNotNull();

      foreach (Assembly assembly in assemblies)
        InternalRegisterMessageHandlers(assembly, messageHandlerConvention);

      SortRegisteredHandlers();
    }

    public void RegisterMessageHandlers(Assembly assembly)
    {
      InternalRegisterMessageHandlers(assembly, new DefaultMessageHandlerConvention());

      SortRegisteredHandlers();
    }

    public void RegisterMessageHandlers(Assembly assembly, IMessageHandlerConvention messageHandlerConvention)
    {
      InternalRegisterMessageHandlers(assembly, messageHandlerConvention);
    }

    internal void InternalRegisterMessageHandlers(Assembly assembly, IMessageHandlerConvention messageHandlerConvention)
    {
      Condition.Requires(assembly, "assembly").IsNotNull();
      Condition.Requires(messageHandlerConvention, "messageHandlerLocator").IsNotNull();

      Logger.DebugFormat("Scanning assembly '{0}' for message handlers.", assembly);
      Logger.DebugFormat("Using message handler convention '{0}'.", messageHandlerConvention);

      // Go through all types and all their methods looking for message handlers
      foreach (Type handler in assembly.GetTypes())
      {
        foreach (MethodInfo method in handler.GetMethods())
        {
          // Only test single-parameter methods for handlers
          ParameterInfo[] parameters = method.GetParameters();
          if (parameters.Length == 1)
          {
            Type baseType = parameters[0].ParameterType;

            if (messageHandlerConvention.IsMessageHandler(method, baseType))
            {
              // Go through all other messages that inherit from the handlers message parameter
              foreach (Type messageType in GetAllInheritedClasses(baseType))
              {
                Logger.DebugFormat("Register message handler '{0}' on '{1}' for message type '{2}'.", method.Name, method.DeclaringType, messageType);
                MessageHandlerRegistration registration = new MessageHandlerRegistration(messageType, method);
                MessageHandlers.Add(registration);
                if (!MessageHandlerIndex.ContainsKey(messageType))
                  MessageHandlerIndex.Add(messageType, new List<MessageHandlerRegistration>());
                MessageHandlerIndex[messageType].Add(registration);
                if (!ObjectContainer.HasComponent(method.DeclaringType))
                  ObjectContainer.AddComponent(method.DeclaringType, method.DeclaringType);
              }
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }

    private IEnumerable<Type> GetAllInheritedClasses(Type baseType)
    {
      return baseType.Assembly.GetTypes().Where(t => t.IsSubclassOf(baseType))
             .Union(new Type[] { baseType });
    }

    private void SortRegisteredHandlers()
    {
      foreach (var entry in MessageHandlerIndex)
      {
        entry.Value.Sort(new InheritanceComparerer());
      }
    }

    private class InheritanceComparerer : IComparer<MessageHandlerRegistration>
    {
      public int Compare(MessageHandlerRegistration x, MessageHandlerRegistration y)
      {
        if (x.ParameterType == y.ParameterType)
          return 0;
        if (x.ParameterType.IsSubclassOf(y.ParameterType))
          return 1;
        return -1;
      }
    }

    public void Dispatch(object message)
    {
      Condition.Requires(message, "message").IsNotNull();
      List<MessageHandlerRegistration> registrations;
      if (MessageHandlerIndex.TryGetValue(message.GetType(), out registrations))
      {
        foreach (MessageHandlerRegistration handler in registrations)
        {
          Logger.DebugFormat("Dispatching message '{0}' to '{1}'.", message, handler);
          handler.Invoke(ObjectContainer, message);
        }
      }
    }

    public IEnumerable<MessageHandlerRegistration> GetMessageHandlerRegistrations()
    {
      return MessageHandlers;
    }

    public IEnumerable<Type> GetHandledMessages()
    {
      return MessageHandlers.Select(h => h.MessageType).Distinct();
    }
  }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
4WD adventures across Australia
4WD Tracks in WA
Western Australia's best 4WD beaches
33 epic 4WD tracks in WA
Our latest trips
3 months with a camper trailer, 4WD and toddler; the summary
Broome and the trip up
Off to Cape Leveque
The Gibb River road, part 1
Lake Argyle and the Bungles; amazing places in WA
Our Travel Setup
Our Isuzu Dmax build for touring Australia
Our new Hybrid Camper; a Lifestyle Reconn R2
Building a tough 4WD boat trailer
Why we moved from a soft floor to a hybrid camper trailer
Camping in WA
60 of the best campsites near Perth
30 unbelievable camp sites in WA
7 Fantastic Camp Sites near Perth
7 Amazing Camp Sites within 3 – 5 hours of Perth
4WD Guides
Fitting bigger tyres to your 4WD
Towing capacity; a simple guide to keep you legal
42 things you must know about 4WDing
20 things you should never do in a 4WD recovery
Is your 4WD legal?
How much do you really know about 4WD insurance?
Roof racks; are you overloaded?
Are you being misled by 4WD tow ratings?
Two insurance claims with Club 4×4; my review
Snowys; the best place in Australia to buy your camping and outdoor gear
Camping Kettle Upgrade
Eaton Harrop E Locker Review
Beaudesert Exhaust Review
Kaymar Rear Bar Review
Projecta Dual Battery monitor review
Seat Covers; are you looking after your 4WD's interior?
Maxtrax MKII
Is an Ozent worth it?
Crocodile safety in the Kimberley and Northern Territory
by Aaron Schubert Last modified on January 1, 2021
Having grown up in Perth, where the only place you'd see a crocodile is at the zoo, it was very interesting to head to the Kimberley in 2015, and then the Northern Territory and Kimberley in 2018.
Heading up on the first trip, I had very little idea about Crocodile safety, and was a little on the cautious side. However, I've since picked up a heap of information that you might find interesting.
If you are chasing more information on travelling the Kimberley, including where to go, where to stay, where you can get fuel, water and food, where you can swim safely and suggested itineraries, check out the ultimate guide to the Kimberley.
For starters, the most common people to get killed in Australia by crocodiles are males, and often locals to the area (I'm not referring to indigenous people either). Males tend to be less cautious, and locals often get far too complacent. Despite signs at Koolpin gorge clearly stating not to go near the waters edge of one of the pools, we saw a couple of locals getting water from it, fully aware of the information shared around. Your life, your decision. Personally, I don't think its worth the risk.
Salt water crocodiles are big, cunning and extremely dangerous
Things you need to know about crocodiles
Fresh water crocodiles are pretty much harmless
There are two types of crocs in Australia; fresh water ones (which are much smaller and have a thinner head) and estuarine crocs, or salt water crocs (which can grow to about 6 metres long, and will happily eat you at any time of the day).
Now, when I say fresh water crocs are harmless, I mean that they will leave you alone, as long as you do the same to them. You can safely swim in water bodies with fresh water crocodiles (Lake Argyle has 25,000 of them and people swim in it every day), but if you annoy or upset them, they will not be harmless in any sense of the word.
A couple of fresh water crocodiles at Windjana Gorge
There have been a few people attacked by fresh water crocodiles, usually because they have gotten too close, or stood on them, or done something stupid. They still have lots of sharp teeth, and have the potential to do a lot of damage, and even kill you.
Leave them alone and you won't have a problem with them
Salt water crocodiles can be anywhere, including fresh water bodies
The term salt water crocodiles is very misleading. They are often found in salt water, but are found in fresh water bodies on a very regular basis as well. When the wet season hits, and lots of rain falls, crocodiles often move long distances, and can be found very far inland.
Don't assume that because its a fresh body of water there are only going to be fresh water crocodiles, or it might be your last decision.
Just because its fresh water doesn't mean salt water crocs can't be there
Salt water crocodiles are cunning, sneaky and seriously dangerous
I do a lot of spearfishing, and have had a few encounters with reasonable sized sharks. A lot of people tell me I'm mad for being in the water with a shark, but the truth is, they are often relatively safe to swim with.
Salt water crocodiles on the other hand, I consider to be far, far more dangerous than a shark. They are cunning, patient, sneaky and will happily eat you if given the chance. Salt water crocodiles have the strongest jaws in the animal kingdom, and will easily crush your skull.
They will also sit underwater for hours, waiting for the precise moment you get too close, and then lunge out at speed that is impossible to react to.
On the Yellow Water Cruise in Kakadu, we were told that when swimming in the ocean with sharks there is a risk of being attacked, which we all know. However, he said swimming in an area where a salt water crocodile lives though there's no risk; its an absolute certainty that you will be attacked if you are in the water for long enough.
We spent a few hours fishing at Lorella Springs Station, and watched a salt water crocodile slowly work his way down towards us, and a big fish sitting on the banks of the river just at the bottom of the cliffs we were fishing at.
We lost him for the last hour or so of fishing, and eventually packed away. Not more than 5 minutes after we'd finished packing away, and I stuck my head over the cliff to see him up on the bank, eating the fish. They will wait until you can't see them, and then pounce. Lorella Springs Crocodiles are common, and they even have a couple in an enclosure at the main homestead.
Salt water crocodiles have killed a lot of people in Australia, including the Kimberley and Kakadu National Park.
A sneaky salt water crocodile making its way up to our fishing spot
Salties are often found in common swimming spots
I mentioned above that in the wet season, salties move around a lot. Places that are very popular for swimming at often have salt water crocodiles caught early on in the season. Cable beach is closed every couple of years due to sightings of salt water crocodiles.
Berry Springs and Mataranka Springs regularly have salt water crocodiles removed, and crocodile traps are often left in place to mitigate the chances of one entering and interacting with people.
Berry springs; absolutely beautiful, but often a place where salt water crocs are caught
The risk is up to you
How far should you be from the waters edge?
The crocodile safe marketing campaign in the northern part of Australia suggests 5 metres away from any water body. A big crocodile can move 5 metres in a split second, and I bet you can't.
The biologists at Crocodylus recommend 25 metres away from the water source, and never go to the same spot on the bank more than once.
Stay well back from the waters edge. This is at Windjana, with the fresh water crocodiles
Locals fishing at Cahills Crossing; a notorious salt water crocodile hot spot
If the water is clear and shallow, its safer
This is true. If you can see the bottom of the water clearly, and its nice and shallow, the chances of getting in contact with a salt water crocodile are much reduced. We swam at Hunter creek, under the guidance of a local aboriginal, only because of this reason.
Still, the safest thing is not to go near bodies of water where crocodiles can be.
Swimming at Hunter Creek under direct instructions from a local aboriginal
Swim at your own risk
At the end of the day, every time you enter the water in crocodile country, its swim at your own risk. In Kakadu National Park, they have crocodile management policies, and suggest you don't swim, but a lot of people do in the places where the risk of a salty is extremely low.
That said, no ones going to give the all clear for a water hole when a crocodile could move in overnight. No one wants to take on the risk these days, and so its 'swim at your own risk'.
If there's been lots of people swimming for days on end, the risks are very slim
No signs doesn't mean its safe
There are a lot of signs in the Kimberley and Northern Territory telling you not to swim at certain water holes. Just because you come across a water hole that has no signs, doesn't mean its safe!
These signs can't be put everywhere; just because you can't see signs doesn't mean its safe
Where can you find Salt Water Crocodiles?
In general, you will only find Salt Water crocodiles north of Broome, and Gladstone. However, there have been plenty of reports of them being further south, and every year they seem to push the territory.
You'd never expect to see them in Port Hedland or Karratha, but they have been seen there, and that's a pretty scary thought. Be aware that anywhere north of Karratha, or Sunshine coast there is a very slim chance you will see one. The further you head north, the more likely it is.
It's your call
I found it very interesting to watch how people reacted to the signs and information in Kakadu National Park. The whole Northern Territory does a pretty good job at warning people of the risks, but in the end, they lay the risk back on your shoulders.
The signs in Kakadu say this is a crocodile management zone, and everything is done to keep them out, but there is a chance they will enter at any time, and you must swim at your own risk.
Standing at Maguk Gorge, looking at the beautiful, crystal clear water and stunning fish swimming around, I'm reminded of the words. We were considering having a swim, but eventually decided it wasn't worth it. Yep, the chances of one making its way up the stream are pretty low, but it does happen from time to time, and is it really worth the risk?
That's your call to make, in every situation. Some people did swim, and it looked amazing, but I don't reckon there'd be many worse ways to die, and help is a long way away in most of the Northern Territory.
Jim Jim Falls had an interesting arrangement – at the bottom of the falls is a huge pool, and then a smaller one just beyond, and then only tiny creeks feeding a wider section, like a river. Now, once the water dries up, there's no way a big crocodile is going to make it from the river section up and over all the rocky section and into either of the pools, so what's the chances of getting attacked?
Pretty much nothing, I'd have thought, unless one somehow comes over the top of the falls, in which case it would be in bad shape. Is it safe enough then? That's your call to make.
I wouldn't want to be anywhere near this bloke
A crocodile death hits home
While in Kakadu, I read a comment from someone which caused me to look into deaths in Kakadu National Park in previous years from Salt water crocodiles, and what I read really sunk in hard.
We spent 4 nights camping at Sandy Billabong camp site, which is a lovely campsite away from the crowds, next to a beautiful big billabong. I was always careful not to go too close to the water, for fear of salt water crocodiles, and this turned out to be a very wise decision, given the reports I've since read.
In 2002, a small tour group camped at Sandy Billabong, and the tour guide told a group of tourists that it was OK to go for a swim in the Billabong, as he'd seen evidence of aboriginal woman taking mussels to eat. A group of them went for a swim at 9PM at night, and a 29 year old German tourist was taken by a big crocodile.
They were in the water for 10 minutes, and felt something move next to them, and then the 29 year old was pulled under the water, never to be seen again. After getting out, they shone a torch around and could see the eyes of a giant crocodile staring at them in the distance.
Sandy Billabong in Kakadu
As with all crocodile deaths in the Northern Territory, when someone is killed, the authorities come in and kill all potential crocodiles until they find the body. They got the one that killed this tourist, and it was a huge 4.6 metres long. You'd have no chance with an animal that size, and they are super aggressive and territorial at that age.
Next time you have to make a decision; is it worth the risk? That's your call; think long and hard about it!
How to book a WA National park camp site online when its busy
Don't let your 4WD tyres down
Low Energy Developments solar panel review
Robin Falls; an awesome surprise
What did our Isuzu Dmax build cost?


text:
Adam Possamai, né en 1970 à Sambreville (en Belgique), est un sociologue et romancier belgo-australien, vice doyen à l'école des sciences sociales et de psychologie, à l'Université occidentale de Sydney.

Biographie
Il est né à Sambreville en Belgique et vit à Sydney en Australie. Diplômé de l'université catholique de Louvain à Louvain-La-Neuve et de l'Université de La Trobe à Melbourne, sa thèse de doctorat a été récompensée en 1999 du prix Jean Martin par l'association australienne de sociologie.

Il a été président de l'association australienne pour l'étude des religions (2003-2005) et président du comité de recherche sur la sociologie des religions pour l'association internationale de sociologie (2010-2014).

Il mène et dirige des recherches sur la sociologie des religions, et plus particulièrement sur la religion et la culture populaire, les spiritualités alternatives et les nouveaux mouvements religieux, les aborigènes d'Australie et la religion contemporaine, et la sociologie de l'Islam. Il est également écrivain de fantastique et de science-fiction, et membre de l'association des écrivains belges de langue française.

Publications

Notes et références

Liens externes
 Western Sydney University Répertoire d'experts
 Adam Possamaï on Academia.edu

Naissance en 1970
Naissance à Sambreville
Écrivain belge du XXIe siècle
Romancier belge
Écrivain australien du XXIe siècle
Écrivain australien francophone
Sociologue belge
Sociologue australien
Écrivain belge de fantastique
Écrivain belge francophone
Écrivain belge de science-fiction

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Behind this unseemly politics was money, lots of money in the billions. In my college teaching, during the first class meeting, I would ask my students a simple question. How many of you like or dislike billionaires? Are they citizens like you or their tremendous wealth makes them different, perhaps, a threat to our democracy?
My students were equally divided. About 50 percent had no trouble with billionaires. The rest expressed uneasiness with people with so much power. After all, they said, we live in a democracy, don't we?
Yes, indeed. Do we live in a democracy? But what is a democracy?
Even in ancient Athens credited with having invented and practiced a hands-on radical democracy, the process of democracy – rule by the people — was complicated and difficult. It demanded the active and perpetual participation of thousands of citizens for the administration of justice and deciding the policies of the polis.
The Athenians had their own billionaires whom they obliged to pay for national defense and public festivals.
What do we do with our billionaires? Practically nothing, save for allowing them not to pay taxes, and continue with their kleptocratic (thieving) practices and business.
Billionaires accumulate even more wealth and the power that goes with it. They separate themselves from the rest of us. They employ armies of servants to keep them safe and well fed, behind impregnable castles of technology, brick and mortar. Their lobbyists have been bribing Congress and the White House for decades.
What do the bribes buy for the billionaire class? No oversight of their business, giving them free hand in pollution, monopoly in the market, control of the prices they sell their products, even if that means death for people who cannot afford those products, as it happens with drugs of the pharmaceutical industry.
The bribes also gut democracy, even the long-distance, second-hand democracy we have in the United States. Those receiving the bribes are politicians "we elect" to Congress and state legislatures. But these bribed politicians have no dignity or honor, signing on the dotted line with their paymasters. They certainly don't serve us or democracy.
As if these hostile acts are not enough, now, in 2019, the billionaire class is using the so-called media (large TV and radio networks, and newspapers) to either raise doubts about global warming or to bamboozle Americans that climate change is a hoax. The cheerleader of this insidious propaganda is none other than president Donald Trump. In fact, the billionaires "elected" Trump to boost the petroleum monopolies and the industrial-agricultural-military complex.
Trump and his buddies somehow have exorcised rising temperatures. Like dark-age landlords, they have convinced themselves they are invulnerable to the rising climate calamities. Their skyscrapers promise fake security. As for the rest of humanity, including their children and grandchildren, don't seem to cross the megalomania and hubris engulfing their metal brains.
In fact, the billionaires are having such a great time in America, they are building a wall of permanently annulling the democracy-like practices still surviving, like electing, from time to time, whom we like. They see the rising majorities in non-white people with alarm. So, they are stealing millions of votes all over the country.
I don't know how billionaire kleptocracy does this in the middle of the night. But Greg Palast does. This is an extraordinary investigative reporter that does not mince words. I met him recently. He speaks of thieves at the highest levels of America, among billionaires especially. He wrote an eye-opener book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: A Tale of Billionaires and Ballot Bandits (Seven Stories Press, 2016).
Ted Rall translates the tales of Palast into a small comic book, The Crypt of Democracy. Then this comic book finds itself into the heart of Palast's book, enriching the overall purpose and impact of the stories Palast relates with so much originality, excitement, integrity and anger.
Read this book. It's well-written. It is provocative. It tells stories that should anger any American with democratic values and patriotism. It is a riveting chronicle of kleptocracy, especially vote heist. It will probably shock you.
Corruption is so thick among the rulers of America (billionaires) that they threaten to make this country worse than a banana police state. They mix the selling of religion with stealing diamonds from Congo and the petroleum of Venezuela. They bribe dictators in Asia in order to buy their petroleum at a cheap price . They are in bed with Saudi Arabia, the worst religious theocracy on Earth, the very country funding Islamic fanatics all over the world.
All American presidents that I remember paid homage to the petroleum kings of Saudi Arabia. Palast calls them dictators in bathrobes.
"The Oval Office has been the residence of craven con men, sanctimonious scoundrels, psychopathic blood worshippers, vainglorious vulgarities, rich dicks and wannabe rich dicks, fraudsters, fakers, and worse: hollow suits, scarecrows, chattering death masks, and men without meaning even to themselves," wrote Palast.
Palast, however, uses more than rhetorical flourish. He means what he says. For example, he does not simply recommend vote reform. He denounces the billionaires. But he goes further. He uses the surgical knife to cut out the cause of kleptocracy: "put an end to billionaires… take away their billions," he says.


First Aid 4 Souls one of the electronic music projects founded by Hungarian musician Istvan Gazdag. with this project he mixes the brutality of noise music with the psychedelic pulsation of trance/acid, the rich melodies of new-wave / synth-wave with the strict grinding of electro industrial / EBM.
At BIMFEST they will present us the best of both worlds on Friday December 14th!
So be on time and don't miss out this unique performance of First Aid 4 Souls vs Stahlgeist!


Payment methods - Back in Brum!
Choose 'I am sending money to friends and family'. In the message box, include your BC name as the reference for your payment. If you are paying for more than one person, please include their names as well. You will receive email confirmation of your payment, and your name(s) will be added to the list of attendees.
Cheques should be made payable to 'Birmingham BCUK Uncon 2016' and sent to Jen Barrow, 28 Woodbridge Road, Moseley, Birmingham B13 8EJ. Please write the BC, or real, names of the people you are paying for on the back of your cheque.
Our Co-operative bank account number is 65790407 and the sort code is 08-92-99.


J'ADE is a Loading... luxury yacht, built by CRN and delivered in 2013. Her top speed is 15.0kn and she boasts a maximum cruising range of 3000.0nm at 14.0kn with power coming from two 2000.0hp MTU 12V4000M61 diesel engines. She can accommodate up to 10 people with 13 crew members.


text:
911:Secret services
3.1 Personal records
3.2 Special networks
3.2.1 ECHELON
3.3 Satellites
3.3.1 DNA surveys from space
3.3.2 Laser Spying
3.4 Drones
3.5 Phone tracing
3.6.1 Google
3.6.2 Social networking
3.6.2.1 Facebook
3.6.2.2 Twitter
3.6.3 Spyware
3.6.4 Malware
3.7 Operating Systems
3.8 Video cameras
3.8.1 Face Recognition
3.9 RFID systems
3.10 Entertainment devices
4.1 Interpol
4.2 NATO
5.1 European Union
5.2 United Kingdom
5.3 Germany
5.4 Italy
5.5 Netherlands
5.6 France
5.7 Spain
5.8 Romania
6 North America
6.1.1 NSA
6.1.1.1 PRISM
6.1.2 CIA
6.1.3 FBI
6.1.4 DHS
9.2 Pakistan
Spies are despicable The Holy Bible Says That Spies Are Despicable!!
To sort out: [5] [6]
Quote from Ignatius, Spying and Sedition-From A Work in Progress
Prior to his journey across the English Channel, on his first begging journey to Bruges and Antwerp, Loyola encountered a Spaniard of high repute and learning. "He met at Bruges the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives, who had recently returned from his post in England." (The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland and England 1541-1588 by Thomas M. McCoog. Page 12, published by Brill, 1996.) Vives was a professor at the Louvain who had come to England at the invitation of Henry, acted as tutor to Princess Mary (later "Bloody Mary"), but was forced to leave England because he had declared himself against the divorce of Catherine of Aragon. (Encyclopedia Britannica,11th Edition, Handy Edition, 1911, Vol. 28, Pages 152-153.) This Spanish Papist was a connection for Ignatius to the Spaniards in England. He was an excellent Catholic role model for Ignatius, having produced a most bigoted and fanatic, religious murderess in his education of Mary. His up to date knowledge of England, together with letters of introduction from him would have provided open doors for Loyola throughout all strata of Catholic and Spanish society in England. Ignatius also would have been easily able to serve as a courier, bringing messages in and then gathering information for his Lord, the Pope. The beginning of Jesuit espionage and counterintelligence began with the founder of the Order, a calculating militarist who well understood the importance of reconnaissance, logistics and planning.... The early training of Loyola would later bear fruit in the spiritual surveillance, physical espionage, and a "human resource" inventory system that was developed within the Society. "The detective system which prevails to so iniquitous an extent amongst the Jesuits must prevent friendship by destroying mutual confidence"... Full dictatorial surveillance based on the Jesuit model was openly implemented in Western Europe under the Gestapo, and this was improved and expanded upon to control and permeate the intelligence agencies of all nations. It has birthed as well a fraternity of men who have demonstrated the ability to amass the wealth of the nations in heaps and piles across the globe for use to achieve the designs for world domination.
Quote from Eric Jon Phelps on the Middle East:
"Before commencing the body of this text, the author recommends the reading of his book, "Vatican Assassins: Wounded In The House Of My Friends". Therein, the reader will be informed, fact-by-fact, as to the origin and perfection of the Jesuit Superior General's International Intelligence Community. That Community is overseen by the Pope's Sovereign Military Order of Malta headquartered in Rome and directed by its Grand Master, Andrew Bertie. Thus, the Jesuit General, also known as the Black Pope, controls the entirety of the American Intelligence Community, including but not limited to, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Office of Naval Intelligence as well as the intelligence arms of the Army and the Air Force."
This "Unified International Intelligence Community" was built during Rome's Second Thirty Years' War (1914-1945) and perfected during Rome's subsequent Cold War (1945-1990).
See also: UK–USA Security Agreement (1941)
video: CIA Coup in Guatemala 1954 "A Coup Made in America"
In Part 3: 'The Catholic Church, the Guatemalan Military, and the Duck Test':
"The CIA contacts Cardinal Spellman in NY, to take part in their psychological war against Arbenz…. " @ 4:19
"We [the CIA] got the 'okay' from Cardinal Spellman to go ahead with this…"
@ 5:33 CIA vet Howard E. Hunt states "We always said in an admiring way, that the Jesuits have formed the greatest intelligence service in the world, always have."
Quote from: Dave Hunt
"Moreover, the pope has thousands of secret agents worldwide. They include Jesuits, the Knights of Columbus, Knights of Malta, Opus Dei, and others. The Vatican's Intelligence Service and its field resources are second to none.." (A Woman Rides the Beast, Dave Hunt, p. 87) [7]
"Leading Surveillance Societies in 2006" (from Daily Telegraph)
All serving the jesuits cia creating the internet cartel monopoly, and the greatest inteligence gattering tool ever known. [1]
Secret Service & the Occult
"It is not really surprising that historically occultism and espionage have often been strange bedfellows. The black art of espionage is about obtaining secret information and witches, psychics and astrologers have always claimed to be able to predict the future and know about things hidden from ordinary people. Gathering intelligence is carried out under a cloak of secrecy and occultists are adept at keeping their activities concealed from sight. Like secret agents they also use codes, symbols and cryptograms to hide information from outsiders. Occultists and intelligence officers are similar in many ways, as both inhabit a shadowy underworld of secrets, deception and disinformation. It is therefore not unusual that often these two professions have shared the same members."
International surveillance companies are based in the more technologically sophisticated countries, and they sell their technology on to every country of the world. This industry is, in practice, unregulated. Intelligence agencies, military forces and police authorities are able to silently, and on mass, and secretly intercept calls and take over computers without the help or knowledge of the telecommunication providers. Users' physical location can be tracked if they are carrying a mobile phone, even if it is only on stand by.
When citizens overthrew the dictatorships in Egypt and Libya this year, they uncovered listening rooms where devices from Gamma corporation of the UK, Amesys of France, VASTech of South Africa and ZTE Corp of China monitored their every move online and on the phone.
But the WikiLeaks Spy Files are more than just about 'good Western countries' exporting to 'bad developing world countries'. Western companies are also selling a vast range of mass surveillance equipment to Western intelligence agencies. In traditional spy stories, intelligence agencies like MI5 bug the phone of one or two people of interest. In the last ten years systems for indiscriminate, mass surveillance have become the norm. Intelligence companies such as VASTech secretly sell equipment to permanently record the phone calls of entire nations. Others record the location of every mobile phone in a city, down to 50 meters. Systems to infect every Facebook user, or smart-phone owner of an entire population group are on the intelligence market.
Surveillance companies like SS8 in the U.S., Hacking Team in Italy and Vupen in France manufacture viruses (Trojans) that hijack individual computers and phones (including iPhones, Blackberries and Androids), take over the device, record its every use, movement, and even the sights and sounds of the room it is in. Other companies like Phoenexia in the Czech Republic collaborate with the military to create speech analysis tools. They identify individuals by gender, age and stress levels and track them based on 'voiceprints'. Blue Coat in the U.S. and Ipoque in Germany sell tools to governments in countries like China and Iran to prevent dissidents from organizing online.
Trovicor, previously a subsidiary of Nokia Siemens Networks, supplied the Bahraini government with interception technologies that tracked human rights activist Abdul Ghani Al Khanjar. He was shown details of personal mobile phone conversations from before he was interrogated and beaten in the winter of 2010-2011. [8]
WikiLeaks: The Spy Files
wiki.echelon2.org
Military Order of Malta (SMOM) and its members the Knights of Malta
Intelligence agencies by country
Companies: Information technology
False flag > Terrorism
Alleged Use of False Flag Attacks by Intelligence Agencies
Surveillance Society: New High-Tech Cameras Are Watching You
Todo: secret/military network infrastructures, financial payment infrastructures, encrypted lines.
Report on the Surveillance Society For the Information Commissioner by the Surveillance Studies Network[9]
State number ("social 'security' number")
Family composition (present and past genealogy)
Occupational record
Educational record
Legal record (police/court/fines/crime/jail)
Political afiliations
Financal record
Taxation (private and corporate)
Spending record (house loan, debt, consumer spending, investments, ...)
Social welfare record
Travel record (visa's / state-entry, boarding logs: bus/metro/train/ferry/airline)
Internet tracks (email, web sites & searches, ...)
Personal character record (emotional/intellectual classification, pastime passions, luxury goods / entertainment spending, sexuality, etc.)
Biometrics:
Facial scans
Voice signature
DNA signature
Special networks
An international espionage network
"ECHELON: America's Secret Global Surveillance Network"
video: Echelon - The Most Secret Spy System
"9/11 and Echelon: Key Players Unearthed"
Todo: Satellite operators, military networks, etc.
Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS)
Main uses: Missile Warning, Missile Defense, Technical Intelligence & Battlespace Awareness [10]
Category:Communications satellite operators
Iridium satellite constellation
Iridium Satellite LLC
Estimate of the number of active satellites in space (source: Union of Concerned Scientists).
See also: US Space Surveillance Network, "Disharmony in the spheres"
DNA surveys from space
Whistleblowing scientist Leuren Moret reveals Googles shocking ongoing plans and technology
Biopiracy Takeover Scientist Leuren Moret blows the whistle on DNA surveys from space
Google accused of biopiracy
Laser Spying
NASA succeeded in using space telescope to decipher voices in a room. Telescope analysed the vibrations of the clothing being worn by the room occupants. This was in 2005.
More recently, Nasa technology has been suggested as a method of extending it: in 2005, New Scientist reported that the US security services were using a space technology previously used to detect faint radio signals from space to eavesdrop on a room where the curtains had been pulled (which defeats the laser). The system used a "horn antenna" to blast a beam of microwave energy at between 30GHz and 100GHz through a building wall: "If people are speaking inside the room, any flimsy surface, such as clothing, will be vibrating. This modulates the radio beam reflected from the surface," it reported. That could be amplified using the Nasa technology and analysed as before. [11]
AeroVironment's Nano Hummingbird - Outdoor Indoor Flight
View from the World's Most Advanced Surveillance Drone
Drones over US to get weaponized – so far, non-lethally
An unclassified US air force document reported by CBS (pdf) news expands on this unprecedented and unconstitutional step – one that formally brings the military into the role of controlling domestic populations on US soil, which is the bright line that separates a democracy from a military oligarchy. (The US constitution allows for the deployment of National Guard units by governors, who are answerable to the people; but this system is intended, as is posse comitatus, to prevent the military from taking action aimed at US citizens domestically.) [12]
Phone tracing
Mobile phone tracing/triangulation/wiretapping (passive/activated-by-defined-signatures and active/on-demand), identification.
Mobile phone infrastructure (connection logs, voice/web data)
VOIP provider data hooks/requests for secret services (Skype, Google Voice, etc.)
Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government?: A former FBI counterterrorism agent claims on CNN that this is the case
ISP data-retention/IP-request laws and its enforcement
Secret services and ISP collaborations
Credit card purchasing information (privacy, fraud, etc.)
Whistleblower: Google Chrome Can Listen To Your Conversations
Cookie issues
Privacy concerned with HTML5
HTML 5 Sniffing users: geolocation is an alternate of correctly pinpointing a user's location. The new idea is to get location information from Wifi Towers and GPS [13]
Canvas fingerprinting
Email taffic espionage (gmail, hotmail)
Search engine espionage (google)
Software install espionage (anti-virus software, ...)
Kaspersky uncovers five-year cyber espionage campaign, Red October
Hardware/appliance espionage (ISP modems, consumer routers/switches, google appliance, ...)
Jesuit Google and Facebook: Part of Rome's International Intelligence Community
Google to enlist NSA to help it ward off cyberattacks
Intellipedia
"Google has lots to do with intelligence" (March 30, 2008):
"The system is modeled after Wikipedia, the public online, group-edited encyclopedia. However, the cloak-and-dagger version is maintained by the director of national intelligence and is accessible only to the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and an alphabet soup of other intelligence agencies and offices. Agents can log in, depending on their clearance, to Intellipedia's three tiers of service: top secret, secret and sensitive but unclassified. So far, 37,000 users have established accounts on the network, which contain 35,000 articles encompassing 200,000 pages, according to Dennehy. Google supplies the computer servers that support the network, as well as the search software that allows users to sift through messages and data."
AxisGlobe eastern secret service news.
Facebook Google are cia fronts
Social Networking Sites and the Surveillance Society
Pentagon sets its sights on social networking websites
Obama pick for NSA review panel wanted paid, pro-government shills in chat rooms
Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media
US military caught social media running-mass propaganda accounts
Corporate manipulation of social media: Example: Monsanto on Reddit
Profiling/Searching populations through Facebook, MySpace (owned by Rupert Murdoch)
A-Space
Social Network Integrated Friend Finder (Sniff)
Security/privacies issues
Information gleaned from social networks has cost people jobs, led to suspensions and expulsions, damaged prospects for employment and university admission, helped crooks defraud victims and generated criminal charges. Universities scour social networking sites for evidence of residence keg parties, in violation of campus policies. Admissions officers use them to evaluate university-bound students. Police tap into them to investigate underage drinking and sexual activity. Companies check out Facebook to help with direct marketing campaigns. And increasingly, employers are using them to screen prospective employees...."Anything on the site, Facebook can see and data mine,"
For companies that engage in Datamining "Not only is it a wide range of personal information that's cross-referenced and verified by the individuals themselves, but people themselves are volunteering this information."
Risks associated with the use of social networks
Data, once published, may remain there forever;
Traffic data may be shared with third parties, including advertisers and law enforcement agencies;
Third parties may misuse the data they obtain;
Photos posted to social networking sites may be connected to facial recognition software and become universal biometric identifiers
The availability of personal data in user profiles could lead to increased identity theft.
video: Does what happens in the Facebook stay in the Facebook?
video: Major Facebook security hole lets you view your friends' live chats
video: Julian Assange: Facebook "Most Appalling Spying Machine Ever Invented"
Identity 'at risk' on Facebook
Facebook's New Terms Of Service: "We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever."
Quebec police arrest teen for allegedly promoting ethnic hatred on Facebook
Facebook tracks your every move, even after logging out (online)
"Even if you are logged out, Facebook still knows and can track every page you visit," Cubrilovic wrote on a recent blog posting. "The only solution is to delete every Facebook cookie in your browser, or to use a separate browser for Facebook interactions" (http://nikcub-static.appspot.com/lo...). But how many Facebook users will actually know to do this? The site has never announced to its users that it is even tracking them in the first place, let alone given them any instructions on how to "opt-out" of this egregious invasion of privacy. Facebook, of course, has become infamous for simply changing its site setup, including privacy settings, and leaving it up to users to figure out how to contain their breached information after the fact. It has switched from an "opt-in" approach, where users used to be given the option to "upgrade" to new features, to a much more complicated "opt-out" approach, where Facebook makes drastic changes and leaves it up to users to somehow figure out how to change things back to the way they were (if such an option is even still possible).
Facebook Privacy Nightmare: How the site tracks you, even when you're offline
Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity
Facebook wants to know why you didn't publish that status update you started writing.
Facebook develops algorithm that will learn EVERYTHING about you from photos and gives details to advertisers
Facebook's Privacy Issues Are Even Deeper Than We Knew
Questions about what social networks mean for personal privacy and security have been brought to a head by research at Carnegie Mellon University that shows that Facebook has essentially become a worldwide photo identification database. Paired with related research, we're looking at the prospect where good, bad and ugly actors will be able identify a face in a crowd and know sensitive personal information about that person.
German officials reopen inquiry into Facebook facial recognition
Big Brother is Not Only Watching You: He is Your Facebook Friend
Facebook new cointelpro what do you mean by no snitching?
I do not think the old way of U.S. Government spying and surveillance has become obsolete, but with the invention of Facebook, it has provided law enforcement with a wealth of information on the identity of people, the various alias they use, photos of family and friends, what city and state they live in, etc., and not to mention the incriminating chat that takes place on Facebook. Facebook is the new FBI dossier and it doesn't require the manpower or the man hours, nor will it be met with the same public resistance of Cointelpro of the past. They have done a superb job of luring people to sleep with the whole concept of social networking and have relaxed the Sheeple so much that they are enjoying and having fun in their own demise. This doesn't require coercion or interrogation (that was once associated with KGB, Mossad, CIA, etc.) and a covert government plot to accumulate or access intimate files on American citizens in particular and citizens throughout the world in general (not to suggest that the old mode of acquiring intelligence has outlived its usefulness). The people have become so dumb down that they are voluntarily providing law enforcement with massive data under the guise of social networking. ]
Facebook's Graph Search: Kiss Your Privacy Goodbye - see Facebook's Graph Search
Similar check Wolfram facebook report
Everything We Know About Facebook's Secret Mood Manipulation Experiment
The Military Doesn't Want You to Quit Facebook and Twitter
The British Army is Creating a Battalion of "Facebook Warriors"
Brussels has been accused of masterminding a secret £2million plot to monitor Eurosceptic debates on the internet - Brussels pays trolls via twitter
FinFisher
Google security engineer Morgan Marquis-Boire and Berkeley student Bill Marczak were investigating spyware found in email attachments to several Bahraini activists. In their analysis they identified the spyware infecting not only PCs but a broad range of smartphones, including iOS, Android, RIM, Symbian, and Windows Phone 7 handsets. The spying software has the capability to monitor and report back on calls and GPS positions from mobile phones, as well as recording Skype sessions on a PC, logging keystrokes, and controlling any cameras and microphones that are installed. [14]
Egyptian dissidents who ransacked the office's of Egypt's secret police following the overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak reported they discovered a contract with Gamma International for €287,000 for a license to run the FinFisher software. [15]
Flame (malware)
Flame related articles
Flame, also known as Flamer, sKyWIper, and Skywiper, is modular computer malware discovered in 2012 that attacks computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system. The program is being used for targeted cyber espionage in Middle Eastern countries. Its discovery was announced on 28 May 2012 by MAHER Center of Iranian National Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), Kaspersky Lab and CrySyS Lab of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. The last of these stated in its report that it "is certainly the most sophisticated malware we encountered during our practice; arguably, it is the most complex malware ever found." Flame can spread to other systems over a local network (LAN) or via USB stick. It can record audio, screenshots, keyboard activity and network traffic.[6] The program also records Skype conversations and can turn infected computers into Bluetooth beacons which attempt to download contact information from nearby Bluetooth-enabled devices. This data, along with locally stored documents, is sent on to one of several command and control servers that are scattered around the world. The program then awaits further instructions from these servers. (wikipedia)
Some of the information strikes me as outdated, as I am aware of at least one large nation/economy which has removed Microsoft from its government computer systems and in now Linux-based, using proprietary software. This switchover began in 2004/5. In other words, that country's government was aware of the "backdoor" in Microsoft which allowed the US to spy on them -- and they weren't having it anymore. [16]
[www.wnd.com/2013/06/now-fbi-wants-back-door-to-all-software/ Now fbi wants back door to all software/]
Windows 8 Will Have a "Kill Switch"
The very anticipated operating system Windows 8 will have a feature that was never found on PC's before: A kill switch that can remotely delete software and edit code without the user's permission. Although Microsoft claims the switch would only be used for software that is downloaded from its app store, no official policies clearly define the actual purpose of the kill switch. In other words, nothing is truly considered "illegal" and that includes issues regarding spying, censorship and free speech. [17]
LEAKED: German Government Warns Key Entities Not To Use Windows 8 – Links The NSA
According to leaked internal documents from the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) that Die Zeit obtained, IT experts figured out that Windows 8, the touch-screen enabled, super-duper, but sales-challenged Microsoft operating system is outright dangerous for data security. It allows Microsoft to control the computer remotely through a built-in backdoor. Keys to that backdoor are likely accessible to the NSA – and in an unintended ironic twist, perhaps even to the Chinese. The backdoor is called "Trusted Computing," developed and promoted by the Trusted Computing Group, founded a decade ago by the all-American tech companies AMD, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and Wave Systems. Its core element is a chip, the Trusted Platform Module (TPM)
TrapWire
Stratfor emails reveal secret, widespread TrapWire surveillance system
Mainstream media whitewashes the facts behind TrapWire scandal
TrapWire tied to anti-Occupy Internet-spy program
"Seeing You: The Coming Surveillance Expansion"
"EU project: Adabts"
Your Computer Is Watching You: AOL Rolls Out Emotion Tracking
Nicknamed "Powder" or "Dust", these chips consist of 128-bit ROM (Read Only Memory) that can store a 38-digit number.
In passports, corporate service cards, consumer goods, ...
Ex-IBM Employee reveals TV Abandoned Analog Band to Make Room for RFID Chips
Hitachi Develops World's Smallest RFID Chip
The Japanese giant Hitachi has developed the world's smallest and thinnest Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chip. Measuring only 0.15 x 0.15 millimeters in size and 7.5 micrometers thick, the wireless chip is a smaller version of the previous record holder - Hitachi's 0.4 x 0.4 mm "Micro-Chip". The company used semiconductor miniaturization and electron beam technology to write data on the chip substrates to achieve this decrease in size. The new chips have a wide range of potential applications from military to transportation, logistics and even consumer electronics. According to the Nikkei website, Hitachi is now planning on developing an even smaller RFID chip using 65-nanometer lithographic technology.
Walt Disney bets the kingdom on hyper-invasive RFID tracking of park guests
Digital TV's
Tech Companies are Developing TV's that Watch You
Online game consoles
Players' behaviour in the game is monitored by companies who aim to understand the new opportunities for emerging real-life markets. A whole new class of corporate game player has emerged. These players research the habits of people via their avatars and market both virtual and real products inside and outside these worlds to other players. p.77 - 36. Virtual Tracking
XBox One: A device brought into your home with 4 microphones, 2 cameras, an infrared motion sensor, and a license to freely record and upload your activity… "to the maximum extent permitted by law, we may monitor your communications and may disclose information about [18]
Phone-home set-top boxes
EU INDECT
"UE FP7 INDECT Project: "Intelligent information system supporting observation, searching and detection for security of citizens in urban environment. Project Description: Intelligent information system supporting observation, searching and detection for security of citizens in urban environment.
The main objectives of the INDECT project are:
to develop a platform for: the registration and exchange of operational data, acquisition of multimedia content, intelligent processing of all information and automatic detection of threats and recognition of abnormal behaviour or violence,
to develop the prototype of an integrated, network-centric system supporting the operational activities of police officers, providing techniques and tools for observation of various mobile objects,
to develop a new type of search engine combining direct search of images and video based on watermarked contents, and the storage of metadata in the form of digital watermarks,[2].
The main expected results of the INDECT project are:
to realise a trial installation of the monitoring and surveillance system in various points of city agglomeration and demonstration of the prototype of the system with 15 node stations,
implementation of a distributed computer system that is capable of acquisition, storage and effective sharing on demand of the data as well as intelligent processing,
construction of a family of prototypes of devices used for mobile object tracking,
construction of a search engine for fast detection of persons and documents based on watermarking technology and utilising comprehensive research on watermarking technology used for semantic search,
construction of agents assigned to continuous and automatic monitoring of public resources such as: web sites, discussion forums, UseNet groups, file servers, p2p networks as well as individual computer systems,
elaboration of Internet based intelligence gathering system, both active and passive, and demonstrating its efficiency in a measurable way.[3]
INDECT partners:
AGH Univeristy of Science and Technology (Poland) - Project Coordinator http://www.agh.edu.pl/en
2. Gdansk University of Technology (Poland) http://www.pg.gda.pl
3. InnoTec DATA G.m.b.H. & Co. KG (Germany) http://www.innotec-data.de
4. Grenoble INP (France) http://www.grenoble-inp.fr
5. MSWIA - General Headquarters of Police (Poland) http://www.policja.pl/
6. Moviquity (Spain) http://www.moviquity.com/webingles/index.htm
7. PSI Transcom GmbH (Germany) http://www.psi.de/
8. Police Service of Northern Ireland (United Kingdom) http://www.psni.police.uk/
9. Poznan University of Technology (Poland) http://www.put.poznan.pl
0. Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Spain) http://www.uc3m.es
1. Technical University of Sofia (Bulgaria) http://www.tu-sofia.bg
12. University of Wuppertal (Germany) http://www.uni-wuppertal.de
13. University of York (Great Britain) http://www.york.ac.uk
14. Technical University of Ostrava (Czech Republic) http://www.vsb.cz
15. Technical University of Kosice (Slovakia) http://www.tuke.sk/tuke?set_language=en&cl=en
16. X-Art Pro Division G.m.b.H. (Austria) http://www.x-art.at
17. Fachhochschule Technikum Wien (Austria) http://www.technikum-wien.at[4]
"Listening to you at last: EU plans to tap cell phones"
British SIS (or MI6)
"Private sector language schools with whom the British Council compete complain about the state subsidized competition. While the language teaching makes a profit, the accounting is not transparent and if it were privatized, it is doubtful the it could be promoted in the way it is at present." (wikipedia)
"For many Russians and, indeed for many people who are suspicious of British motives all over the world, the British Council is an ideal target, not just because it is a symbol of British culture and learning but because it is popularly supposed to be a front for espionage activities." - from: "Its widely assumed that the British Council is a wing of our secret services"
"MI5, which has a target of increasing its current 3,000 staff to 4,000 by 2011, also insisted that it wanted to improve relations with Muslim communities." [19]
Data-gathering operation is part of a £1bn internet project still being assembled by GCHQ
How British Spies "Seed the Internet With False Info, Control YouTube Pageviews and Manipulate Online Polls"
DIS ("Dipartimento delle Informazioni per la Sicurezza" - secret service)
AISI ("Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Interna" - national)
AISE ("Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Esterna" - international)
French intelligence constitutes of two major units: the DGSE("In 2009, the DGSE had an estimated staff of approximately 5,000 employees." [20]) the external agency and the DCRI the domestic agency. The latter being part of the police while the former is associated to the army. The DGSE is notorious for the Sinking of the Rainbow Warrior, but it is also known for revealing the most extensive technological spy network uncovered in Europe and the United States to date through the mole Vladimir Vetrov.
rance also operates a PRISM-like spy network
Alexandre de Marenches head of the DGSE was a Knight of Malta. [21]
CNI "Centro Nacional de Inteligencia" Employees +/- 2200. The National Intelligence Center (Spanish: Centro Nacional de Inteligencia, CNI) is the Spanish official intelligence agency. Its headquarters are located in the A-6 motorway near Madrid. The CNI is the successor of the Centro Superior de Información de la Defensa, Higher Centre for Defense Intelligence. Its main target areas are North Africa and South America and it operates in more than 80 countries. CNI's budget for 2010 is approximately 255 million euros. [22]
CNSAS ("National Council for the Study of Securitate Archives") (Romania)
US secret service IP's: "Now, if you scan these IP addresses, you will find that they all match up...the list is somewhat outdated I suspect, but since they all match up (...) If you trace these IPs most will lead back to "The Internet Access Company" [??], and they also go through Cogent Communications, a Washington DC based tech company that has been doing quite well for being a very young business."
Todo: Military forts (especially large-scale underground complexes - DUMBs)
Raven Rock Mountain Complex
Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center
Nuclear powered drilling machines? [2]
Patent (number 3,885,832) exist for such machine Subterrene [3]
"The technotronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. (...) The capacity to assert social and political control over the individual will vastly increase. It will soon be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and to maintain up-to-date, complete files, containing even most personal information about the health or personal behavior of the citizen in addition to more customary data. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities."-Zbigniew Brzezinski, protegé of David Rockefeller, cofounder of the Trilateral Commission, and NSA to Jimmy Carter, from his 1971 book Between Two Ages[23]
William Binney, a former official with the National Security Agency, recently said that domestic surveillance in the U.S. has increased under President Obama, and trillions of phone calls, emails and other messages sent by U.S. citizens have been intercepted by the government. In fact, in an interview with Democracy Now, the official-turned-whistleblower claims that the government currently possesses copies of almost all emails sent and received in the United States. Binney, who is regarded as one of the best mathematicians and code breakers in NSA history, says he left the agency in late 2001 after he learned about its plan to use the September 11th terrorist attacks as an excuse to launch a controversial data collection program on its own citizens. One commercial company he claims to have participated in the program is AT&T, which he says handed over more than 320 million records of citizen-to-citizen communications that took place within the U.S. The program, which Binney says he helped create, was never meant for domestic surveillance but the agency has supposedly been spying on U.S. citizens for more than a decade now. According to Binney, once the software intercepts a transmission it will then build profiles on every person referenced in the data. The NSA is now in the process of building a $2 billion data storage facility in Utah that is bigger than anything Google (GOOG) or Apple (AAPL) has ever built, and Binney calculates that the facility will be able to store 100 years worth of the world's electronic communications. [24]
The NSA is building an enormous spy center, probably the biggest ever, in Bluffdale Utah. When construction is completed in 2013, the heavily fortified $2 billion facility will encompass 1 million square feet, including four 25,000-square-foot areas to house endless rows of high-powered servers. The center will be fed data collected by the agency's eavesdropping satellites, overseas listening posts, and secret monitoring rooms in telecom facilities throughout the US. [25]
The NSA Is Building the Country's Biggest Spy Center
NSA whistle blowers warn that the US government can use surveillance to 'see into your life'
The National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. Among other forms of intelligence-gathering, the NSA secretly collects the phone records of millions of Americans, using data provided by telecom firms AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth. "Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications. And the Obama administration has formally demanded that it have access to any and all forms of internet communication."[26]
XKeyscore presentation from 2008 – read in full
Training materials for the XKeyscore program detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases and develop intelligence from the web [27]
The NSA Revelations All in One Chart [4]
nsawatch.org
NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls
The NSA Revelations All in One Chart
NSA call database
NSA electronic surveillance program
NSA warrantless surveillance controversy
NSA routing internet data thru Amsterdam to monitor U.S. websites and e-mail
Trailblazer Project
Stellar Wind (code name)
Turbulence (NSA)
Narus (company) & Narus STA 6400
NSA Paid a Huge Security Firm $10 Million to Keep Encryption Weak
The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian. The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called PRISM, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.... In a statement, Google said: "Google cares deeply about the security of our users' data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government 'back door' into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user data." Some of the world's largest internet brands are claimed to be part of the information-sharing program since its introduction in 2007. Microsoft – which is currently running an advertising campaign with the slogan "Your privacy is our priority" – was the first, with collection beginning in December 2007. It was followed by Yahoo in 2008; Google, Facebook and PalTalk in 2009; YouTube in 2010; Skype and AOL in 2011; and finally Apple, which joined the program in 2012. The program is continuing to expand, with other providers due to come online. [28]
Reinhard Gehlen also had profound influence in helping to create the National Security Council, from which the National Security Act of 1947 was derived. This particular piece of legislation was implemented to protect an unconscionable number of illegal government activities, including clandestine mind control programs. [29]
The CIA was founded by William Donovan, a Knight of Malta who had been awarded the highest award in the Roman Catholic Church. The first director of the CIA, Allen Dulles, was a Knight of Malta whose nephew, Avery Dulles, was a prominent Jesuit priest. CIA directors William Colby, William J. Casey, John McCone, Allen Dulles, George Tenet, and Leon Panetta have all been either Knights of Malta or Jesuit-trained. [30]
National Intelligence Council is small think tank of senior analysts reporting to the Director of Central Intelligence that produces estimates on priority national security issues for the President and his top advisers. [31] by John C. Gannon - "John C. Gannon, ... Department of Homeland Security ... was a member of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps and is affiliated with [Jesuit] Georgetown University while an ex-CIA officer" [Eric Jon Phelps, email interview with 'mpm', April 2006]. [32]
The current CIA head - who was also the 9/11-era NSA head - Michael Hayden was Jesuit trained at Georgetown University. [33]
The 1997 CIA budget was 26.6 billion dollars. This year (1998) their budget is $26.7 billion [34]
HUD's Missing Money, Catherine Fitts, Hamilton Securities and the CIA.
The fraudulent movement of finances through HUD were made possible by poor auditing standards that enabled as much as tens of billions of dollars to go annually missing. In a March 2000 report, the HUD (fraud scandal) Inspector General, Susan Gaffney, reported a high number of 'adjustments' that had to be made to account for $59 billion that could not be located in 1999 [35]
video: US Foreign Policy - Secret Wars of the CIA
video: Secrets of the Jesuit CIA
Profile: Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) (historycommons.org)
CIA Plans to Shift Work to Denver
see Denver International Airport murals
C.I.A. Sponsored Trolls Monitor Internet & Interact With Users to Discredit Factual Information
The FBI was founded by Charles J. Bonaparte (a grandson of Jérôme Bonaparte, the youngest brother of the French Emperor Napoleon I), a Knight of Malta who served on the board of trustees for the Catholic University of America. FBI directors Louis Freeh and Thomas Pickard are devoutly Roman Catholic and Louis Freeh is an alleged member of Opus Dei. [36]
The COINTELPRO Papers
COINTELPRO Article at http://decryptedmatrix.com [37] [38] [39] [40] [41]
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is a Jesuit operation. The first director was Tom Ridge, a devoutly Roman Catholic Knight of Columbus. The real power behind the DHS was John C. Gannon, the head of it's intelligence unit. Gannon was Jesuit-trained at the College of the Holy Cross and is a member of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. The deputy director of the DHS from 2005-2007 was Michael P. Jackson, who was Jesuit-trained at Georgetown University. Bush's first pick for the second DHS director was a Roman Catholic man. In the end, he chose Michael Chertoff, who is married to a Jesuit professor (Meryl Chertoff). Under Chertoff, the head of the DHS' immigration was Emilio T. Gonzalez, a Knight of Malta. The new DHS director (Under Obama) is Janet Napolitano, who was Jesuit-trained at Santa Clara University. [42]
Information Awareness Office - Information-mining technology and mass surveillance system
National Reconnaissance Office
List of directors
An investigation by Reuters found a secretive DEA unit known as the Special Operations Division (SOD) has been helping state and local law enforcement with drug busts by providing information collected from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a "massive database of telephone records." [43]
tolink: ODNI, NIC, NNSA, DOJ, ATF, FINCEN, PFIAB, IOSS, NICX, the U.S. Marshals, Customs, the USPS Postal Inspectors, the Secret Service, Treasury, SBU (Ukraine), ASIS, NZSIS, BND, CSIC, CNI, NBH, ABW, SEID, SISD, the FSB, PRC Intelligence, ROC MJIB, the Japanese Naicho, and all of the U.S., SEATO and ASEAN Defense Departments.
"Except for the CIA, intelligence offices or agencies are components of cabinet departments with other roles and missions. The intelligence offices/agencies, however, participate in Intelligence Community activities and serve to support the other efforts of their departments." ... "Intelligence Community. The Intelligence Community (defined at 50 U.S.C. 401a(4)) consists of the following:" (from "Intelligence Issues for Congress")
National Reconnaissance Office (NRO)
Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR)
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA)
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)
Army Intelligence
Office of Naval Intelligence
Air Force Intelligence
Marine Corps Intelligence
Coast Guard (CG)
Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)
National Health Intelligence Network (NHIN)
Bureau of Firearms/xplosives, Tobacco and Alcohol (BFTA)
CSIS (Canada)
GRU (1918, created by Jesuit coadjutor Lenin)
FSB (Russia)
Foreign Intelligence Service (Russia)
"KGB's archives affords me a glimpse at Vatican's Intelligence Service":
"Stanislav Lekarev, a well-placed investigative reporter and a former Soviet official, reveals the results of his heart-to-heart with a friend that still has access to the documents from KGB's 5th Chief Directorate that was also responsible for dealing with religious dissent. Despite the Holy See's curt, Jesuit-like denial of having any involvement in intelligence activities, the archives shed rare light on the Vatican's well-though-thinly-cloaked clandestine activities in USSR. Vatican's Secret Service is a well-compartmentalized into its many cover organizations conveniently subdivided by their religious activities that afford the Holy See the advantages over any other intelligence service. The strategically important service is the responsibility of the Jesuits. The order is under the direct command of the pontiff. The Jesuits manage information-gathering functions for the Vatican. Thus the Russian department is conveniently set up under the cover of the Congregation of the Eastern Churches, Actione Catolica, Russia Christiana, and has its operations center at the St. Georgio Institute in Medona, and at the Modesto Monastery in Seriate, a picturesque suburb of Milan. The department that runs its agents in Russia is the mysterious Russicum [44], which has a legitimate appearance of any other Catholic outreach facility, recruiting into its ranks residents of Eastern Europe. Information gathering takes place under the guise of very conventional missionary activity, a non-governmental charity work, seemingly innocent purchase of a government's archives. The Russian desk is still run by its Vatican's former USSR directorate which bears the name of the St. Teresa Russian Catholic College. The external and hands-on operations are also performed by the Dominican Order. The order uses its international resources to exfiltrate its agents, to discredit undesirable officials, and other cloak and dagger operations. Its low-profile department of Sodalicium Pianium is responsible for internal security, taking care of the Vatican's own heretics, and vetting out Vatican's security apparatus. Thus Vatican has plenty of organizations to also collaborate with other intelligence agencies. Joint projects with CIA, MI6, SDECE and Mossad has been through The Sovereign Military and Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta. Pinochet and the Polish Solidarnosc (Solidarity) are good examples of Vatican's intelligence networking par excellence."
"Vatican intelligence has spied on Russia for many years"
[Russia's Security Service Could Gain Powers Formerly Associated With Soviet KGB]
Russia's parliament is considering a new law that would extend the powers of the country's secret security agency, the FSB. If the bill is passed, it would restore practices once associated with the infamous KGB. Russia's security services have steadily regained power and influence under Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, himself a former KGB officer. Human rights advocates are concerned that the new measures could further curtail the rights of government critics and the independent media.
Chinese Firm Helps Iran Spy On Citizens
Many in the Pakistani government, including slain former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, have called the intelligence agency "a state within a state," working beyond the government's control and pursuing its own foreign policy. [45]
[46] The CIA and the cult of intelligence, Victor Marchetti, ISBN 978-0440203360
Blank Check: The Pentagon's Black Budget, Tim Weiner, ISBN 978-0446392754
redactednews.blogspot.com
"Current US intelligence classifications"
"The U.S. Domestic Intelligence Enterprise"
theguardian.com/world/surveillance
Retrieved from "http://www.thebabylonmatrix.com/index.php?title=911:Secret_services"


Junior Harpsichord Competition at Handel & Hendrix in London ~ a museum in Mayfair. Adjudicated by Dusan Toroman.
Join us at Clementi House in Kensington for a piano competition for beginner pianists. Everyone will receive a certificate and written feedback. There will be medals for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. Trophy for 1st place.


text:
Q: trying to set text where section header has different margin and textwidth from section text i am trying to set some text where the section header has a different margin and textwidth from the section text.
the screenshot shows a mockup of how i would like the final layout to look (including some of the section text layout usecases). section headers are in sans serif.

any advice on how best to implement this without resorting to tables? the easiest and cleanest thing would be to define separate geometry for section headers and section text? is this possible?

A: You can use the titlesec package to change the sectional unit formatting. A little example in which a \parbox was used to control the width of the text area reserved for the title and a negative length was used as the first argument of \titlespacing* to get the hanging title. The explicit option was used just to get explicit access to the titles:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[explicit]{titlesec}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\titleformat{\section}[block]
  {\normalfont\sffamily}
  {\thesection}{.5em}{\parbox[t]{3.7cm}{\centering\MakeUppercase{#1}}\filright}
\titlespacing*{\section}
  {-4pc}{2.5ex plus .1ex minus .2ex}{0.5pc}

\begin{document}

\section*{The Processional Experience}
\lipsum[2]

\end{document}

Of course, feel free to change the settings according to your needs.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


(AP) — Major League Soccer and its players' union have agreed in principle to a five-year labor contract, averting a possible strike ahead of Friday's season opener.
The deal, the culmination of talks that began last weekend, was announced Wednesday night and would replace the contract that expired Jan. 31.
MLS's 20th season begins this weekend, with the defending champion Los Angeles Galaxy hosting the Chicago Fire in the opener.