The Three-Ring Circus that Has Replaced the Three Branches of Government?

No matter what you think of imprisoned writer and activist, Mumia Abu Jamal, he hit the nail on the head when he told Chris Hedges,

“ What’s necessary for the state is the illusion of normality, of regularity … In Rome, what the emperors needed was bread and circuses. In America, what we need is ‘Housewives of Atlanta.’ We need sports. The moral stories of good cops and evil people [or evil cops and Because you have that …. there is no critical thinking in America ...”

However, since Donald Trump took office, the "illusion of normality, of regularity" grows thinner everyday,  yet because the indoctrinated public is so unable or unwilling to revise their current belief in the truth of "officialdom", and in the United States as a beacon of light, they're easily swayed by appeals to authority, to emotion, to fear, etc., and can't see through the greatest show on earth designed to distract them from the reality that their government is not even pretending to be a constitutional republic, not even pretending to be a democracy.

From Trump's absurd presidency to hysterical Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, and everything in between, it's hard to differentiate between reality and satire; reality and parody; reality and entertainment. Watching Trump's entire presidency is like watching back to back episodes of "Saturday Night Live", fill-in-the-blank reality TV,  and/or  "As the World Turns".  Perhaps, that's because what we're told is reality is, in reality, the Greatest Show on Earth, that the only thing we can be sure of is that we're being duped and indoctrinated to replace the Truth/Reality with this alternate and virtual reality  

"Bread and circuses" anchored the domestic politics of ancient Rome: feed and put on a good show to placate the masses...keep them distracted, fat and happy. However today, thanks mostly to the exponential advancement of technology, the bread isn't as important as the three-ring circus that has replaced the three branches of government. In other words, the never ending, all encompassing circus is the mainstay of global politics and President Trump gladly plays the role of puppet ring-master. What we're seeing today is a manufactured reality, a matrix conjured up by parasitical globalist wizards in order to beguile the overtaxed, over-policed, overburdened, undernourished, poisoned, traumatized, dumbed-down, plundered, indoctrinated populace. Yes, it's more important than ever to keep the masses compliant, convinced, and captivated...keep them in their place so as the prison walls turn, they don't turn in on their masters.

Keep in mind that  cultural revolution precedes political revolution.  The three-ring circus that presents as reality today wouldn't work five or six decades ago, prior to the sexualization of American society including children, prior to the destruction of the Catholic Church in the northern hemisphere, prior to the destruction of the family, prior to the "anything goes" moral relativity that has eliminated God from the public square. Directly or indirectly--through entertainment,  pop culture,  public "education", foundations, secret societies, laws, technology, etc.--the culture had to be changed to roll out the circus.

So, yes the reality show that is pretending to be started long before President Trump.  It started inching it's way  out of the closet when President-elect Donald Trump met with “Apprentice” director Mark Burnett to discuss a reality-TV-style inauguration, complete with a grand entrance by helicopter.  According to the New York Times, he didn't get his wish, however, every day since President Trump took office proves otherwise.  Think about it.  President Trump spends most of his time tweeting, golfing, watching TV...when does he have time to preside?  And if he's not presiding, who is? 

Washington DC has become the ultimate reality show of reality shows that have been created to replace...wait for it, reality, and  Brett Kavanaugh's "confirmation hearing" is just the latest episode as they continue to inundate  us with theatrics, spectacle and tabloid static. "Due-process", "presumption of innocence," "evidence" mean nothing thanks to our trial by media society, where faulty generalizations, cherry picking, circular reasoning, red herrings, appeal to authority, appeals to emotion, ad infinitum, proceed unchallenged.

Today's three ring circus is dominated by money and profit, imagery and spin, hype and personality,  guarantees that nothing in the way of real truth reaches the populace.  It is so emotionally charged and entertaining that it make you forget that you live in a police state.

“In 2016, his Republican primary opponents didn’t recognize that we are living in an age of bread and circuses, an age Donald Trump didn’t create but into which he inserted his own circus. Curiosity seekers filled the tent and loved the show.”

The sophisticates in the media thought they could beat Donald Trump at this game by burying him under waves of negative publicity. But he feeds off of it, just as he turned the Philadelphia Eagles’ White House no-show into a display of patriotic music, with the maestro at the center.

Now, fantastically, some Democrats are complaining that they can’t get their message out (the tax cut didn’t work, Medicare for all) because Donald Trump has blotted out the media sun. Gee whiz, whose fault is that?

The eclipse won’t end. The media has turned the Trump presidency into a phenomenon of constant self-absorption—their self-absorption in this one person. Donald Trump has become the biggest balloon in a political Macy’s parade of modern media’s own creation. They could let go of the ropes. But they won’t. ─ Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal

The world is truly a stage now. Everything we see is, at the very least, partially choreographed, scripted, and 99% theatrical. That those who occupy the highest or celebrated positions in government, media, academia, etc., are, more or less, mind-controlled life-time actors who live out the roles they've been chosen to play based on their talents, personalities, background, intelligence, etc. No, they don't memorize lines and they don't rehearse, and they may not even know the circumstances they will face--many do not even know they're actors-- but, ultimately, through indoctrination, trauma-based mind control, blackmail, reward, etc., they will act and react as their character. In other words, they become their character just as the greatest method actors become the aggregate of features and traits that form the individual nature of the person they've been chosen to play. The difference, of course, being, it's a lifetime role. They live it on and even off camera for as long as needed.

Meanwhile, the global dominance that has been progressing for centuries--now that Europe is consolidated under the EU; the North American union is consolidated under NAFTA, and other more powerful "free" trade agreements consolidating the planet; the entire media consolidated under five corporations, and banks and national corporations being run by fewer and fewer multinationals--is almost complete. The final steps that are firmly establishing totalitarian global order--as they divide, confuse and confound the masses with the three-ring circus led by Trump, are being taken.

In other words, as the three-ring circus rolls out act after act, behind the scenes,  the true powers that be are consolidating even more power than they already have; each "crisis" unifying the most powerful, entrenching authority even more deeply, while they concentrate the power in the hands of the same global elite that created and designed the never ending crisis, disasters and absurdities we see everyday.  Make no mistake, there is a very definite method to their madness, a very definite order to the "chaos".

The bottom line is that the unaccountable technocracy continue to tweak the Luciferian establishment system that protects and expands a perverse culture that repudiates the most sacred tenants of civilization as we know it, blurring all distinctions between not only national borders, but between man and woman, human and machine, God and man, etc. The biggest obstacle to this new order has been and is always God so the consolidation effort must be extended to the sphere of religion because global power understands the religious nature of human beings, hence our survival of the fittest "enlightenment" with the creation of  Darwinism, scientism, humanism, transhumanism, and other isms and 'ologies, reinforced by "pop culture", "celebrity culture," etc.,that pushes our Creator to the sidelines.  This--the attempt to replace/ transform/erase the Wisdom that's written and inscribed in our hearts by our Creator --is the hidden issue that is not only ignored but, with great effort, actively suppressed by the establishment because they know their totalitarian agenda is impossible when the foundation of our hope rests upon God's Wisdom; when the multitude is animated by a spirit of understanding and unselfishness by the principles and spirit of the Gospel.

And unto man he said to man: Behold the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom: and to depart from evil, is understanding."  

Nevertheless, as long as we're breathing, it's never too late to take back our souls from this worldly agenda. The choice is ultimately ours: Do we become obedient servants of a Godless institutional despotism or the obedient servants of a Loving and Sovereign God who created the world and everything in it?

 For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul? Mark 8:36

 

Links:
Trump Is the Symptom, Not the Disease

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Digitally Distracted? Re-Synchronize Your Brain Hemispheres!

Do you find yourself doing stupid things? Forgetting things? Do you experience "phantom" phone vibrations, imagining your phone is calling you when it hasn't actually buzzed? Are you a "constant-checker": do you check your emails and social media accounts frequently, if not constantly?  Do you go into panic mode when you can't find your smartphone?  Do you find it difficult to look up from your phone screen, computer screen, iPad, etc.? Is your attention span/concentration level diminished? Do you feel generally fearful without knowing why?  In other words, are you digitally distracted, digitally dumbed-down and/or digitally distressed?  Are you digitally addicted?

If you can relate to any of the aforementioned questions, you are not alone.   An ever-increasing amount of research suggests that constant access to information is changing our brains in more ways than one, and not for the best. As our devices get smarter, our brains get lazier, or to be blunt, dumber, which I realize is over-simplifying, but some things are best if researched for oneself.  Once again, risking oversimplification, part of the problem is alignment; not only realigning technology with humanity’s best interests, but realigning or even more accurately,  resynchronizing our brain hemispheres.

“Adrian Ward, a researcher at the University of Austin, has found that in many ways the internet is a lot like junk food. Just as snacks play on a deep biological need for sugar and fat, which tricks us into overeating these unhealthy foods, the internet messes with our cognitive functions to increase our dependence on it. Just being around a smartphone drives many to distraction, while heavy Googling has us increasingly outsourcing the task of remembering things to the cloud. That in turn means that we have to Google more and more things that we used to just have to commit to memory. Similarly, we may be taking more photos of things than ever, but we remember them less.

So, if you are a smart/cell/mobile phone user or even if you are not, because you are absorbing radiation from other people's wireless devices and the WIFI environments from which there is no escape, the following video will help because electrosmog is not only smogging up our brains it's switching our brains causing all of the symptoms previously mentioned. Even more importantly, a prolonged state of fear will also result in the switching of the brain which is the basis for mind control. This is one of the reasons why this technology is being forced upon us whether we like it or not. Don't get me wrong, most people love it! But for those of us who don't--a growing number-- because we see what it's doing, there is very little choice in the matter.

In other words, the technology we’re tethered to, not to mention, the WIFI environments we're immersed in, switch the brain.  Believe it or not, there is a little something you can do about it aside from crawling under a rock and wrapping yourself in tin-foil.  It's called  de-switiching, as it re-synchronizes the brain hemispheres.  Try it! You've got nothing to lose and perhaps, something to gain.



Links:

Here's What Your Smartphone Is Really Doing to Your Brain

Stress in America™ 2017: Technology and Social Media

Your Brain on Apps

This is what your smartphone is doing to your brain — and it isn't good

Your smartphone is hijacking your brain. Here's how to stop it.

This beautifully designed 'dumb phone' can only make calls and send texts — and it might be the key to curing our addiction to apps

Humane Tech

“Technology is hijacking our minds and society.

Our world-class team of deeply concerned former tech insiders and CEOs intimately understands the culture, business incentives, design techniques, and organizational structures driving how technology hijacks our minds.

Since 2013, we’ve raised awareness of the problem within tech companies and for millions of people through broad media attention, convened top industry executives, and advised political leaders. Building on this start, we are advancing thoughtful solutions to change the system."

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IRS Rules Bitcoin Property Not Currency.

The IRS ruled that virtual currency, such as Bitcoin (BTC),  is not considered currency, but property for U.S. federal tax purposes. In other words, it does not have legal tender status in any jurisdiction. 

“The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is aware that “virtual currency” may be used to pay for goods or services, or held for investment. Virtual currency is a digital representation of value that functions as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and/or a store of value. In some environments,it operates like “real” currency-- i.e., the coin and paper money of the United States or of any other country that is designated as legal tender, circulates, and is customarily used and accepted as a medium of exchange in the country of issuance -- but it does not have legal tender status in any jurisdiction.

Virtual currency that has an equivalent value in real currency, or that acts as a substitute for real currency, is referred to as “convertible” virtual currency. Bitcoin is one example of a convertible virtual currency. Bitcoin can be digitally traded between users and can be purchased for, or exchanged into, U.S. dollars, Euros, and other real or virtual currencies. For a more comprehensive description of convertible virtual currencies to date, see Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) Guidance on the Application of FinCEN’s Regulations to Persons Administering, Exchanging, or Using Virtual Currencies (FIN-2013-G001, March 18, 2013)

General tax principles that apply to property transactions apply to transactions using virtual currency. Among other things, this means that:

• Wages paid to employees using virtual currency are taxable to the employee, must be reported by an employer on a Form W-2, and are subject to federal income tax withholding and payroll taxes.
• Payments using virtual currency made to independent contractors and other service providers are taxable and self-employment tax rules generally apply. Normally, payers must issue Form 1099.
• The character of gain or loss from the sale or exchange of virtual currency depends on whether the virtual currency is a capital asset in the hands of the taxpayer.
• A payment made using virtual currency is subject to information reporting to the same extent as any other payment made in property.

Really? Does the IRS really expect everyone who buys a cup of coffee with digital "currency," like BTC, to track capital gains? What a bureaucratic nightmare! However, I'm sure the IRS has no problem creating more administrative bureaus to deal with tracking virtual "currency" transactions. Not to mention, the burden on virtual "currency" users. But as Oscar Wilde said, "The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy."

Links:

What the IRS Bitcoin Tax Guidelines Mean For You

Are the IRS Capital Asset Rules Realistic for Small Transactions?

Fiat Link - watch the world's currencies flow into BTC in real time.

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The Ministry of Truth: Weeding-Out Pre-Criminals for the Secret State.

42-years ago, in 1968, the essential apparatus for a police state was in place...a reporting structure in line with the technology of the day: old-fashioned shoe leather and manila folders.  This organization of activities, functions, processes, etc., was created in order to cover millions of Americans, conducting law-abiding lives. In other words, agents who normally did security checks, also monitored dissent.  7-years later, in 1975, Senator Frank Church headed a congressional commission to investigate widespread abuses by US intelligence and law enforcement agencies, laying the groundwork for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.  Imagine that kind of time-frame in today's world!

Senator Church warned about government’s power to turn surveillance technologies on its own citizens, a warning, even more crucial as we transform into the digital age. On the one hand, ultimate first amendment-enabling technology has leveled the playing field like never before. On the other hand, the foundation for an Orwellian type of investigative government exists like never before.

“ . . . the Internet of Things refers to the seamless connection of devices, sensors, objects, rooms, machines, vehicles, etc, through fixed and wireless networks. Connected sensors, devices and tags can interact with the environment and send the information to other objects through machine-to-machine communication . . . The Semantic Web promotes this synergy: even agents that where not expressly designed to work together can transfer data among themselves when the data come with semantics.” -- Internet Governance and critical Internet resources

Anyway, remember the concept of "pre-crime" -  part of the predictive behavior model that describes stopping crimes before they happen - in the movie Minority Report, set in the year 2054? Well, the electronic police state, if not already here, arrived... a few years early.

The stage was set in the 1990s, when the data industry mushroomed. Vast computer systems quietly gathered staggering amounts of personal information we the people willingly feed to cell-phone networks, really surveillance networks, that continuously track us through sensors on ATM machines, credit card readers, the Internet, electronic fingerprint readers, convenient tollbooths that sense transponders on cars, etc.

Then, on 9/11/2001, the largest terrorist attack, on U.S. mainland in history, occurred.  This gave the powers the perfect excuse to merge the government and private data mining companies.  Choicepoint won a $67 million contract with the Justice Department, and other data companies serve/served as a private intelligent operation for the government. As you can see, data is a valuable commodity.

Fast forward 45 days to October 26, 2001, and with very little public debate, lawmakers passed the Patriot Act, dismantling limits Congress created in the 1970s in response to widespread abuse on the monitoring of citizens. National security officials began using the data mining system, Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange (MATRIX)— a powerful tool for tracking terrorists.

Data mining tools like MATRIX create new information by giving investigators the power to discern patterns and apply profiles, thus creating the ability to cut across sales and police records, coming up with links in an instant instead of days, weeks, months and sometimes, years.

So, what's the big deal?

Well, if the FBI suspects one person they are going to try to round up as much information on every single person the suspected person has come into contact with. In other words, "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" transforms from harmless fun to potentially deadly serious.

Why deadly serious?

Everyone is familiar with Google Earth, right? And drones? And the CIA?  Google who knows more about all of us than God is linked to the U.S. spy and military systems through the technology behind Google Earth software.   You see, the software was originally developed by Keyhole Inc., a company funded by  In-Q-Tel,  the CIA's semi-private investment company.  This same technology is currently used by U.S. military and intelligence systems for “full-spectrum dominance” of the planet and geospatial intelligence used in drone attacks that kill people.

The CIA and Google are both backing the company, Recorded Future, that monitors the web in real time.  They say  it uses that information to predict the future. The CIA’s semi-private investment company, In-Q-Tel, and Google Ventures, the search giant’s business division had partnered-up with Recorded Future, which scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the "invisible links" between people, institutions, actions and incidents, here and now, and the "predicted future".  In-Q-Tel also invested in Visible Technologies, a software firm specializing in monitoring social media.

The ‘Visible’ technology can automatically examine more than a million discussions and posts on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, Amazon, and so forth each day. The technology also ‘scores’ each online item, assigning it a positive, negative or mixed or neutral status, based on parameters and terms set by the technology operators. The information, thus boiled down, can then be more effectively scanned and read by human operators.

Privacy International rated eight countries as 'endemic surveillance societies' and the U.S. is one.

No, this is not the surveillance society George Orwell wrote about. We feed our personal information to Big Brother, voluntarily. Why?  For a variety of conveniences, discounts, and because we don't want to be left out, but we don’t want to know how the electricity gets to the light switch; we just want to flick it on.

The bottom line is that we are fast approaching a genuine surveillance society in the U.S. Already, our every move, transaction, communication is recorded, compiled, and stored away, ready to be accessed and used against us by the authorities on demand. No court order needed.

Links: 

10 Ways We are Being Tracked and Traced

Authorities Plan To Trawl Phone Calls And E Mails For Signs Of “Resentment Toward Government”

Data Mining and Homeland Security

E-Mail Surveillance Renews Concerns in Congress

Feds Use Pre-Crime To Target Disgruntled Veterans

Google and NSA The world's largest Internet search company and the world's most powerful electronic surveillance organization are teaming up in the name of cybersecurity.

Mind Machine Project at MIT

Pinwale still going strong under Obama.

Protecting Individual Privacy in the Struggle Against Terrorists: A Framework for Assessment - debunked the utility of data-ming and link analysis as effective counterterrorism tools.

Recorded Future A White Paper on Temporal Analytics

Social Intelligence - data-mines the social networks to help companies decide if they really want to hire you.”

State Electronic Harrassment or "Cyberstalking" Laws

Top Secret America  investigation disclosed that the government has built a huge, complex and hard to manage national security and intelligence system.  Google supplies mapping and search products to the U.S. secret state and that their employees, outsourced intelligence contractors for the Defense Department, may have filched their customers’ wi-fi data as part of an NSA surveillance project

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Hollywood Studios Slash Wholesale Prices on DVDs.

Update: Shoppers, just in time for Christmas, big big savings on DVDs are coming your way. You can thank RedBox for commoditizing the movie business. In case you live under a rock, RedBox is a company that has about 22,000 red box movie dispensers all over America in supermarkets, retail stores, pharmacies, etc., where you can rent a movie for $1.

So, why does this translate into big savings on DVDs? Well, the studios are desperate to make up for this shortfall in the sales of DVDs so they are cutting whole-sale prices. That includes Blu-ray discs and players. Wal-Mart and Target are offering Blu-ray DVDs for as low as $8.99 and Blu-ray players as low as $79.99.

Gone are the huge profits of years past, and the revenue streams Hollywood has traditionally experienced, as the DVD sales continue to decline by double digits annually, flat box office returns for the last decade, and an international market that's drying up. In addition, steep competition continues to grow with 500 cable channels, countless videogames, free online video content galore. And then there is the exploding array of options to deliver movie content and the inevitable marriage of your TV to your computer screen/Internet, if not already hitched. Yes, it's clear that Hollywood isn't the only kid on the block anymore.

Disney CEO Bob Iger said, this past weekend, at a conference on the USC campus: "[The] business model that formed the motion picture business...is changing profoundly before our eyes."

In other words, if Hollywood doesn't find a new business model that reflects the current push toward digital distribution technologies available today, as well as keeping an eye to what's right around the corner, and embrace, rather than try to displace the generation of consumers who are used to getting their content for free, Hollywood may become a squally hood.

Mark Gill, Founder and CEO, The Film Department, an independent film financing company, and formerly president of Miramax LA, which has recently gone from 500 workers down to 20, says independent film studios have been hit hard and by the end of next year, the number of movies released in theaters will be cut in half.

In addition, Hollywood will have to cut overhead costs, marketing costs, picture production costs, and the biggest one of all, talent costs.

"Meaning, if you're a big movie star, if you're a top filmmaker, you used to get a big, nice back-end of the movie -- you got part of the profits. By in large, the studios are cutting back on all of that. They're saying, 'you share in the risks with us; you don't get first-dollar gross, you don't get a share of the profits right away; you have to wait till we break even with all our expenses; and then, if the movie is still successful you can share in the profits." -- Patrick Goldstein, columnist and blogger for the "Los Angeles Times"

The quality of studio movies will surely suffer, as the emphasis will shift away from creative content to marketing because marketers, who know more about creating brands that can live across multiple platforms, than what goes into making a good movie will increasingly take over the movie studios.

However, chasing the almighty dollar, by focusing on marketing rather than producing a good movie will backfire on them, as the Internet enables all of us to tap into trusted communities who are more than willing to share what they think is good and not so good. In addition, there is more, and a greater diversity of content being produced than ever before. This wealth of creative talent is able to both produce and distribute content without going through a centralized system, therefore, not bound restrictive marketing forces and to traditional marketing campaigns that try to sell consumers on what is good.

"Not every idea has to start at the widest reach platform. It used to be that when writers would develop an idea, the initial target was TV or film. What’s starting to evolve is that writers are approaching smaller platforms where there is not as much available audience - like publishing or digital - but where they’re allowed to express their creation in a more undiluted manner…one that reaches the market quicker where they can show what they want to do, and then try to leverage some degree of early traction and success in smaller platforms to bring to larger platforms like TV or film."

Hollywood used to be driven by technological change whether it was the invention of sound, color, television, or even new audio formats. But then things changed... around the time of home video, that Hollywood started to lose their mojo. They tried to maintain and protect old business models that were starting to deteriorate, and they chose to take a heavy-handed approach, imposing their ideas of what's "good" - more like what would make them the most money - on the consumer, and started making movies that were marketable vs movies that were enjoyable or good. The exponential growth in technology that has occurred and will continue is forcing Hollywood to adjust or go bust.

Links:

Hollywood's Sales Floor How independent film is faring in a tough economy. The annual American Film Market is the less glamorous side of the movie industry.

TVersity is a free program you can download from tversity.com. It works by installing a media server on your PC that allows you to manage your internet and home media on a multitude of devices, beaming the media to your device. Not only that it goes through all the necessary format conversions automatically enabling transmission of your media to every known set-top device supported by *DLNA. It's also supported by Universal Plug and Play (UPP), so you don't have to figure out all the various networks, ports, etc.

*Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) - is a global collaboration of 245 of your most trusted brands, all working together to help you create the home entertainment environment you’ve always imagined.

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Backup In the Event of Blackouts and Black Holes.

We've heard it all before...from Nostradamus to Y2k, predictions of doom loom large as we transition into the new millennium. The latest prophecy of doom is said to occur in the year 2012. It's easy to cast this aside as nonsense, however, although it is not the Apocalypse, this warning may go beyond fear mongering.

Scientists have found two large holes in the Earth's magnetosphere, the area around our planet that shields us from severe solar storms which scatter charged particles from the sun, that can disable satellites and disrupt power grids on Earth.

"Although it is invisible, the magnetosphere has an impact on our everyday lives. For example, solar storms agitate the magnetosphere in ways that can induce power surges in the electrical grid that trigger black outs, interfere with radio transmissions and mess up GPS signals. Charged particles in the magnetosphere can also damage the electronics in satellites and affect the temperature and motion of the upper atmosphere." - Charles Chappell, research professor of physics, director of the Dyer Observatory at Vanderbilt University who found this region.

So, if the worst happens, and the geomagnetic storms of 2012 disrupt communications and shut down power grids, considering the exponential growth of paper-reducing technologies, we could face major inconveniences, and perhaps worse.

Moreover, "historians may face a ‘black hole’ of lost information, even without the predicted events of 2012, according to some. In an increasingly paperless world, part of history may vanish if website content is not archived properly. Transforming print into digital data without hard copies may not be such a good idea if a few shots from the sun can wipe it out in seconds.

Granted, if the world caught on fire, our precious paper would be transformed into ash, but then again, so would we.

Some interesting info:

From Jupiter's Dance: "So what then is happening between the Sun and Jupiter to create the sunspots; a combined tidal effect, a focussing of magnetic fields on the Sun with the inner planet acting as a lens at the time of each synchronised pass of Jupiter and Earth, a shadow effect allowing the Sun's energies to rise to the surface. Let's look at the sky of December 21st 2012, mmmm. Jupiter, Earth, Sun in a line, Saturn, Venus, Sun in a line and Neptune, Mars, Sun in a line, auspicious wouldn't you say. It couldn't be they're all beaming their energy at our Sun simultaneously as a prelude to a mega rash of sunspots which in turn lead to...uulp!"

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Wiretapping in the Digital Age

Communications coming from outside the US do not come in by radio or wire any more, they come in from optical fiber.

First, the optical fiber is split into two copies; not quite at the same strength but still pretty good quality. One copy goes to the phone switch and the other copy runs through filters that select data based on pre-decided terms based on what the government is looking for.

One difference between the old way of wiretapping and the new way is that cooperation of the phone and/or cable companies is needed because their equipment or cables must be altered to get results.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is currently litigating in San Francisco that AT&T has allegedly set aside a secure room for the National Security Agency (NSA) to wiretap where the signal is split and then the run their half of the cable through filters. The communications of interest is then shipped back to the NSA.

The Bush Administration is trying to get the case dismissed, declaring this action falls under the category of state secrets, or in other words is none of our business. In another similar case the government refuses to identify the carrier.

The corporations, such as AT&T, are caught in the middle, because complying with the government's request flies in the face of protecting the privacy of communication they promise to their customers.

"The courts cannot permit the government to evade responsibility for unconstitutional activities with thin claims of 'state secrets.' Without judicial review, there is no way to stop abuses of power," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "The courts are well equipped to protect state secrets while determining whether the spying is illegal and if so, to put a stop to it."

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Digitized US Foreign Policy Decisions.

The University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center, is the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions that have been declassified and edited for publication. They provide quality digital resources from its academic libraries to UW faculty, staff and students, citizens of the state, and scholars at large. The series is produced by the State Department’s Office of the Historian and printed volumes are available from the Government Printing Office.

Related:
Office of the Historian
The Government Printing Office

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Will the Demise of the VHS Tape Curtail Creation of Culture?

BILL HAMMACK: Back in the 1980s, the Supreme Court ruled VCR makers couldn't be held liable for copyright infringement.

That gave consumers the right to make personal copies of TV shows and movies using a VCR.

The new digital media that are erasing the VHS format are also erasing our rights.

A few years ago, a Judge issued a catch-22 ruling: Yes, she said, we can copy commercial DVDs too. But no one can sell the software to do that.

In effect, that lets a content producer, the copyright owner, code their own intellectual property law into the DVD.

What's wrong with what? I mean surely only criminals would like to copy, right?

Well, wait a minute.

The U.S. has a long history of fair use: You have the right to cut out and frame a New Yorker cartoon. Or photocopy a newspaper article.

Fair use also catalyzes innovation and allows us to talk about ourselves, to create culture.

Take an artist of the future. He or she might want to make a statement using a bit of video or sound in a creative work.

But as all media — even books — become digital, every embodiment of thought or imagination becomes subject to commercial control.

DVDs use a technology called Digital Rights Management that allow producers to control when and where you watch.

They can specify whether you view a movie once or 100 times, and they can even restrict the devices you can play it on.

The slow demise of VHS tape risks the literary and intellectual canon of the coming century becoming locked into a digital vault accessible only to a few.

As our country moves forward to regulate digital copying, I urge us all to bear in mind T.S. Eliot's famous saying. "Good poets borrow; great poets steal."

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Computers the Size of Sugar Cubes Could Record Entire Life in Two Decades

A device the size of a sugar cube will be able to record and store high resolution video footage of every second of a human life within two decades, experts said yesterday.

Researchers said governments and societies must urgently debate the implications of the huge increases in computing power and the growing mass of information being collected on individuals.
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Some fear that the advent of "human black boxes" combined with the extension of medical, financial and other digital records will lead to loss of privacy and a dramatic expansion of the nanny state.

Others highlight positive advances in medicine, education, crime prevention and the way history will be recorded.

Leading computer scientists, psychologists and neuroscientists gathered to debate these issues at Memories for Life, a conference held at the British Library yesterday.

Prof Nigel Shadbolt, president of the British Computer Society and professor of artificial intelligence at the University of Southampton, said: "In 20 years' time it will be possible to record high quality digital video of an entire lifetime of human memories. It's not a question of whether it will happen; it's already happening."

Cliff Lynch, director of the US think tank Coalition for Networked Information, said the changes could lead to a dramatic extension of state interference.

"Imagine having a personal companion that whines at you three times a day, telling you that you are eating the wrong things and that you spent more than you earned today. The scary thing is it might be foisted on us."

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