Category Archives: Of Interest

10 Corporations that Own Just About Everything

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10 Corporations Control Almost Everything You Buy — This Chart Shows How

Chris Miles's avatar image By Chris Miles  
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Ten mega corporations control the output of almost everything you buy; from household products to pet food to jeans.

According to this chart via Reddit, called “The Illusion of Choice,” these corporations create a chain that begins at one of 10 super companies. You’ve heard of the biggest names, but it’s amazing to see what these giants own or influence.

(Note: The chart shows a mix of networks. Parent companies may own, own shares of, or may simply partner with their branch networks. For example, Coca-Cola does not own Monster, but distributes the energy drink. Another note: We are not sure how up-to-date the chart is. For example, it has not been updated to reflect P&G’s sale of Pringles to Kellogg’s in February.)

Here are just a few examples: Yum Brands owns KFC and Taco Bell. The company was a spin-off of Pepsi. All Yum Brands restaurants sell only Pepsi products because of a special partnership with the soda-maker.

$84 billion-company Proctor & Gamble — the largest advertiser in the U.S. — is paired with a number of diverse brands that produce everything from medicine to toothpaste to high-end fashion. All tallied, P&G reportedly serves a whopping 4.8 billion people around the world through this network.

$200 billion-corporation Nestle — famous for chocolate, but which is the biggest food company in the world — owns nearly 8,000 different brands worldwide, and takes stake in or is partnered with a swath of others. Included in this network is shampoo company L’Oreal, baby food giant Gerber, clothing brand Diesel, and pet food makers Purina and Friskies.

Unilever, of soap fame, reportedly serves 2 billion people around the world, controlling a network that produces everything from Q-tips to Skippy peanut butter.

And it’s not just the products you buy and consume, either. In recent decades, the very news and information that you get has bundled together: 90% of the media is now controlled by just six companies, down from 50 in 1983, according to a Frugal Dad infographic from last year.

 

It gets even more macro, too: 37 banks have merged to become just four — JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and CitiGroup in a little over two decades, according to this Federal Reserve map.

The nation’s 10 largest financial institutions hold 54% of our total financial assets; in 1990, they held 20%. As MotherJones reports, the number of banks has dropped from more than 12,500 to about 8,000.

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The numbers are stark, and the charts visualize the mind-bending reality. This is the world we live in.

from:    http://www.policymic.com/articles/71255/10-corporations-control-almost-everything-you-buy-this-chart-shows-how

Building the Coral Castle

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Mystery of the Coral Castle Explained

By Benjamin Radford, LiveScience Contributor   |   November 08, 2013
coral castle, engineering
 Author Benjamin Radford is shown visiting Florida’s mysterious Coral Castle in 2012.
Credit: Benjamin Radford.

In Homestead, Fla., not far from Miami and off the South Dixie Highway, sits a world-famous structure called the Coral Castle. Though not really a castle — and not really made of coral — it is nonetheless an amazing achievement. More than 1,000 tons of the sedimentary rock (oolite limestone) was quarried and sculpted into a variety of shapes, including slab walls, tables, chairs, a crescent moon, a water fountain and a sundial.

“You are about to see an engineering marvel that has been compared with Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids of Egypt,” touts an information sheet available at the site. Many sources claim that the castle, originally called Rock Gate Park, is scientifically inexplicable. According to the attraction’s website, “Coral Castle has baffled scientists, engineers and scholars since its opening in 1923.” It has appeared countless times in books, magazines, and television shows. Rock musician Billy Idol even wrote a hit song about the place, “Sweet Sixteen.”

For decades, the park featured a perfectly balanced stone gate that, despite its weight, would easily swing open with a strong breeze or the push of a finger. How it worked remained a mystery until 1986 when it stopped moving. When the gate was removed it was revealed that it rotated on a metal shaft and rested on a truck bearing.

As strange and amazing as the site is, its history is equally improbable. It was created by just one man working alone for nearly three decades until his death in 1951. He was a small Latvian immigrant named Edward Leedskalnin who stood, it is said, 5 feet tall (1.5 meters) and weighed 100 pounds (45 kilograms). Legend has it that he was inspired to build the structure after being abandoned by his 16-year-old sweetheart on what was to be their wedding day. Spurned by his lost love, he set out to prove to her — and the world — that he could do something remarkable, and make something of himself despite his poverty and fourth-grade education. And he succeeded spectacularly.

Philosopher of stone

Though Leedskalnin was a private person, he opened the park in 1923 as a tourist attraction and would often greet visitors to personally show them his handiwork. Leedskalnin was not only a hard worker but also a self-styled philosopher (and a bit of a crank) who issued a series of pamphlets about his personal views on political, social, and domestic issues. One moralizing booklet optimistically titled “A Book in Every Home” complained, “The schools and the churches are cheapening the girls! They are arranging picnics — are coupling up the girls with the fresh boys — and then they send them out to the woods, parks, beaches, and other places so that they can practice in first-degree love making.”

Leedskalnin also opined that the unemployed and powerless should not have voting rights: “It is not sound to allow the weaklings to vote. Any one who is too weak to make his own living is not strong enough to vote, because their weak influence weakens the state….” He was clearly a man of strong will and convictions who prized self-sufficiency and a rigid work ethic.

coral castle, engineering
 Edward Leedskalnin used these hand tools to single-handedly build the Coral Castle.
Credit: Carl Stewart / Shutterstock.com

Creating the castle

Many stories and wild theories emerged over the decades about Leedskalnin and how he built his castle. Some say he levitated the blocks with psychic powers, or by singing to the stones. Others suggest Leedskalnin had arcane knowledge of magnetism and so-called “earth energies.”

As tempting as it is to view the amazing park through a veil of mystery, in fact we know how the castle was built. Creating a structure like the Coral Castle today could probably be accomplished in a few months with a construction crew and modern machinery. But Leedskalnin worked alone using basic tools like picks, winches, ropes and pulleys. Leedskalnin himself said that that he did it using hard work and the principles of leverage. The tools he used to quarry the rock are on display at the Coral Castle, and several old photos depict the large tripods, pulleys, and winches he used to move the blocks. Though the quarried stone slabs are large, they are actually lighter than they appear because the rock is porous.

Though Leedskalnin worked alone, he was not a reclusive hermit; he had friends who he saw often. One man, Orval Irwin, was not only a long-time friend of Leedskalnin’s but also a building contractor with a deep knowledge of construction techniques. Irwin wrote a 1996 book with the inspiring title “Mr. Can’t Is Dead! The Story of the Coral Castle,” and in it he explains, through photographs, drawings, and schematics, how it was done.

Irwin pours cold water on the paranormal theories that unknown energies, alien technology, or levitation built the castle. In fact, he finds such theories an insult to the hard work and integrity of his friend: “Back in the days when Ed started carving out his original stones,” Irwin writes, “his was a generation who knew accomplishments by the sweat of the brow. It wasn’t mysticism but hard work, this is how Ed really accomplished the massive project….” (Of course if Leedskalnin had used powerful supernatural assistance he likely could have constructed the castle in weeks or months instead of decades.)

It may be fun to think that the old, lovelorn Latvian who spent his life making the Coral Castle did it with arcane knowledge, lost technology, or superhuman powers, but it’s reassuring to know that he did it just like you or I would have: through patience, determination, and hard work.

Benjamin Radford is deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer science magazine and author of six books including “Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries” and “Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore.” His website is www.BenjaminRadford.com.

from:    http://www.livescience.com/41075-coral-castle.html

 

Typhoon Haiyan

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After spending 48 hours at Category 5 strength, the strongest landfalling tropical cyclone in world history, Super Typhoon Haiyan, has finally weakened to a Category 4 storm. With top sustained winds of 155 mph, Haiyan is still an incredibly powerful super typhoon, but has now finished its rampage through the Central Philippine Islands, and is headed across the South China Sea towards Vietnam. Satellite loops show that Haiyan no longer has a well-defined eye, but the typhoon still has a huge area of intense thunderstorms which are bringing heavy rains to the Central Philippines. I’ve never witnessed a Category 5 storm that made landfall and stayed at Category 5 strength after spending so many hours over land, and there are very few storms that have stayed at Category 5 strength for so long.


Figure 1. Super Typhoon Haiyan approaching the Philippines, as seen by the Japan Meteorological Agency’s MTSAT at 0630Z on November 7, 2013. At the time, Haiyan had maximum sustained winds of 175 mph. Image credit: NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory.

Haiyan’s place in history
Haiyan hit Guiuan, on the Philippine island of Samar, at 4:40 am local time (20:40 UTC) November 8, 2013. Three hours before landfall, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) assessed Haiyan’s sustained winds at 195 mph, gusting to 235 mph, making it the 4th strongest tropical cyclone in world history. Satellite loops show that Haiyan weakened only slightly, if at all, in the two hours after JTWC’s advisory, so the super typhoon likely made landfall with winds near 195 mph. The next JTWC intensity estimate, for 00Z UTC November 8, about three hours after landfall, put the top winds at 185 mph. Averaging together these estimates gives a strength of 190 mph an hour after landfall. Thus, Haiyan had winds of 190 – 195 mph at landfall, making it the strongest tropical cyclone on record to make landfall in world history. The previous record was held by the Atlantic’s Hurricane Camille of 1969, which made landfall in Mississippi with 190 mph winds.

According to the official “best track” records from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, here are the strongest tropical cyclones in world history:

Super Typhoon Nancy (1961), 215 mph winds, 882 mb. Made landfall as a Cat 2 in Japan, killing 191 people.
Super Typhoon Violet (1961), 205 mph winds, 886 mb pressure. Made landfall in Japan as a tropical storm, killing 2 people.
Super Typhoon Ida (1958), 200 mph winds, 877 mb pressure. Made landfall as a Cat 1 in Japan, killing 1269 people.
Super Typhoon Haiyan (2013), 195 mph winds, 895 mb pressure. Made landfall in the Philippines at peak strength.
Super Typhoon Kit (1966), 195 mph winds, 880 mb. Did not make landfall.
Super Typhoon Sally (1964), 195 mph winds, 895 mb. Made landfall as a Cat 4 in the Philippines.

However, it is now recognized (Black 1992) that the maximum sustained winds estimated for typhoons during the 1940s to 1960s were too strong. The strongest reliably measured tropical cyclones were all 5 mph weaker than Haiyan, with 190 mph winds—the Western Pacific’s Super Typhoon Tip of 1979, the Atlantic’s Hurricane Camille of 1969, and the Atlantic’s Hurricane Allen of 1980. All three of these storms had a hurricane hunter aircraft inside of them to measure their top winds. Haiyan’s winds were estimated using only satellite images, making its intensity estimate of lower confidence. We don’t have any measurements of Haiyan’s central pressure, but it may be close to the all-time record of 870 mb set by Super Typhoon Tip. The Japan Meteorological Agency estimated Haiyan’s central pressure at 895 mb at 18 UTC (1 pm EST) November 7, 2013. This would make Haiyan the 12th strongest tropical cyclone on record globally, as far as lowest pressure goes.


Figure 2. Damage from Super Typhoon Haiyan in Legazpi city, Albay province, Nov. 8, 2013, about 325 miles south of Manila, Philippines. (Twitter/Ritchel M. Deleon)

Massive damage in the Philippines
Wind damage on the south shore of Samar Island in Guiuan (population 47,000) must have been catastrophic, perhaps the greatest wind damage any place on Earth has endured from a tropical cyclone in the past century. A massive storm surge must have also caused great destruction along a 20-mile swath to the north of where the eye hit, where Project NOAH was predicting a 17’ (5.3 meter) storm tide. Wind and storm surge damage were heavy in Tacloban, population 221,000, the capital of the province of Leyte, according to preliminary media reports. Much of Tacloban is at elevations less than ten feet, and several videos posted on YouTube showed a storm surge of at least ten feet moving through the city. The northern (strong) part of Haiyan’s eyewall made a direct hit on the city. Storm Chaser Jim Edds was in Tacloban, and reported that at least ten crewed boats were in the harbor, attempting to ride out the storm. Haiyan’s winds, rains, and storm surge have caused widespread devastation throughout the Central Philippines, though we do not yet have reports from the worst-hit portions of the disaster zone, including the south shore of Samar Island. Fortunately, the storm’s fast forward speed of 25 mph cut down the amount of rain the storm dumped, compared to typical typhoons that affect the Philippines. Hopefully, this will keep the death toll due to flash flooding relatively low. Flash floods are usually the biggest killer in Philippine typhoons.


Figure 3. Predicted rainfall from the 06Z November 8, 2013 run of the HWRF model, for the 96-hour period ending at 06Z November 12, 2013. A 100-mile wide swath of 8 – 16 inches of rain (medium dark red colors) as well as a 30-mile wide swath of 16 – 24″ (dark red colors) is predicted to affect Vietnam and Laos. Rains of this magnitude are likely to cause a top-five most expensive natural disaster in both nations. Image credit: NOAA/NCEP/EMC.

Haiyan an extremely dangerous storm for Vietnam and Laos
Haiyan will steadily decay over the next two days, due to colder waters and higher wind shear. However, it will still likely be a formidable Category 1 or 2 typhoon when it makes landfall in Vietnam near 06 UTC Sunday. Haiyan is expected to begin recurving to the northwest as it makes landfall, which means that a long 100+ mile stretch of the Vietnam coast will receiving the punishing winds and peak storm surge of the strong northern portion of the typhoon. With part of its circulation still over water, Haiyan will be able to pull in a huge amount of moisture that will create prodigious rains over Vietnam and Laos. I expect that the 12+ inches of rain that the storm will dump on those nations will make it a top-five most expensive natural disaster in their history.

Links
Visible satellite landfall loop from the Korean COMS-1 satellite, courtesy of Scott Bachmeier of the University of Wisconsin CIMSS group.
Damage videos from Tacloban from Marcjan Maloon
Twitter updates from Japan meteorologist Robert Speta.

Video 1. Damaging winds and a potent storm surge from Super Typhoon Haiyan are captured in this video from the capital of Leyte Province, Tacloban, which received a direct hit from Haiyan. Thanks to wunderground member GatorWX for posting this in my blog comments.

from:    http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/show.html

Volcanoes – Etna & Sinaburg

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Eruption Update for November 5, 2013: Etna and Sinabung

Etna in Italy erupting from two vents simultaneously on October 26, 2013. Image: Dr. Boris Behncke / Flickr.

Sometimes it takes as many days as the meeting to catch back up afterwards — which is clearly the case for me after GSA this year. Finally getting almost on track as we hurtle into November.

Volcano news!

Italy

So, like clockwork, right as I leave for Denver and the GSA meeting, a volcano decides to put on a show. This time it was Etna. After six months of relative quiet, the Sicilian volcano put on quite an impressive show (see above), with eruptions from two craters simultaneously: the New Southeast Crater and the Northeast Crater (see above). Both of these eruptions were explosive, producing plumes that reached a few kilometers over the volcano and spread ash across the area of eastern Sicily. At the same time, a lava flow issued from the saddle between the two crater, meaning that Etna has erupting from at least three different vents simultaneously during the October 26 eruption. Dr. Boris Behncke of the Osservatorio Etneo posted an excellent video of the action during the 10/26 paroxysm that shows the lava fountaining that occurred from the New Southeast Crater. Towards the end of the video, you can see some great examples of strombolian activity during the waning stages of the eruption from the New Southeast Crater as giant bubbles pop in the conduit of the erupting vent. Each “pop” of that bubble would send out thousands of lava bombs, and created the booming sound you can hear on the video. Dr. Behncke also posted a great sequence of images and a story behind the remnants of a former volcano observatory on Etna. Right now, only the antenna of the former building sticks out above many years of volcanic debris, but the October 26 paroxysm lava flow came with 1 meter(!) of knocking down even that last vestige of the structure. Things have settled down at Etna after this eruption, but as we all know, the volcano can ramp up quickly to a new paroxysm.

 

Indonesia

Across the world in Indonesia, Sinabung continues to produce explosive eruptions. Right now, these discrete event have been producing ash plumes that reach up to 7 km (23,000 feet) over the volcano. All of this activity at Sinabung prompted the PVMBG to raise the alert status at the volcano to its second highest setting (siaga – alert). This move increased the exclusion zone around the volcano to 3 km and ~1,300 more people have evacuated the slopes of the restless volcano. Elsewhere in Indonesia, looks like people want to add some fearmongering to the menu (as if actively erupting volcanoes weren’t enough). The IB Times has an article proclaiming “Lake Toba’s Volcanic Underbelly ‘Could Erupt at Any Time’“, snatching a poor choice of words by the president of the Indonesia Geological Experts Association, Rovicky Dwi Putrohari. The article itself sounds like an attempt by the IGEA to promote its annual conference that occurred this week — nothing like capitalizing on fear of the next eruption from a caldera to grab the media’s attention.

from:    http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/11/eruption-update-for-november-5-2013-etna-sinabung/#more-322411

Photo: Soul Leaving Body at Death

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Russian scientist photographs the soul leaving the body at death

The timing of astral disembodiment in which the spirit leaves the body has been captured by Russian scientist Konstantin Korotkov, who photographed a person at the moment of his death with a bioelectrographic camera.

The image taken using the gas discharge visualization method, an advanced technique of Kirlian photography shows in blue the life force of the person leaving the body gradually.

According to Korotkov, navel and head are the parties who first lose their life force (which would be the soul) and the groin and the heart are the last areas where the spirit before surfing the phantasmagoria of the infinite.

In other cases according to Korotkov has noted that “the soul” of people who suffer a violent and unexpected death usually manifests a state of confusion in your power settings and return to the body in the days following death. This could be due to a surplus of unused energy.

The technique developed by Korotkov, who is director of the Research Institute of Physical Culture, St. Petersburg, is endorsed as a medical technology by the Ministry of Health of Russia and is used by more than 300 doctors in the world for stress and monitoring progress of patients treated for diseases such as cancer. Korotkov says his energy imaging technique could be used to watch all kinds of imbalances biophysical and diagnose in real time and also to show if a person does have psychic powers or is a fraud.

This technique, which measures real-time and stimulated radiation is amplified by the electromagnetic field is a more advanced version of the technology developed for measuring Semyon Kirlian aura.

Korotkov observations confirm, as proposed by Kirili, that “stimulated electro-photonic light around the tips of the fingers of the human being contains coherent and comprehensive statement of a person, both physically and psychologically.”

In this video interview Korotkov speaks of the effect in the bioenergy field with food, water and even cosmetics. And emphasizes one umbrella drink water and organic food, particularly noting that the aura of the people in the Undies suffers the negative effects of nutrients as technologization distributed in this society.

Korotkov also speaks of their measurements in supposedly loaded with power and influence that people have in the bioenergy fields of others. Checking Rupert Sheldrake’s experiment of the feeling of being watched : Because a person’s bioenergy field changes when someone else directs his attention, even though it is backwards and not consciously perceived. Also a place fields are altered when there is a concentration of tourists.

Also warns of cell phone use and their negative radiation often being carcinogenic, which several studies seem to confirm.

Korotkov hosting is optimistic that this new scientific field, which is a pioneer, is taking, especially in Russia, where some schools were teaching children to recognize and use energy, and not as a suspect but as a metaphysical quantifiable fact.

http://www.thcfarmer.com/forums/f64/russian-scientist-photographs-s…

‘There is some staggering photographic and video evidence demonstrating some of the technologies, particularly shocking is the Oldfield Camera Filter which using a normal camera appears to show ghosts or other wordly entities clearly in photographs! Truly amazing stuff!

Harry, the author of ‘Harry Oldfield’s Invisible Universe’ goes on to demonstrate how through various technologies he is able to reveal aspects of this previously unseen universe in all their glory!

Three decades of research into this area and considerable practical application enable Harry to present some very convincing evidence that there is far more to the Universe than that which we currently experience with the 5 senses.’

from:    http://www.esotericonline.net/profiles/blogs/russian-scientist-photographs-the-soul-leaving-the-body-at-death

 

Comet ISON

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RACING TOWARD THE SUN: Comet ISON is now inside the orbit of Earth and racing toward the sun. Last night, astronomer Alberto Quijano Vodniza of Pasto, Colombia, recorded the comet moving through space at 103,000 mph (46 km/s). Click to set the scene in motion:

“The movie shows the comet’s motion over 27 minutes,” says Vodniza. Watch it again. “We also caught a satellite.”

On Nov. 28th, Comet ISON will fly through the sun’s atmosphere little more than a million kilometers above the sun’s fiery surface. This raises a question: Is Comet ISON racing toward its doom? Astronomer Matthew Knight of the Lowell Observatory thinks the comet might withstand the heat:

“At its closest point to the Sun, the equilibrium temperature approaches 5000 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to cause much of the dust and rock on ISON’s surface to vaporize,” says Knight. “While it may seem incredible that anything can survive this inferno, the rate at which ISON will likely lose mass is relatively small compared to how big it likely is. Assuming that the comet’s nucleus is bigger than about 200 meters in radius (current estimates suggest it is 500-2000 m in radius), it will likely survive. It helps that the comet is moving very fast, about 400 km/s at perihelion, so it will not remain long at such extreme temperatures.”

If Comet ISON does survive its encounter with the sun, it could put on a good show for backyard astronomers in the northern hemisphere in December. The next few weeks will tell the tale. Stay tuned!

fr/spaceweather.com

11/5 Solar Flar & ‘Magnetic Crochet’

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SOLAR FLARE CAUSES RARE ‘MAGNETIC CROCHET’: On Nov. 5th at 22:12 UT, the magnetic canopy of sunspot AR1890 erupted, producing a brief but intense X3-class solar flare. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the extreme ultraviolet flash:

Radiation from the flare caused a surge in the ionization of Earth’s upper atmosphere–and this led to a rare magnetic crochet. Alexander Avtanski observed the effect using a homemade magnetometer in San Jose, California. A magnetic crochet is a disturbance in Earth’s magnetic field caused by electrical currents flowing in air 60 km to 100 km above our heads. Unlike geomagnetic disturbances that arrive with CMEs days after a flare, a magnetic crochet occurs while the flare is in progress. They tend to occur during fast impulsive flares like this one.

More eruptions are in the offing. NOAA forecasters estimate a 45% chance of M-class solar flares and a 10% chance of X-flares on Nov. 7th.

from:    spaceweather.com

NSA Monitoring, yep, Just about Everything

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Confirmed: NSA has broken into Google, Yahoo data centers and now monitors all web searches, Gmail

Friday, November 01, 2013 by: J. D. Heyes

NaturalNews) If the reports earlier this summer detailing how the National Security Agency monitors all data passing through the nation’s internet service providers and tech companies was a little too much to digest or accept, that’s understandable.

After all, this is America, right? And the NSA isn’t supposed to be spying on Americans.

Only, it does, as a new report proves beyond any doubt.

According to The Washington Post, the NSA has managed to secretly hack into the main communication links that connect Yahoo! and Google data centers to the rest of the world, as per documents obtained from former NSA contractor-turned-fugitive Edward Snowden, as well as interviews with insider officials.

The paper said:

By tapping those links, the agency has positioned itself to collect at will from among hundreds of millions of user accounts, many of them belonging to Americans. The NSA does not keep everything it collects, but it keeps a lot.

MUSCULAR, PRISM data collection programs

A top-secret accounting dated Jan. 9, 2013, provided details about how the NSA’s acquisitions directorate sends millions of records daily from Yahoo and Google internal networks to databases located at the agency’s headquarters at Fort Meade, Md.

In the 30 days prior, the report noted, field collectors processed and returned 181,280,466 new records, ranging from “metadata,” which can provide information about who actually sent and received emails and when and content like text, video and audio.

The Post reported:

The NSA’s principal tool to exploit the data links is a project called MUSCULAR, operated jointly with the agency’s British counterpart, GCHQ. From undisclosed interception points, the NSA and GCHQ are copying entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information between the data centers of the Silicon Valley giants.

The infiltration is especially striking because the NSA, under a separate program known as PRISM, has front-door access to Google and Yahoo user accounts through a court-approved process.

But apparently, even that access – authorized by the USA Patriot Act – isn’t good enough. Obviously, the NSA wants no oversight of its activities at all.

The Post said the MUSCULAR project looked to be “an unusually aggressive use” of NSA capabilities against American tech companies. To be sure, the NSA is built to conduct high-tech spying, and has a wide range of digital tools at its disposal, but has no previous reputation of using them at will against U.S. firms.

Despite the revelations, no one in government wanted to talk about them on the record. “White House officials and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the NSA, declined to confirm, deny or explain why the agency infiltrates Google and Yahoo networks overseas,” the Post reported.

Privacy? What privacy?

Google released a statement saying the company was certainly “troubled by allegations of the government intercepting traffic between our data centers, and we are not aware of this activity.”

“We have long been concerned about the possibility of this kind of snooping, which is why we continue to extend encryption across more and more Google services and links,” the company said.

A spokeswoman from Yahoo added: “We have strict controls in place to protect the security of our data centers, and we have not given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency.”

According to earlier releases of top secret information by Snowden, the PRISM program is used by the NSA to gather incredible amounts of online communications records through legal means; tech companies, via warrants issued by the secret FISA court, are compelled to turn over data matching the court’s approved search terms.

That program is authorized under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

“Intercepting communications overseas has clear advantages for the NSA, with looser restrictions and less oversight. NSA documents about the effort refer directly to ‘full take,’ ‘bulk access’ and ‘high volume’ operations on Yahoo and Google networks,” the Post reported. “Such large-scale collection of Internet content would be illegal in the United States, but the operations take place overseas, where the NSA is allowed to presume that anyone using a foreign data link is a foreigner.”

In today’s online, interconnected world, America, you have no more privacy. That should be crystal clear by now.

Oh, and the NSA’s spying and data storage capability is only going to increase. The agency is building a massive new facility in Utah for just those purposes, among others: http://nsa.gov1.info.

Bakersfield, CA UFO

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Mysterious glowing UFO in the sky seen in Bakersfield for the past two nights Oct 29, 2013, -VIDEO- UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting:  October 28 and 29 of 2013
Location of sighting: Bakersfield, California, USA
This mysterious UFO appeared and was tracked by an amateur astronomer in Bakersfield, CA yesterday. The object came low over the city and moved around, then suddenly shot of at high speeds.  Its good to see the news taking this subject seriously. Bakersfield also had simiar sighings of similar craft back in Dec of 2012. If you live in Bakersfield or have seen a similar UFO, please tell us about it in comments below. SCW
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pne6a9SMvU
from;     http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/2013/10/mysterious-glowing-ufo-in-sky-seen-in.html