Category Archives: Of Interest

Pluto! A Planet Again!!!

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Pluto could become a planet again: Scientists propose new definition that would include 110 objects in the solar system (including Earth’s moon)

  • Scientists propose new way to define planet based on ‘physics of the world itself’
  • This would see 110 objects in solar system classified as ‘full-fledged’ planets
  • Includes dwarf planets and moons such as Ceres, Pluto, Charon, and our moon

By Cheyenne Macdonald For Dailymail.com

Published: 19:02 EST, 21 February 2017

More than a decade after it was demoted, Pluto could soon be considered a planet again – along with more than 100 other objects in our solar system.

Scientists have proposed a new way to define planets based on ‘the physics of the world itself,’ citing technical flaws in the definition adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 2006 as the reason for the possible overhaul.

If accepted, the geophysical definition would essentially classify all ‘round objects in space that are smaller than stars’ as planets, including Pluto, other dwarf planets, and even moons.

Adopting this definition would see roughly 110 objects in the solar system classified as ‘full-fledged’ planets, including dwarf planets and moon planets such as Ceres, Pluto, Charon, and our own moon

Adopting this definition would see roughly 110 objects in the solar system classified as ‘full-fledged’ planets, including dwarf planets and moon planets such as Ceres, Pluto, Charon, and our own moon

THE GEOPHYSICAL DEFINITION

Scientists have proposed a new way to define planets based on ‘the physics of the world itself.’

By the proposed geophysical definition: ‘A planet is a sub-stellar mass body that has never undergone nuclear fusion and that has sufficient self-gravitation to assume a spheroidal shape adequately described by a triaxial ellipsoid regardless of its orbital parameters.’

Or, simply put, ‘round objects in space that are smaller than stars.’

Scientists from NASA’s New Horizon’s mission will make their proposal at the Lunar and planetary Science Conference in March.

The team argues that the IAU definition is flawed in several ways, including that it only recognizes as planets those which orbit our sun.

This leaves out objects orbiting other stars or those orbiting freely through the galaxy.

Along with this, they say there are parameters which even the planets in our solar system cannot satisfy.

The new definition, they argue, would meet the needs of both scientific classification and ‘peoples’ intuition.’

By the proposed geophysical definition: ‘A planet is a sub-stellar mass body that has never undergone nuclear fusion and that has sufficient self-gravitation to assume a spheroidal shape adequately described by a triaxial ellipsoid regardless of its orbital parameters.’

Or, simply put, ‘round objects in space that are smaller than stars.’

This definition holds the physics of the planet itself to more importance than the physics of its interactions with other objects, the researchers explain.

Adopting this definition would see roughly 110 objects in the solar system classified as ‘full-fledged’ planets, including dwarf planets and moon planets such as Ceres, Pluto, Charon, and our own moon.

According to the proposal, the new definition would be better for scientists, educators, and students alike, as it is more intuitive and emphasizes the intrinsic physical properties of a planetary body.

More than a decade after it was demoted, Pluto could soon be considered a planet again – along with more than 100 other objects in our solar system. The newly proposed definition, simply put, would classify ‘round objects in space that are smaller than stars' as planets

More than a decade after it was demoted, Pluto could soon be considered a planet again – along with more than 100 other objects in our solar system. The newly proposed definition, simply put, would classify ‘round objects in space that are smaller than stars’ as planets

And, it speaks to a practice that is already in use.

‘In keeping with emphasizing intrinsic properties, our geophysical definition is directly based on the physics of the world itself rather than the physics of its interactions with external objects,’ the authors explain.

‘Our definition captures the common usage already present in the planetary science community.

‘In peer-reviewed planetary science publications and talks, the world ‘planet’ often substitutes for the given name of the world, even if the world is a moon or a dwarf planet.’

The Pope, Freemasons, And Knights of Malta-What’s this?

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Pope Orders Purge of Freemasons from Knights of Malta

Some call the Freemasons a Jewish Luciferian cult, a religion of Judaism, based on the Babylonian Talmud, and the Jewish Kabala, an alchemical system of magic and deviltry, which form the basis for the Scottish Rite’s 33 ritual degree ceremonies. The freemasons are basically a warped, rogue community which took spiritual teachings meant for good and turned them to evil – the classic archetype which most can relate to being Darth Vadar – a ‘high priest” which sold his soul to evil and now is part-man, part machine, dying inside his own mask.

The Knights of Malta, some attest, are not an arm of the cabal, but another secret society. The Sovereign Military Order of Malta is a lay religious organization headquartered in Rome dating back to the First Crusade. They too have a bloody and questionable history. They were Christian crusaders who believed that bloodshed was necessary to ‘convert’ the evil. Funny then, that Pope Francis has ordered a purge of the Freemasons from the Knights of Malta. Which should truly be purged from the other?

The Holy Father instructed Cardinal Burke to “clean out” Freemasonry from the order. He is “deeply disturbed” by the fact that the Knights of Malta were handing out contraceptives in parts of Africa, according to Vatican journalist Edward Pentin.

The current wrangle centers around what Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin has described as an “unprecedented crisis.” It first became public after the grand master of the Knights of Malta, Fra’ Matthew Festing, dismissed Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager as grand chancellor (the order’s third-ranking official) on Dec. 6, accusing him of being ultimately responsible for the distribution of contraceptives through the order’s humanitarian agency, Malteser International.

His insubordination has been called “disgraceful”. The Vatican church teaches that the use of condoms is gravely immoral and the Knights of Malta have been passing them out to “protect against HIV” and other sexually transmitted diseases.

According to the Vatican’s semi-official newspaper, proponents of euthanasia and aborting chronically ill fetuses use the same arguments that were once used by the Nazis to promote their eugenics program of mass extermination; and indeed the eugenics movement is epitomized in forced sterilizations of women who were institutionalized in some way. Many state laws permitted this, and a landmark Supreme Court case, Buck v. Bell in 1927, ratified those laws; however, a United Nations WHO file suggests a dual purpose for Vatican supported vaccines.

A file titled “Global Vaccine Market Features and Trends” reveals incriminating evidence and financial motive for Vatican UN WHO criminal acts of terrorism, bioterrorism, mass murder and genocide. Almost every single person on earth would have to be vaccinated in order for the financial goals set forth by the Vatican in this document, to come to fruition.

While the Knights of Malta are no saints, purging their own Cardinals might be a better idea if the Vatican is truly trying to stop a eugenics movement, and prevent child harm.

Or is Pope Francis, linked to child sex trafficking, rape, and murder concerned about another outcome? His authority is now being challenged by the Knights of Malta over his sacking of a Catholic official.

popp

Matthew Festing has resigned as leader of the Knights of Malta after a conflict that tested the authority of Pope Francis. Photograph: Reuters

As some experts are wise to point out, most fraternal societies are in-between good and evil, but all feed the same impulses as in Masonry: including knowing and holding secrets.

To say that the Vatican has a difficult relationship with the Knights (of Malta, Templar or otherwise) is a big understatement. The Knights were the crusaders and first international banking powerhouse in Europe – some say the seed of the modern Federal Reserve, and fractional banking system. After losing the Holy Land, they still held on to wealth and power.

Renegade Catholic explains, that this beef likely has much older roots,

“Only recently on the 700th anniversary did the Vatican belatedly let [the Templar Knights] off the hook, publishing a book with documents absolving them of heresy. Emboldened, a group claiming to be heirs then sued the Vatican for $150 billion. They later also demanded an apology.”

The Vatican laughed all this off, but it turns out the Templars’ great rivals were another order sworn to protect pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land: The Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, now known as the Knights of Malta. They were actually founded before the Templars.

from:    http://themindunleashed.com/2017/01/pope-orders-purge-freemasons-knights-malta.html

Resurgence of Non-Violence

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Standing Rock and the Return of the Nonviolent Campaign

There’s something even better than electoral politics and one-off protests when mobilizing citizen power.
ZummoUnarmed650px.jpg
George Lakey

Nonviolent campaigns are often dramatic and catch the attention of millions—think of Standing Rock water protectors resolute in the face of a brutal police force. All the more puzzling that the concept of a “nonviolent campaign” is little known and often ignored when people talk about how to mobilize power, for example, to prevent Donald Trump from erasing gains made in addressing climate change.

Nonviolent campaigns are often dramatic and catch the attention of millions.

For many, the choices are limited to lobbying, petitions, and looking for promising progressive candidates to run a different kind of campaign—the electoral campaign. Thinking outside that box usually means a one-off march or rally, or possibly a protest. The trouble is, a nonviolent march or rally or protest is not nearly as effective as a nonviolent campaign. One or two of those actions could not have the impact of the enduring Standing Rock campaign.

What marks a nonviolent campaign?

Swarthmore College researchers have been digging into that question, analyzing over 1,000 nonviolent campaigns waged in almost 200 countries. Swarthmore’s publicly available database goes back historically to 12th century Egypt, when laborers building a tomb for the Pharaoh successfully campaigned for wages that were being unfairly withheld. The researchers found protests are usually one-off events that express grief, outrage, or plain opposition to an action or policy, and if the protest gets attention, it may be repeated. Campaigners, by contrast, carry out a strategy over time. They plan a series of nonviolent actions that continues until the goal is reached. That may be a matter of weeks, or months, or years.

When Earth Quaker Action Team reached year three of its campaign to induce PNC Bank, the nation’s seventh largest, to stop financing mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia, the members of EQAT began to tire. They researched the Swarthmore database and discovered that the British campaign to force Barclays bank to divest from apartheid in South Africa took 20 years to succeed. The Barclays campaign gave EQAT fresh perspective on endurance. Two years later, the group won its “Bank Like Appalachia Matters” campaign.

True, many campaigns are resolved in a much shorter time. America’s earliest recorded nonviolent campaign was in colonial Jamestown, Virginia, when Polish artisans—the first non-English settlers—campaigned for the right to vote equally with the English. The Poles won their demand in three months.

The Allegany County Nonviolent Action Group in New York won its 1990 campaign to prevent a nuclear waste dump from being built there in less than a year. Citizens in Bodega Bay, California, with the help of Berkeley students and folksinger Malvina Reynolds, needed two years to cancel a plan to build the nation’s first commercially viable nuclear power plant. In 1964, campaigners in Los Angeles won cancellation of a planned Malibu plant as well.

Campaigns have specific demands and targets

Nonviolent campaigners know what they want: clean water in North Dakota for indigenous people; the Dream Act for students brought to this country as children by undocumented immigrants; a cleanup of chemicals at Love Canal in upstate New York; university goods and clothing made by workers who are treated fairly with safe working conditions.

Campaigners also know who can make the decision they need. Alice Paul led the National Woman’s Party campaign for suffrage and targeted President Woodrow Wilson. As the film Iron Jawed Angels reveals, the women demonstrating during World War I compared the president to the German emperor, calling him “Kaiser Wilson!” In her later years, when I interviewed Alice Paul, she said she was confident that Wilson could make the difference in persuading a balky Congress to pass the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote. She was right. Her 1917 escalation of the campaign brought voting to women just three years later.

Escalation is an art

The 1960s civil rights movement showed expertise in locating and sequencing direct actions to escalate pressure on their target.

When President John F. Kennedy refused Martin Luther King Jr.’s request to provide leadership for a civil rights bill, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference made an unusual strategic decision. Instead of taking the obvious next step of focusing action in the nation’s capital in order to gain victory there, the SCLC decided to escalate in Birmingham, Alabama, at that time a major industrial city. It was where the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, a member of SCLC, had for years led an ongoing antisegregation campaign.

The civil rights struggle also illustrates the way campaigns build mass social movements.

In spring 1963, SCLC brought additional organizers and trainers to Birmingham to join the local struggle. Campaigners escalated their tactics, confronting the segregationists’ police dogs and fire hoses with nonviolent discipline. When mass jail-ins left a scarcity of adults available for civil disobedience, children stepped in to fill the streets. The sheer volume of disruption dislocating Birmingham and the national charisma of Dr. King effectively pressured the White House. Kennedy reportedly got on the phone with U.S. Steel President Roger Blough and others of the power elite, gaining agreement that the time had come for a national civil rights bill that would guarantee equal accommodations.

Campaigns can build movements

The civil rights struggle also illustrates the way campaigns build mass social movements. On Feb. 1, 1960, just four college students initiated a sit-in campaign at a segregated lunch counter near their campus in North Carolina. Inspired, students at other campuses followed suit. Within a month there were student sit-ins throughout the South and a solidarity campaign at Woolworth stores in northern cities as well. Multiple, replicated local campaigns turned a few students’ efforts into the widespread and iconic “freedom movement.”

When Gandhi faced the largest empire the world had ever known, he knew that India would need a massive movement to sustain protracted struggle and gain independence. Initially, he believed that his people were too disunited and disheartened to forge such a movement. So he led a series of campaigns, using them to win smaller demands, build leadership and organizing skills, and develop the necessary self-confidence. The campaigns eventually built a large-enough national movement to wage the famous Salt March of 1930–31, which in turn increased the size of the growing movement by supporting more, smaller campaigns involving still more people. A little more than a decade later, critical mass forced the British to give up the prize jewel of their empire.

Overshadowed by politics

The obsession of the U.S. mainstream media is electoral campaigning. In Denmark, a national political campaign is limited to six weeks and paid advertising is not allowed on TV. Danish voter participation is much higher than in the U.S. Mass media have a small window in which to present and clarify the issue differences among the parties and candidates. They do that efficiently.

In the United States, media bombard citizens for at least a year with the horse-race dimension of elections. People may not learn much about the issues, but they do gain a sense of how a political campaign works, including strategy.

Our choices are not limited to petitioning politicians or staging a protest.

By contrast, no one hears how nonviolent campaigns won or what their strategic choices were. Context is absent: What mainstream media source gives us that kind of context about Standing Rock, comparing it with other campaigns waged by indigenous groups for their tribal and environmental rights? When do we hear academic experts on nonviolent struggle explain the dynamics behind breaking news in a nonviolent campaign?

The result is a public ill-informed about its options when facing an authoritarian president or a wave of policy changes that diminish human rights and planetary sustainability.

The good news is the reemerging art of the nonviolent campaign. Our choices are not limited to petitioning politicians or staging a protest. Instead, we can start something big.

from:    http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/standing-rock-and-the-return-of-the-nonviolent-campaign-20170106

What’s With the Floating Cities?

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Questions Arise as Second Floating City Seen Over China in Last Two Years

Buck Rogers, Staff Writer
Waking Times

The world’s militaries have ownership of the sky, which is increasingly being weaponized to host elaborate surveillance, communication and warfare technologies. The public has only a very narrow understanding of some of the programs of which information has been publicly released. For example, we know a little about the space fence, rods from god, HAARP, the laser development atmospheric lens, experimentation with atmospheric spraying, geoengineering, and a handful of other endeavors, but we really have no idea of the full extent of what is being developed and tested in secret.

When something extraordinary and unexplainable is seen up above, we have to ask if it is a natural phenomenon, a hoax, or a government program. For the second time in the last two years a floating holographic city has been seen and recorded by numerous people in mainland China, and many are asking these very questions.

It is impossible at this point to rule out a hoax, for as we know, computer graphics are sufficiently advanced to fool even the well-trained eye, however, video of this event is not yet being challenged by media sources as a hoax on the basis of multiple recordings and eye-witness accounts. According to RT, the Xinhua News Agency, the official press agency of The People’s Republic of China, the mirage is a natural occurrence:

“The buildings visible in the video are actually surrounded by “radiation fog,” which occurs when the ground temperatures cool and the moisture in the air condenses as a result, according to Xinhua News Agency. As temperatures rise, the fog usually evaporates.” [Source]

Perhaps, but this explanation does not take into account either the duplication of shapes in the floating image, nor the fact that floating holographic images of cities is not an isolated phenomenon. In 2015 a similar phenomenon occurred in a different, rural area of China, again causing a stir of speculation.

 

The military is unquestionably conducting broad experimentation of emerging atmospheric technologies, and it does so without public disclosure.

In 2015, the military acknowledged the test of a submarine launched Trident II D5 ballistic missile over the coast of Southern California after hundreds of thousands of people saw the extraordinary and unexplained phenomenon above. There continues to be widespread speculation as to what could be causing loud unnatural humming and percussive sounds coming from the sky in many areas, as no natural explanation fits and no known civilian industry is capable of creating such noise.

2015 Missile test over California.

Furthermore, limited knowledge of leaked and partially disclosed programs, such as Project Blue Beam which can supposedly project holographic images onto real space to confuse or mislead eyewitnesses, only adds to curiosity about what technologies the world’s militaries are experimenting with right in front of our eyes.

Civilian comprehension of the motives and projects being conducted by the military with tax dollars and black budget funds will always be light years behind the reality of what is actually going on in secret laboratories and on secure bases. In order to stay abreast of what types of weapons and programs are being directed at the public and at the planet, the best we can do is chronicle all such suspicious events as they happen, working to eventually connect the dots as time goes by and as more pieces of these puzzles emerge.

 

from:    http://www.wakingtimes.com/2017/01/19/questions-emerge-second-floating-city-seen-china-last-two-years/

DNA & Quantum Wave

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New Science: DNA Begins As a Quantum Wave

One strand of DNA from one single cell contains enough information to clone an entire organism. Obviously, understanding DNA allows us to understand much about life and the universe around us. A deeper understanding of the new science tell us that DNA beings not as a molecule, but as a wave form. Even more interestingly, this wave form exists as a pattern within time and space and is coded throughout the entire universe.

dna

We are surrounded by pulsating waves of invisible genetic information, whose waves create microscopic gravitational forces that pull in atoms and molecules from their surrounding environment to construct DNA.

One scientist who caught these microgravitational forces in their action is Dr. Sergey Leikin. In 2008, Leikin put different types of DNA in regular salt water and marked each type with a different fluorescent color and the DNA molecules were then scattered throughout the water. In the experiment’s major surprise, matching DNA molecules were found pairing together. After a short time, entire clusters of the same colored DNA molecules had formed. Leikin believes some sort of electromagnetic charge allowed the same colored molecules to cluster. However, other experiments show that this is not the case. That it is most likely to be gravity. Let us explain.

In 2011, Nobel Prize winner Dr. Luc Montagnier demonstrated that DNA can be spontaneously formed out of merely hydrogen and oxygen. He started out with a hermetically sealed tube of pure sterilized water and then placed another sealed tube next to it, which had small amounts of DNA floating in water. Montagnier then electrified both tubes with a weak, 7 hertz electromagnetic field and waited. 18 hours later, little pieces of DNA had grown in the original tube, which consisted of only pure sterilized water.

This new science tells us that the universe is constantly conspiring to make biological life, whenever and wherever it can. In any given area of the universe, these hidden microgravitational waves will begin gathering atoms and molecules together to create DNA, and thus, life.

Another phenomenal discovery was made when Dr. Fritz-Albert Popp caught DNA in the act of pulling in photons (tiny packets of energy that make up visible light). The new science reveals that photons are essential to the basic health and function of DNA and are apparently used to send and receive information throughout the body. He found that each DNA molecule stores up to 1,000 photons within itself, similar to that of a tiny fiber-optic cable. The photons shoot back and forth at the speed of light inside the molecule and are stored until they need to be used.

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In 1984, Russian scientist Dr. Peter Gariaev discovered that when a DNA molecule was placed inside a small quartz container, it naturally absorbed every photon in the room. A stunning analogy of this would be that of a single person standing in a large sports stadium and having every photon in the stadium somehow bending directly to that person, leaving that person’s body literally glowing with light, while the rest of the stadium goes completely dark.

In conventional science, the only force that can bend light is gravity and it is done only around a black hole. Thus, it appears DNA is generating a microgravitational effect that attracts and captures light. Looking back to the first experiment mentioned in this article by Dr. Leikin, we see that it is indeed likely not an electrical charge that forced or allowed the same DNA molecules to attract to one other, but is likely due to gravity, as electrical charges have never been able to bend light as it moves through space.

The most incredible part of Dr. Gariaev’s experiment came when he thought it was over. He had pulled out the DNA from the quartz container and looked back into the container only to find that photons were still spiraling in the exact same place where the DNA had been. Apparently, some sort of gravitational influence was holding photons right where the DNA had been. This later became called the “DNA phantom effect. Thus, DNA is creating an energetic force that absorbs photons and pulls them right into the molecule, but the DNA itself isn’t even needed. It is some invisible force, or some wave, that attracts and holds the light (photons) there all by itself. 

Dr. Gariaev found that he could “blast” the phantom with supercold liquid nitrogen gas and the photons would all escape from the force field. Within 5 to 8 minutes though, new photons would be captured and the entire phantom would reappear. He could keep doing this as much as he wanted, but new photons would keep appearing. In fact, it was only after doing this for 30 days straight that the photons finally did not reappear.

Certainly, this last experiment was done over 30 years ago, and yet, the significance of it has yet to be truly felt. The first two experiments are still relatively young and have also yet to be fully appreciated. Clearly though, our view of the universe and life itself is changing as these concepts are understood by more people each day.

Much of the information in this article came from The Synchronicity Key: The Hidden Intelligence Guiding The Universe and You, by New York Times Best Selling author David Wilcock

from:    http://themindunleashed.com/2017/01/new-science-dna-begins-quantum-wave.html

Ramen Anyone?

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Japan hopes to get elderly drivers off the road by bribing them with ramen noodles

Friday, December 02, 2016 by:

Image: Japan hopes to get elderly drivers off the road by bribing them with ramen noodles

(NaturalNews) In one of the sillier stories of a historically silly year, Japanese authorities are now bribing elderly drivers to give up their driver’s licenses — in exchange for coupons that will lower the cost of ramen noodles. No, this is not an article from The Onion. This is happening in real life.

Why would Japan ask such a thing of their elderly? It has a lot to do with the fact that they seem to be putting a lot of innocent lives at risk by remaining on the road. Yaron Steinbuch of The New York Post reports, “The offer comes amid a spate of deadly accidents caused by vehicles driven by the elderly — a growing problem in a country where 4.8 million people aged 75 or older have a license. Those who relinquish their license will receive a certificate that will cut prices from 590 to 500 yen – about $5.20 to $4.43.”

If the authorities are actually concerned about the well-being of these elderly individuals, you have to question just how healthy a diet of ramen noodles could possibly be. They’re historically filled with sodium, which is not exactly what people who are coming up on the last years of their lives should be consuming on a regular basis, if at all.

Still, at this time, the government is not forcing elderly citizens to hand in their driver’s licenses, leaving this a completely optional decision. Though it is extremely strange and something that is easy to poke fun at, it is a far cry from fascism and that’s a very good thing. During an era when government overreach has become the norm, it’s nice to see the powers that be trying to get creative in order to achieve their goals. It may not be a good idea and it may not even work, but at least they aren’t trying to oppress people based on their age.

So where do you stand on this issue? Should elderly people be allowed to drive after if they pass all the requirements necessary?

from:    http://www.naturalnews.com/2016-12-02-japan-hopes-to-get-elderly-drivers-off-the-road-by-bribing-them-with-ramen-noodles.html

The Role of Media – Something You Can Do

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What Went Wrong With Trump and the Media

The business model is pulling in the wrong direction for democracy.

Nov. 19, 2016 3:26 PM

LM Otero/AP Photo

We need to push harder, go deeper, spread the story wider. Help us do it with a tax-deductible donation to Mother Jones

There aren’t a lot of people who have not yet been blamed for the election of Donald Trump.

FBI Director James Comey. Vladimir Putin, Jon Stewart, Sean Hannity, Twitter, Facebook, CNN, Hillary Clinton, the DNC, and oh, Donald Trump. There’s a good case to be made for almost every culprit you can imagine, and a tweetstorm or thinkpiece to lay it out.

This is not going to be one of those pieces. As my colleague Kevin Drum writes, “For the most part, people are just blaming all the stuff they already believed in.” But in the flood of emails that have poured into MoJo since the election, many readers have asked us to dive into one issue in particular—the role of  media.

And it happens to be an issue we’re obsessed with. We believe that the business model for media in the United States is broken; that if we’re going to have the kind of journalism that democracy requires, we’re going to need different ways of paying for it; and that critical among those will be reader support in many different forms.

So we’re not going to pussyfoot around: By the end of this piece, we hope you’ll invest in our hard-hitting investigative reporting. And if you’re already in for that, you can do it right now. Meanwhile, let’s take a look at where things stand.

We’re preparing to be governed by a man with a record of contempt for truth and transparency, at a time when every potential countervailing force, from the Democratic Party to the courts, is on the ropes. We’re also headed for nearly unmitigated one-party control of the federal government and a growing number of states.

In the past, the Fourth Estate has been essential at moments like this, holding the powerful accountable until the pendulum swings back toward checks and balances. Whether that can happen this time, though, is not so clear. Because this time, the press itself is among the institutions under strain—and that strain may well be part of what made Trump’s ascent possible.

Here’s what played out during the campaign, and is playing out again in the transition: Individual journalists and individual outlets do amazing work under the most difficult circumstances, facing down virulent abuse in person and on social media. But the larger gravitational forces of the industry pull in the opposite direction. Those forces push us toward the lowest common denominator. They reward outrage and affirm anger—and they don’t incentivize digging deep, explaining complex problems, or exposing wrongdoing.

One person who understands this better than most is…Donald Trump. He knew from the get-go that as a celebrity known for saying outrageous stuff, he could call up any show, anytime, and count on being put on the air because he brought the eyeballs. As CBS chairman Les Moonves put it way back in February, his bomb-throwing “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”

Trump could have capitalized on this at any time, but he really hit a perfect-storm moment. Media revenues are under enormous pressure across the board. Newspapers and magazines are battling cheap and free digital competitors. Cable is threatened by cord-cutting. And digital publishers are watching new ad dollars rush over to Facebook and Google.

That made news organizations desperate for eyeballs and content, and Trump gave them both. Airing his interviews, covering his rallies, turning his tweets into posts and his comments into tweets was quick and inexpensive—far less expensive certainly than digging through his business record or analyzing how his campaign has emboldened white nationalists.

When it comes to news, you get what you pay for, and when the answer to that is “zero,”  that’s also the value of a lot of what you get in your Facebook feed.

Which brings us to the other part of the perfect storm: social media. Rage (and fear) motivate sharing. Rage-sharing reinforces the beliefs we and our friends already hold, which makes us want to signal those beliefs even more. Each “OMFG, Trump just_______” pushes the button again, and motivates.

And it’s not just media organizations that noticed Trump driving the clicks and shares. A network of bottom-feeders, bots, and outright provocateurs have discovered that you can cash in on ad networks by simply making up fake news stories that will spread wildly on social media. And what a coincidence that we didn’t learn until after the election that Facebook had a way to tamp down fake news, but held back because it was terrified of a conservative backlash. Google likewise waited until after the election to kick fake-news sites out of its ad network; Twitter didn’t crack down on far-right accounts until November 15. That really bodes well for the future decisions of companies that govern our digital life (and know more about each of us than the National Security Agency ever will).

The last part of the perfect storm was—is—the evisceration of newsrooms. There are, give or take, 40 percent fewer journalists in America than there were a decade ago, and there are about to be even fewer as companies cut back dramatically post-election. Univision is shedding more than 200 jobs, many of them at millennial-aimed Fusion; the Guardian is in the process of reducing its US newsroom by 30 percent, the Wall Street Journal is trimming positions and consolidating sections, and the New York Times has said it has a newsroom downsizing coming in January.

For those journalists who remain, the pressure will only increase—to bring eyeballs, but also avoid offense. Because while big media companies feed on controversy, they are terrified of being targets of controversy themselves. They built big audiences and revenue streams on a style of journalism that avoids any semblance of a point of view, so as not to drive any part of the audience away. Trump’s attacks on journalists as biased are designed to reinforce that fear. That’s one reason why for much of the campaign his lies weren’t called out, his falsehoods weren’t fact-checked—because that would have appeared like injecting a point of view.

Grim, right? Here’s another link where you can support our work during these challenging times with a monthly or one-time gift (along with a Harvard study showing that the act of giving may promote happiness).

In the end, political journalism is deeply conservative—not in the partisan sense, but in the sense of being invested in institutions, ways of doing things, and the foundational belief that the system works and  destructive forces will be neutralized in due time. That was what made it hard to imagine a Trump win, or to recognize Bernie Sanders’ movement as more than the usual protest candidacy.

And it’s what now is driving coverage inexorably toward normalization. Already, public radio hosts banter as they inform us that Steve Bannon, a man who ran an openly race-baiting website, has become the senior White House strategist; already People, just weeks after publishing a harrowing article about its own writer’s experience of being assaulted by Trump, has compiled “27 Photos of Ivanka Trump’s Family That Are Way Too Cute.”

Demagogues are dependent on a compliant media. It is the air they breathe, the fuel they run on. They rely on it to legitimize their lies and give their bombast a veneer of respectability. They deploy it to bestow favors and mete out punishment. And they will not abide disrespect from the press, because it’s contagious.

Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire and Trump champion, showed one way of punishing journalists when he spent millions on the lawsuit that shut down Gawker. (Mother Jones was a target of similar litigation—though we won.) There will be many other opportunities, from rewriting transparency laws like the Freedom of Information Act to defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. (So in addition to supporting Mother Jones with a monthly or one-time gift, consider pitching in for your local public media station.)

We need an alternative—and we need it now.

Back to where we started: The business model is broken when it comes to ensuring the kind of journalism democracy requires. In the uncertain, dangerous times ahead, we’ll need something better, and a lot of it.

We’ll need media that doesn’t have to bargain for access or worry about backlash.

We’ll need media that isn’t dependent on giving bigots a platform. (CNN expects to make $1 billion this year—in large part thanks to election coverage that had many high moments, but also employed paid Trump operative Corey Lewandowski.)

We’ll need media that doesn’t sell out its own for political ends. (Remember when Fox News’ Megyn Kelly had to “make up” with Trump after nearly a year of bullying and threats?)

We’ll need reporters who can chase after what is shaping up to be cronyism and corruption of epic proportions, and who can stand up to the intimidation that is bound to ensue.

We’ll need a business model that—to circle all the way back to Les Moonves—isn’t dependent on pumping up the eyeballs at any cost.

That’s what we are determined to build here at MoJo.

We don’t claim to have all the answers on where things go from here. But we know a free, fearless press is an essential part of it, and that means doubling down on the investigative reporting that readers like you have demanded, and supported, for 40 years.

Instead of focusing on the controversies that Trump and other politicians spoon-feed the press (over here, five candidates for secretary of state! No here, a fresh Twitter rant against the New York Times!), we’ll dig into the stories they want to keep secret. We’ll go after the unprecedented conflicts of interest and corruption wherever they arise. (These, as you well know, are not limited to either party.)

We’ll expose the danger to vulnerable communities like immigrants and religious minorities, while also exploring how people are organizing and fighting back. We’ll listen to people whose voices aren’t heard enough—including the working-class people who voted for Trump because he promised them better times. And we will ask you, our readers, what else is important to cover now—your input is key as we all find our way in this new landscape.

Whatever the story is, we won’t be held back by timidity or fear of controversy. The only thing that limits us are the resources we have to hire reporters, send them into the field, and give them the time and job security they need to go deep.

That’s where your tax-deductible monthly or one-time donation makes all the difference. (So does subscribing to our magazine, giving a gift subscription—we have some great holiday savings going on—or signing up for our newsletters.) A full 70 percent of Mother Jones’ revenue comes from reader support. It’s the core of the business model we think will be critical to saving watchdog journalism. And many of you agree: Since the election we’ve been seeing unprecedented support from readers who have flocked to our site to read, subscribe, donate, and share their thoughts about where we need to go from here.

And let’s take one more step. While it’s critically important to shore up independent reporting, you’re going to want to take action in other ways too. Here are some things we’re thinking about as we head toward the holidays.

Many of you will talk—and listen—to people you disagree with, to understand where they’re coming from and maybe find the tiniest sliver of common ground. Arlie Hochschild did that in our cover story about Trump voters, and she saw many of the trends others in the media missed. Some of you might want to try to open up your Facebook feeds to people you differ with; we put together a list of tools to get out of your “filter bubbles.” And one of our editors, James West, has started a project where he’s friending all the Trump supporters he interviewed this year. He’ll tell their stories as that evolves.

Finally, we’re remembering to be thankful—not least, to you. Mother Jones as you know it today is the result of a big, risky bet at a moment not unlike this one—2006, when we were looking at media that had failed to challenge a war-mongering government’s lies and a digital news landscape where hot takes had overtaken original reporting. We asked you, our readers, to help us counter that trend, to build a 24/7 digital operation and a newsroom to go after the big stories of the day. And you did.

Ten years later, at a moment of even more radical upheaval, many of you have told us that you want to be part of a movement that builds a bigger, stronger independent journalism scene. Thanks to you, we are ready.

MoJo will need to be stronger, more agile, and even more fearless in an environment that’s growing more dangerous to journalism and democracy. Let’s go.

from:    http://www.motherjones.com/media/2016/11/trump-media-fail

New FBI Hacking Powers

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It Just Got Much Easier for the FBI to Hack Your Computer
Just in time for the Trump administration.

Dec. 2, 2016 12:37 PM

Cedric Hatto/ZUMA

Just in time for the Trump administration, the FBI has gotten what critics characterize as broad new hacking powers. As of Thursday, government agents can now use warrants obtained from a single judge to hack computers in multiple jurisdictions, rather than having to get warrants from judges in each distinct jurisdiction, as required under the old rule. The rule went into effect despite the last-ditch efforts by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and others to either kill or delay it in order to give Congress time to study its implications.

In a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday, Wyden said the change to Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure was especially troubling given the imminent presidency of Donald Trump, who has “openly said he wants the power to hack his political opponents the same way Russia does.”

“By sitting here and doing nothing, the Senate has given consent to this expansion of government hacking and surveillance.”

The changes were approved by the US Supreme Court in a private vote at the end of April, after several years of discussion within the federal judiciary. They were never debated by Congress. The US Department of Justice says the news rules are necessary, particularly in cases where criminals use anonymizing software to conceal their location while committing crimes such as peddling child pornography. Another concern is the weaponizing of hundreds of thousands of internet-connected devices into “botnets” that are then used to flood websites with traffic to shut them down, or for criminal activities that, in the words of Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell, “siphon wealth and invade privacy on a massive scale.”

Wyden isn’t convinced that the changes are urgent. Along with Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Steve Daines (R-Mont.), he tried on Wednesday to get the Senate to approve legislation that would have either blocked or delayed the implementation of the new powers.

Those efforts failed.

“By sitting here and doing nothing, the Senate has given consent to this expansion of government hacking and surveillance,” Wyden said in a statement. “Law-abiding Americans are going to ask, ‘What were you guys thinking?’ when the FBI starts hacking victims of a botnet hack. Or when a mass hack goes awry and breaks their device or an entire hospital system and puts lives at risk.”

Caldwell argued the rules had already been debated and vetted. In a November 28 blog post, she wrote the federal judiciary deliberated on the changes for three years, using the same process used to modify other rules of criminal procedure. The current rule change deals specifically with venue issues—removing traditional jurisdictional constraints—and not what investigators can actually do as part of the search, she wrote. Further, investigators already had the power to search multiple computers at the same time, she noted, and it was already legal for investigators to hack victim computers to understand the scope of the criminal hack.

“It would be strange if the law forbade searching the scene of a crime,” she wrote.

Caldwell also wrote that the rule modification doesn’t change what is and isn’t permissible under the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. “The Constitution already forbids mass, indiscriminate rummaging through victims’ computers, and it will continue to do so,” she wrote. “By contrast, blocking the [rule change] would make it more difficult for law enforcement to combat mass hacking by actual criminals.”

But those reassurances likely will not satisfy privacy advocates. In June, tech writer Mike Masnick noted that the DOJ’s justification for the rule change “skirt[ed] the truth, at best.” The new rule, Masnick wrote, “effectively wipe[s] out the requirement to give a copy of the warrant to the person whose computers are being hacked,” which “pretty much guarantees that some of the people who are hacked following this won’t even know about it.” He suggested that the DOJ’s use of the threat of child exploitation as a way to legitimize the rule change in effect derailed the necessary review of serious modifications to the government’s powers that should be debated and approved by Congress. “The FBI has a rather long history of abusing its surveillance powers, and especially seeking to avoid strict oversight,” Masnick wrote. “Approving such a change just because the DOJ is insisting it’s ‘FOR THE CHILDREN, WON’T YOU PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!’ isn’t a particularly good reason.”

That’s probably why big tech companies like Google and a host of civil rights organizations have opposed the change for years.

“Google has a significant interest in protecting its users and securing its infrastructure,” wrote Richard Salgado, Google’s director of law enforcement and information security, in a February 2015 letter submitted to the Judicial Advisory Committee on Criminal Rules. “The proposed amendment substantively expands the government’s current authority under Rule 41 and raises a number of monumental and highly complex constitutional, legal, and geopolitical concerns.”

from:    http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/12/fbi-computer-hacking-supreme-court

What Value – Hope?

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In Stripping Away Our Hope, Maybe Trump Has Done Us a Favor

The outcome of this election is a wake-up call to action. Now that we know our elected leaders will not save us, let’s get to work.
Trump-Action.gif
David Korten

Prince Ea, rapper and spoken-word artist and social justice advocate, has a soliloquy on YouTube with a surprising title: WHY IM HAPPY TRUMP WON. How could he think that, as he has passionately called for recognizing the dignity in all people? He’s happy, he says, because he sees this election result as a wake-up call. It forces us to recognize the sickness of our society and “that we cannot legislate our way out of human problems, nor can we truly change the world by changing the rulers.”

I remember hoping a Clinton-Gore administration would lead to a system transformation back in 1992. I had the same hope for the Obama administration in 2008.

But it’s now clear that leadership for the needed system change will not come from within the existing corporate-dominated political system. It must come from We the People, claiming and exercising our sovereign right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Since we cannot expect action from the upcoming administration and Congress on any measure that puts environmental and social interests ahead of the interests of corporations and the very rich, there will be no point during the next two to four years in the old discussions of what might be politically feasible. We can instead focus on building popular support for what is necessary and desirable and transforming the political landscape to press the rule makers to follow.

Because of the depth and breadth of the change our circumstances require, we will need to organize on many fronts, including the following four:

1. Resist the forces of corporate rule. Given Trump’s record and that of his political allies, we should be prepared to expose his betrayal of his promise to his base to clear the swamp of Wall Street interests and lobbyists as he pushes to privatize public services, programs, and infrastructure; roll back environmental protections; cut taxes for the rich; normalize corruption; and further rig the electoral process. All the while, we must keep clearly in mind that resistance without a compelling positive alternative is a losing strategy.

2. Grow community. The relationships involved in strong, inclusive, caring communities are an essential foundation of what some call the ecological civilization we must now bring into being. Reconnecting with neighbors. Organizing activities that connect people across religious and racial lines. Rebuilding local economies. Resisting racism and sexism. Supporting local farmers. Participating in local initiatives to restore local ecosystems. Supporting sustainable-energy initiatives. Advancing cooperative ownership. Electing community-oriented city council members and county supervisors. Supporting groups finding housing for the homeless and jobs for the jobless. Campaigning for a living wage. I find hope in evidence that such efforts are blossoming all around the country in ways I’ve not seen in my lifetime. As science is confirming, such community-building engagement affirms our self-worth and aids recovery from the distrust and fear the presidential campaign has evoked.

3. Democratize political institutions. Voter suppression, the distortions of corporate media and dark money, gerrymandering, the candidate limitations of a two-party system controlled by a corporate establishment, and an electoral college system that ignores the will of the majority are powerful reminders that democracy in the United States remains an aspiration. A true democracy of the sovereign people is another essential foundation of the ecological civilization on which our future well-being depends. We will have it only as We the People organize to demand it.

4. Advance a new public narrative. We humans are only beginning to awaken to the fact that our status as living Earth’s dominant species carries with it responsibilities as well as rewards. The ways of living, the institutions, and the narratives of our past no longer serve. We humans live by shared stories. We need a shared narrative that gives us the courage and guiding vision to take the step to species maturity. Through public dialogue, social networking, and independent media, we can find a compelling shared narrative to guide our path to institutions and policies appropriate for our time.

If the outcome of this election forces us to face up to the depth of system failure that threatens our common future and motivates us to engage the work of an essential cultural and institutional transformation, it may prove to be, as Prince Ea put it, a blessing in disguise.

from:   http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/in-stripping-away-our-hope-maybe-trump-has-done-us-a-favor-20161130

Interesting Quantum Distortion

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ESO/L. Calçada

We just got the first real evidence of a strange quantum distortion in empty space

It’s taken us 80 years to witness this.

BEC CREW

For the first time, astronomers have observed a strange quantum phenomenon in action, where a neutron star is surrounded by a magnetic field so intense, it’s given rise to a region in empty space where matter spontaneously pops in and out of existence.

Called vacuum birefringence, this bizarre phenomenon was first predicted back in the 1930s, but had only ever been observed on the atomic scale. Now scientists have finally seen it occur in nature, and it goes against everything that Newton and Einstein had mapped out.

“This is a macroscopic manifestation of quantum field,” Jeremy Heyl from the University of British Columbia in Canada, who was not involved in the research, told Science. “It’s manifest on the scale of a neutron star.”

An international team of astronomers led by Roberto Mignani from INAF Milan in Italy made the discovery while observing a neutron star called RX J1856.5-3754 that’s 400 light-years from Earth.

Neutron stars are the crushed cores of massive stars that collapsed under their own weight when they ran out of fuel, and exploded as a supernova.

They’re made of some of the most dense material in the Universe – just 1 teaspoon of the stuff would weigh 1 billion tons on Earth – and their crust is 10 billion times stronger than steel.

Neutron stars also have the strongest magnetic fields in the known Universe – astronomers predict that the strongest neutron star magnetic fields are nearly 100 trillion times stronger than Earth’s.

These magnetic fields are so ridiculous, they’re thought to affect the properties of the empty space surrounding a neutron star.

In the classical physics of Newton and Einstein, the vacuum of space is entirely empty, but the theory of quantum mechanics assumes something very different.

According to quantum electrodynamics (QED) – a quantum theory that describes how light and matter interact – it’s predicted that space is actually full of ‘virtual particles’ that pop in and out of existence and mess with the activity of light particles (photons) as they zip around the Universe.

These virtual particles aren’t like regular physical particles like electrons and photons, but are fluctuations in quantum fields that have similar properties to a regular particle – the big difference being that they can appear and vanish at any point in space and time.

In regular empty space, photons aren’t affected by these virtual particles, and travel without interference.

But in the empty space near the incredibly intense magnetic field of a neutron star, these virtual particles are ‘excited’, and they have a dramatic effect on any photons passing through.

“According to QED, a highly magnetised vacuum behaves as a prism for the propagation of light, an effect known as vacuum birefringence,” Mignani explains in a press release.

“This effect can be detected only in the presence of enormously strong magnetic fields, such as those around neutron stars,” adds team member Roberto Turolla from the University of Padua in Italy.

As Jay Bennett reports for Popular Mechanics, the researchers directed the world’s most advanced ground-based telescope, the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), at their neutron star, and observed linear polarisation – the alignment of light waves influenced by electromagnetic forced – in the empty space around the star.

“This is rather odd, because conventional relativity says that light should pass freely through a vacuum, such as space, without being altered,” says Bennett.

“The linear polarisation was to such a degree (16 degrees, to be precise) that the only known explanations are theories of QED and the influence of virtual particles.”

You can see an illustration of this at the top of the page, where light coming from the surface of a neutron star (on the left) becomes linearly polarised as it travels through the vacuum of space on its way to the observer on Earth (on the right).

The next step now is for the observations to be replicated in another scenario to know for sure that vacuum birefringence is what we’re looking at here, and if that’s the case, we’ve got a whole new phenomenon to investigate in the field of quantum mechanics.

“When Einstein came up with the theory of general relativity 100 years ago, he had no idea that it would be used for navigational systems. The consequences of this discovery probably will also have to be realised on a longer timescale,” Magnani told New Scientist.

The research has been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, and you can access it for free at arXiv.org.

from:    http://www.sciencealert.com/we-just-got-the-first-real-evidence-of-a-strange-quantum-distortion-in-empty-space