Monthly Archives: December 2015

Councilmember who opposed asset forfeiture sees his store raided twice

Posted on by

“City Councilman Stephen Holman, who represents Ward 7, and store owner Robert Winston Cox, 62, each face a felony drug count of acquiring proceeds from drug activity, as well as six counts each of unlawful possession of drug paraphernalia stemming from an earlier raid.  ‘They took the same exact types of items this time. I guess they were mad that we restocked,’ Holman said.  Holman alleges the charges might be politically motivated because he has questioned police’s use of civil forfeiture funds and the department’s attempts to use such funds to purchase a Bear Cat armored vehicle. Police officials say that has nothing to do with actions taken.”

http://newsok.com/article/5468125

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Last flight for US-funded air war on drugs as Colombia counts health cost

Posted on by

“For more than two decades crop dusters have buzzed the skies of Colombia showering bright green fields of coca with chemical defoliant as part of a US-funded effort to stem the country’s production of cocaine.  Farmers across the country have long complained that indiscriminate spraying also destroys legal crops, and that the chemical used – glyphosate – has caused everything from skin rashes and respiratory problems to diarrhoea and miscarriages.  Authorities in Colombia and the United States – which has funded the aerial eradication programme with as much as $2bn since 2000 – scoffed at those claims.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/06/colombia-air-war-drugs-last-flight-looms-health-cost

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Colombian president signs decree to legalise medical marijuana

Posted on by

“Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos has signed a decree legalizing the growing and sale of marijuana for medical purposes, a dramatic shift in a country long identified with US-backed policies to stamp out drug crops.  Santos said the new regulatory framework was long overdue given that Colombians had been consuming marijuana and marijuana-based products in a legal void for years.  Conservative critics in Colombia and abroad see Santos’s drive to reform drug policy, including a decision earlier this year to end a two-decade-old campaign of spraying illegal coca crops with herbicides, as a sign that the government’s resolve is weakening.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/22/colombia-president-legalise-medical-marijuana

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Where in the World Is It Safe from Terror?

Posted on by

“Just last week, 51 Saudi citizens were sentenced to execution by decapitation and crucifixion. All according to Sharia law. Their ‘crime’?  Participating in a street demonstration.  What’s even more shocking is that three were minors, including one boy who was just 15 years old at the time of the incident and whose parents insist he was an innocent bystander arrested by mistake.  Opponents of the executions hoped that intense diplomatic pressure from two staunch Saudi allies — the UK and the U.S. — might persuade judges to lighten the minors’ sentences. But the response from Riyadh is, in essence: ‘It’s none of your business.'”

http://www.moneyandmarkets.com/world-safe-74871

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Trump’s Ban on Muslims Is Unconstitutional and Obscures Real Solution

Posted on by

eland_ivan_100x1331

“Trump’s solution is just a more extreme version of the denial that the West has shown since 9/11 that radical Islamist terrorism is retaliatory in nature. The reality for Middle Eastern Muslims has become what George W. Bush claimed after 9/11: the United States needs to fight them over there so it doesn’t have to fight them over here. For Middle Eastern Muslims, they are beginning to strike over here to ultimately get the United States to withdraw from over there. Thus, Trump’s proposal is just one more example of a false solution based on hysteria.”

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=8617

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Et Tu, Brute? (How Empires Die)

Posted on by

“The state-owned Bank of China has been ordered by an American court to hand over customer information to the US. The bank has refused to comply, as to do so would violate China’s privacy law. The US court has subsequently ordered the Bank of China to pay a fine of $50,000 per day.  China is a sovereign nation, halfway around the globe from the US, yet the US seems to feel that it’s somehow entitled to set the rules for China.   All over the world, those who live outside the US are increasingly observing that the US has become so drunk with power that they’re threatening both friend and foe with fines, trade restrictions, monetary sanctions, warfare, and invasions.”

http://www.internationalman.com/articles/babson

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

John Hussman: Reversing the Speculative Effect of QE Overnight

Posted on by

logo

“Last week, without taking any care to reduce the size of its balance sheet, the Federal Reserve instantly changed the monetary environment to one that is observationally equivalent to the one that prevailed in 2009. By raising interest rates artificially (through interest payments on reserves and reverse repurchases) and applying those payments to everything but currency in circulation, the Fed has neutralized the misguided speculative prop it created through 6 years of policy distortion, and it did so in one fell swoop. From the standpoint of investors, the overall effect is just as if the Fed had suddenly reversed every dollar of quantitative easing since 2009 ($1.7 trillion).”

http://www.hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc151221.htm

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Juniper Networks backdoor confirmed, password revealed, NSA suspected

Posted on by

“The next mystery to solve is where this unauthorized code comes from. Security advisories usually relate to vulnerabilities arising from defects — mistakes programmers made. In this case, someone deliberately inserted a backdoor password into Juniper’s devices. That’s a huge deal. If it’s the NSA (which looks possible, given one leak about a program called ‘FEEDTROUGH’ that installs persistent backdoors in Juniper devices) then it will mean that the US government deliberately sabotaged tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of networks that were protected by products from a US company that is the second-largest provider of networking equipment in the world, after Cisco.”

https://boingboing.net/2015/12/21/juniper-networks-backdoor-conf.html

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

CIA director fumes over teen who hacked his AOL email account

Posted on by

“The head of the CIA says he was ‘outraged’ by a teenager’s hacking of his personal AOL email account.  Brennan didn’t explain why someone in his position still has an AOL account that a teenager was able to access.  The hacker said he used a reverse phone-number lookup to determine that Brennan has a Verizon Wireless account.  He then called the company, posing as a technician whose ‘tools were down’ to get details about the account, including Brennan’s AOL email address.  With that information, the teen called AOL and convinced a representative to reset the password, using Brennan’s personal details provided by Verizon.”

http://nypost.com/2015/10/27/cia-director-outraged-with-teenager-who-hacked-him/

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Hillary Clinton wants “Manhattan-like project” to break encryption

Posted on by

“Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has called for a ‘Manhattan-like project’ to help law enforcement break into encrypted communications. This is in reference to the Manhattan Project, the top-secret concentrated research effort which resulted in the US developing nuclear weapons during World War II.  Though Clinton said she has ‘confidence in our tech experts’ to solve this problem, she has continued pushing for weakening encryption despite warnings from Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other tech companies that putting encryption back doors into their products would weaken data security for everyone.”

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/12/hillary-clinton-wants-manhattan-like-project-to-break-encryption/

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet