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Microsoft to Make a Digital India a Reality Using White Space

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Written by: Alek Hidell

 

Microsoft has developed a plan to provide free internet service to the entire country of India using the unused spectrum between  between TV stations, known as White Space. Microsoft has already received approval to test the program in two districts.  If successful, Microsoft hopes to implement the free internet service across the nation.

 Broadband-Rural-India-300x224Everyone Should Have Access To Internet & Knowledge – AnonHQ

In 2010, the FCC made white space, the unused space between VHF and UHF channels available for unlicensed public use.  The attraction to white space is in part due to the overcrowding of currently used communication channels.  White space not only provides an alternative to the currently used spectrum, it can also be used to provide internet in places that are too remote for standard ISPs.  The current range of Wi-Fi is approximately 100 meters or just over 300 feet.  Microsoft’s new white space internet would have a broadcast range of over 10 kilometers.  It was originally called super-wifi because of it’s ability to broadcast over vast distances and it’s ability to penetrate buildings, trees and other structures that would have previously cause interference.

whiteSPACES-Microsoft

Currently the white space in India is going unused, much like most of the world.  If the project is successful, it would allow for Prime Minister Narenda Modi’s idea of a Digital India to become reality.  Modi has a vision of turning India into a modern digital powerhouse.  Modi’s idea looks to connect Common Service Centers (CSC), as central hubs from which all of a village’s goods  and products can be ordered and picked up. The idea is to create centers of commerce using broadband internet, bringing parts of the country that are currently beyond the reach of internet communications, into the fold.  Commerce isn’t the only use for these planned digital centers.  One could consult with doctors remotely from any of the medical e-centers.   There are also plans to use these centers as education hubs, connecting educators and students around the world.  India hopes to have CSCs up by 2019.

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Microsoft began testing white space technology in 2011 along with partners BT, Nokia and the BBC.  The technology has been in development and is currently available in certain areas.  White space technology is one of the best hopes for bringing low cost, reliable broadband internet to the developing world.

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Sources:

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-08-22/news/53112561_1_digital-india-pwc-india-prime-minister-narendra-modi

 

http://www.hindustantimes.com/business-news/microsoft-to-use-white-space-tech-for-free-internet-in-india/article1-1284325.aspx

 

Social Media and Its Impact On the Self

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Written by: Alek Hidell

 

Social media was born in the early days of the internet. A means for people to communicate, share photos and ideas, one could say social media started with the first email, back in 1971.  Since then, with the help of websites like MySpace, Facebook and Linked-In, social media has become an industry unto itself with more current accounts than people on the planet.

 

While social media is meant to connect people and create positive experiences, there is a downside which many don’t realize.  While some enjoy posting their every random thought or moment, the majority of us take time to carefully sculpt our digital image using select photos, songs, videos or other media that we believe will project to others what we want them to see.  Recent studies are finding that many times, when one’s own personal image does not meet up to the image they believe they project in social media, the result can be depression, low self esteem and a slew of other issues.  As we sculpt our digital image, we rarely portray ourselves in a poor light.  This creates a subtle psychological competition  of sorts between us and our “friends” who may be presenting themselves or their digital identity in a manner that “outshines” us.

 

When one posts on Facebook or other social media, many times the number of “likes” one receives, the greater sense of importance one feels.  Dr. Susan Newman, PH. D., who conducted a study on social media and narcissism, stated “The more ‘likes,’ ‘retweets,’ etcetera, that some people receive gives them a feeling of importance. They represent a form of reassurance that they are recognized by a large number of ‘friends’ in spite of the fact that they may not really know most of them.” Social media has been studied for it’s affects on the individual by many organizations, including Psychology Today. Psychology Today concluded that we receive a boosted ego every time one of our posts is liked. The down side to social media is that besides boosting ego, it can be stressful.  The American Psychological Association recently conducted a study on stress.  According to the study, 39% of teen girls find social media stress significant.

social-media-and-narcissism

Are you a social media narcissist?

Instagram has come under fire lately for “killing girls self esteem” but is there any truth to it? According to a study at Humboldt University Berlin, Instagram, a photo sharing social media site, causes low self esteem due to the number of “cues” being observed of people happy, rich or successful. This brings us back to the internal subtle perception of competition between us and our “friends.”  Watching images of your friends engaging in fun events, wearing nice clothes, driving nice cars, wearing nice jewelery, will have an adverse affect on your feelings of social standing which can and does lead, many times, to low self-esteem.  Last year alone, 58% of plastic surgeons saw a dramatic increase in patients under 30 for facial surgery and inject-able treatments like Botox. Was the rise due to social media? These days it is not uncommon for your first introduction to people to be through social media.  It appears that some actually are sculpting not only their digital image, but their actual image, to make a great first impression in the digital world.

 

Social media is a tool. And with all tools there is a danger associated with it.  A knife can cut you, a car can hit you, and social media can ruin you if you let it.  Like any other tool, know the dangers associated with it and how to over come them.  Social media has connected the world and disconnected individuals.  Knowing social media’s place in your life and not making it your life, is a good place to start.

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Sources:

http://bit.ly/1wjbAYr

http://qz.com/294789/instagram-is-killing-teen-girls-self-esteem/

http://www2.uncp.edu/home/acurtis/NewMedia/SocialMedia/SocialMediaHistory.html

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2014/03/14/how-social-media-affects-our-self-perception/

http://voxxi.com/2013/12/04/psychology-of-social-media-narcissism/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristen-race-phd/6-ways-to-help-your-teens-cope-with-social-media-stress_b_4931490.html

https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2013/highlights.aspx

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/23/cyberbullying-8-ways-to-a_n_2741577.html

The JFK Assassination: 51 Years of Lies, Deceit, and Cover-up

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Written by: Alek Hidell

 

This November 22 marks the 51st anniversary of the John F. Kennedy assassination. This time of year has become a treasure trove of Kennedy related TV shows and news articles all asking the same questions. Was Kennedy assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald, a communist and disgruntled ex-marine or by a complex conspiracy involving the CIA, the Mafia and high ranking government officials? The government has had several inquiries and conclusions drawn on the Kennedy assassination. The first was the Warren Commission’s Report which found that Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated the President alone; a lone assassin. The House Committee on Assassinations in the 70’s, however, found that President Kennedy was most likely assassinated as the result of a conspiracy.  Two official positions have been put forth by the government and still hold to this day.

john-f-kennedy

Kennedy is said to be the most charismatic & charming President who ever lived in the history of the USA and – probably –  the world

The purpose of this article is not to lay out what happened in Dallas on that mournful day in November 1962.  The purpose of this article is to lay out some of what happened after.  I have been a student of the JFK assassination for the better part of three years.  I even publish my articles under the name Alek Hidell, the name allegedly used by Oswald to order the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle found in the Texas School Book Depository. The one thing I have gleamed from studying the Kennedy assassination is that if there was ever a breakdown in the fabric of the matrix, this is it.  I could not begin to summarize the sheer volume of material on the assassination, much of it superfluous but much of it vital to understanding what really happened.  This case has expert witnesses on both sides, and guess what? Both sides appear to have evidence that points to conspiracy and lone gunman theories. There are pieces of evidence against Lee Harvey Oswald that are very incriminating. His signature on the back of one of the infamous backyard photos, which shows Oswald holding the rifle and pistol he ordered by mail, is just one of many.  Experts on both sides have what they deem to be evidence that the photos are either real or fake, depending on who you ask.  This is just one of many examples of how individual pieces of this puzzle are scrutinized and can be used to view the assassination from either point of view.

 

We will probably never know the specifics of what happened in Dealey Plaza. It truly becomes a waste of time going over what happened at the scene as we have already squeezed it for every last bit of information.  The best hope we have for uncovering the truth is to study the cover up.  Yes, there was a cover up.  When people think of the conspiracy to kill Kennedy, they tend to forget that there was a second conspiracy to cover up the true facts of the assassination.  Why would there be a need for a cover up if Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin? That is the ultimate question, isn’t it? Much of the information I will present here is the result of decades of hard work by Doug Horne.  Horne was the senior analyst of Military records for the Assassination Records Review Board from 1995 through 1998.  He summed up his work in a 2009 book entitled “Inside the Assassination Records Review Board.” Thankfully Horne summed up his work in a series of videos called Altered History and can be found in my references.  Horne’s work focused on the medical and autopsy evidence as well as the Zapruter film, which Horne concluded were all altered to fit the lone gunman scenario.  Before I get to that I want to cover some background.

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The Political Climate

Kennedy was elected president in 1960.  He moved into a political climate that was not friendly to the Kennedys, liberalism or the progressive beliefs he held.  To this day I feel that Kennedy was fifty years ahead of his time in ideology and societal understanding.  Eisenhower left office with a stern warning about the growth of the military industrial complex. This is the era that Kennedy inherited.  A progressive searching for peace in a world on the brink of another war.  Kennedy planned to withdraw the troops from Vietnam as is outlined in National Security Action Memorandum 263.  This memorandum would have effectively ended the Vietnam war before it began.  Kennedy was also hated by the establishment types for his failure to order air strikes at the Bay of Pigs.  The Bay of Pigs was a CIA operation which was meant to overthrow the Cuban government.  When Kennedy realized he was being manipulated by the CIA, he refused to order airstrikes and the invasion failed.  Afterward, JFK said that he would smash the CIA into a thousand pieces. This made Kennedy enemy number one to the intelligence community.  So now, Kennedy has neither the Joint Chiefs and the military on his side or the intelligence community.  Many suspect that Lyndon Johnson had a role in the assassination, and if anyone has studied Johnson, you already know that he had his own personal hit man, Malcolm Wallace.  I’m not saying that he was involved, but it is not outside the scope of his past behavior, as Johnson reportedly had his own sister killed.  Johnson and Kennedy were enemies and always had been.  Some say that Johnson manipulated his way onto the ticket by holding personal indiscretions over JFK’s head.  Once in office, Kennedy sent Johnson around the world as an ambassador of goodwill , so to speak, with little to no influence in government.  This enraged Johnson who didn’t want his career to end in the dead-end job of Vice President.  Kennedy’s only friend in Washington was his brother, Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General.

 

The Patsy

Lee Harvey Oswald is an enigma of a figure.  When one follows his life, nothing seems to make sense or add up. A loner as a child, he would ride the subway system alone for hours in New York.  He gained an interest in Communism and while in the Marines, was called Oswaldovich by his fellow recruits. Angry at the system and America, he dropped out of the Marines and defected to the Soviet Union. He returns to America, disappointed by his failures and he assassinated the President. That’s what happened right? Well that is the official story. Oswald is truly a mystery, even to Oswald researchers.  The debate goes on as to whether or not he was an operative of the CIA.  This one piece of information

is probably the biggest question still being asked.  The implications of Oswald having been handled by the intelligence community would be a devastating blow to the official story and the trust that the American people have in their government.  If the assassin of the president worked for the US government, how could we ever trust the government again? The government still has over a million pages of documents on the Kennedy assassination which are classified and unavailable to the public.  While I don’t believe these documents will shed any light on the assassination itself, I have no doubt that they do show a closer relationship between Oswald and the intelligence communities. Why would anyone believe that Oswald was a spy? Lets evaluate his behavior from the time of a child.  His brother attests that Lee loved the television show, I Led Three Lives, a show about a spy.  Lee loved the idea of being a spy.  He decides to join the Civil Air Patrol at age 15, where he meets David Ferrie.  Ferrie was an instructor to Oswald in the CAP and was also a known mafia and CIA pilot.  Ferrie’s involvement in the CIA and mafia are well documented.  It was right around the time he met David Ferrie that he began to take an interest in communism.  Something Ferrie sparked in Oswald? Ferrie was kicked out of the CAP for indoctrinating the young recruits into his ultra right wing philosophies.  Strange? You bet. Lee joins the Marines where he is given a Russian language test. He is then stationed at the CIA air base in  Atsugi Japan.  This was the government’s highest kept secret at the time, the U2 spy plane and the base from which they flew. Oswald, after openly preaching Marxism to fellow Marine’s, in a time when America persecuted communists, ends up at the CIA’s top secret base with a security clearance? Really?  Shortly after being stationed at Atsugi, Oswald gets a discharge from the Marines to take care of his sick mother, who wasn’t sick.  Only a few days after returning home, owning only $200 in his bank account, Oswald buys a $1500 ticket which takes him to England, France and Finland before landing in Russia.  Along the way, Oswald stayed in hotels which are the equivalent of the Ritz Carlton and had tour guides.  How did Oswald afford this? To this day no one knows. Years later, after telling the world he was going to divulge top secret information to the KGB, he is allowed to return to America, never questioned by the CIA, never brought up on treason charges, nothing.  Oswald strolls back into the country like nothing ever happened AND he brought a Russian born wife back with him.  Again, really? Strings were pulled for Oswald by someone.  No one knows who.  Once Oswald returns, he is seen with the likes of David Ferrie, his old CAP teacher, Guy Bannister, a former FBI and CIA man as well as Clay Shaw.  Shaw as you know was the subject of the film JFK by Oliver Stone. The trial of Clay Shaw by New Orleans DA Jim Garrison uncovered many of the intelligence community contacts held by Oswald.  The film also led to the JFK Records Review Board which was responsible for the release of millions of pages of documents. I could go on for days about Oswald and the inconsistencies in his life which point to the intelligence community, but in the interest of time I will save that for another day.  The bottom line is, there is more to Oswald than being the lone gunman disgruntled communist which he has been made out to be.  The deeper I got into studying the JFK assassination, the less relevant Oswald seemed at all.

 

The Medical Evidence

Immediately following the assassination, JFK was rushed to Parkland Hospital in Dallas.  At Parkland, every doctor, nurse and medical assistant who observed JFK stated on the record that they observed a large exit wound in the Occipital Parietal region in the back of the President’s skull. That is just above the bump on the back of the right side of the skull.  Dr. Charles Crenshaw stated that the hole was large enough for pieces of Kennedy’s cerebellum to fall out.  This is in stark contrast to the wounds described in the Warren Commission Report.  This is also corroborated by the skull fragment found in Dealey Plaza by Billy Harper, known as the Harper Fragment. The Warren Commission concluded that Kennedy was shot with a single bullet from the rear which fragmented upon impact and caused the large skull flap injury we have all come to know.  A shot from the rear does not explain an exit wound clearly observed by the entire medical staff at Parkland. Dr. Malcolm Perry was the attending physician who performed the  tracheotomy on JFK.   Dr. Perry reported his observations of the throat wound as a wound of entry, resulting in an approximately 5mm hole in the President’s throat.  The Warren Report indicated that this was a wound of exit, caused by the bullet that entered the President’s back.  The angle of exit was 11 degrees upward from the entrance of the bullet, which struck at the third thoracic vertebrae. The injuries documented in the Warren Commission Report do not correlate with the injuries observed by the doctors at Parkland Hospital.

 

After the brief scuffle between the Parkland doctors, Dallas Police and the Secret Service, the President’s body was loaded onto Air Force 1.  The removal of the body was illegal under Texas law.  Proper procedure would have been for local authorities to maintain custody of the body through autopsy, as this was a Dallas homicide, technically nothing more in the eyes of the law.  The body was transported in a bronze ceremonial casket. Once the body of the President was on board, history took a turn which most are unaware of.  This is where nearly 50 years of research and dedication by the JFK assassination research community paid off.  Getting back to the work of Doug Horne; Doug traced the transport of Kennedy’s body from Parkland to Bethesda and the truth he uncovered destroys the official story and everything we think we know about the Kennedy assassination.  The American people watched the President’s bronze ceremonial casket being removed from Air Force 1, what they didn’t know was that the casket was empty.  The President’s body had already been offloaded in a cheap military style shipping casket and driven to Bethesda Naval Hospital in a black Cadillac mortuary ambulance.  This information was elicited during interviews done by the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB). In 1997, the ARRB interviewed Dennis David and Donald Rebentisch. Both were enlisted Navy men.  Both testified under oath that they removed the President’s casket, a cheap aluminum shipping casket, from a black hearse style ambulance at approximately 1835 hours.  That’s 6:35pm, twenty minutes before the motorcade carrying the bronze casket arrived to Bethesda. This was corroborated by Roger Boyajian, a Marine whose barracks provided physical security for the autopsy.  Boyajian stated that the autopsy itself began at approximately 1845 hours, ten minutes before the motorcade arrived.  Why would there be a need to shuttle the President’s body twenty minutes early and to put on a dog and pony show for the cameras?  The doctors chosen to perform the autopsy were James Humes and Thornton Boswell.  Neither of them had ever performed a gunshot autopsy in their careers.  Neither of them controlled the autopsy.  They were commanded by Military personnel and were active participants in the cover up.  Now, why was the President transported to Bethesda before the motorcade? Sterilization of the crime scene.  In the time before the “official” autopsy started, Kennedy’s wounds were altered to eliminate any evidence of multiple gunmen.  When the doctors from Parkland reviewed the official autopsy photos, none of them had previously observed the injuries they were now shown.  The throat wound, which Dr. Perry described as a wound of entry, and through which he performed the tracheotomy, was now a gaping wound approximately 2-3 inches across.  Above the President’s right eye near the scalp was now a v shaped incision that went the length of the skull.  None of the parkland doctors recall that type of injury and indicated it appeared to be a “crude surgery.”  The gaping head wound in the rear of Kennedy’s skull was now missing from the photographs.  Dr Humes did not even know there was a bullet wound to the throat until after the autopsy was concluded and Dr. Perry informed him by phone.  The autopsy is one of the worst documented autopsies in history. Common autopsy procedures were not followed and areas that should have been investigated were ignored.  After the autopsy, there were four official autopsy reports made.  The first three stated that the wound in the President’s back was shallow and terminated but no bullet was found.  It was not until the three versions made their way through the hands of the military that the report was written a fourth time to indicate that the shallow back wound was actually a through and through that exited the President’s throat.  Besides altered wounds on the President, the majority of the photographs, bullet fragments and of course, the President’s brain have all disappeared.  The alteration of the medical evidence is the single biggest indicator of cover up.

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The Zapruter Film

The Zapruter film is the most well known piece of home movie footage in history.  We have all seen it and know it.  What if the Z film you thought you knew was an alteration?  I personally doubted the Z film was altered until I watch Doug Horne’s interview with Dino Brugioni.  Brugioni was the number two guy at the CIA’s NPIC, the photo lab that handled and developed the CIA’s most sensitive photos.  Much of his work was done on the U2 spy plane images over Russia.  Brugioni was presented with a split 8mm copy of the Z film with sprocket holes on only one side.  This is important as the type of film used by Zapruter was a double 8, which has two rows of opposing frames.  In order to develop the film, it has to be slit down the center so a 25 foot 16mm film is now a 50 foot 8 mm film.  There were three copies of the Z film made on November 22, but only the original was a split double 8 roll.  Life Magazine, after making a deal with Zapruter, took custody of the original film and the copies on Saturday November 23, 1963.  According to the official story, the original film was held in the possession of Life Magazine in Chicago through the weekend.  We know now that this story is false.  Brugioni was called in that Saturday night where he observed the original unedited Z film and proceeded to make poster boards for presentation of several frames.  He describes the poster boards as being approximately 21 by 24 inches and hinged together.  These are not the poster boards of the Z film that are currently held by the National Archives.  During the interview, Brugioni stated in regards to the Z film he observed, you could see Kennedy’s limo turn onto Elm St.  This portion of the film which has been removed from the known Z film.  The next discrepancy for Brugioni was the explosive head shot at frame 313.  Brugioni’s description of the explosion was that it lasted much longer than only 1 frame and shot much higher into the air.  When Brugioni looked at the poster boards which are now in the National Archives, he stated that those were not the boards made by him and gave specific details.  What Brugioni didn’t know was that the second set of boards were created the next day, Sunday November 24, by his colleagues at NPIC, Ben Hunter and Homer McMahon.  Brugioni was intentionally kept in the dark as to the work of Hunter and McMahon on the poster boards just as Hunter and McMahon were kept out of the loop as far as Brugioni’s work.  All parties were commanded to not discuss their work, even with their commanding officers.  Who gave this order? The Secret Service, specifically Agent Bill Smith.  At NPIC, the only person who was in on the creation of both sets of poster boards was Brugioni’s boss, Arthur Lundahl, a key figure in the cover up.  One has to ask, how did the Secret Service get the original Z film and how did they get Life Magazine to go along with it? Easy. CD Jackson, the publisher of Life Magazine was a former OSS operative, Assistant to President Eisenhower and a life long CIA man.  He personally took part in Operation Mockingbird, which was the CIA’s operation meant to influence the media. When Life Magazine purchased the Z film, it was actually being purchased by the CIA.   Horne has enlisted the help of numerous Hollywood film producers to analyze the known Z film. While his results have not yet been published, Horne indicated that crude painting had in fact occurred on the frames showing Kennedy’s head after the fatal shot. The painting was meant to cover the rear of the head where the Parkland Hospital doctors observed the massive exit wound.  The Zapruter Film Mystery, listed in the references contains the complete interview with Dino Brugioni.  Horne’s work on both the medical evidence and the alteration of the Zapruter Film have brought new life to the JFK assassination investigation.

 

Trying to sum up the details of the JFK assassination is no simple task.  Some have dedicated their lives to solving this mystery and we are closer now than ever.  Will we ever know who pulled the trigger? Probably not, but one thing I think I can say assuredly is that Oswald, most likely, did not.  When one analyzes the alteration of the medical evidence and the Z film, how does Oswald fit into that? Like I said earlier, when you dig into the details, Oswald starts to seem irrelevant.  If Oswald shot the President, why the need for cover up? When asking if there was a conspiracy to kill the President, one has to ask why, if everything truly is as reported to the American people, why is there a need for cover up?  To draw the conclusion that there was a conspiracy to cover up the facts of the assassination, one has to conclude that there was a conspiracy to kill the President.  Hopefully, with the help of researchers like Doug Horne, we will continue to fill in the blanks and come to understand what really happened in Dallas on that fateful day in November.

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Sources:

Doug Horne’s Altered History – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrVyOYsx81k

 

NSAM 263 – http://worldhistoryproject.org/1963/10/11/president-kennedy-issues-nsam-263-ordering-the-withdrawl-of-1-000-military-personnel-from-vietnam-by-the-end-of-1963

 

Doug Horne Essay – http://assassinationofjfk.net/the-af1-tapes-and-subsequent-events-at-andrews-afb-on-november-22-1963-what-was-supposed-to-happen-vs-what-did-happen/

 

Humes and Bowell – http://www.jfklancer.com/HumesBos.html

 

Bullet Wounds – http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/factoid5.htm

 

The Zapruter Film Mystery – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_QIuu6hsAc

 

Operation Mockingbird – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

 

Why We Shouldn’t Ignore Global Warming

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Written by: Tiobe

 

It is trite, perhaps, but true: when it comes to Earth, there is no “away,” no Planet B to escape to, as yet. It is but one of the many facts that makes climate change depressing to those paying attention; if humans damage this planet irreparably (for our use, at any rate), there is no known feasible alternative.

Make no mistake, the science regarding climate change is in: according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a whopping 97 percent of climate scientists agree the planet is warming, most likely due to human activities. A GIF of compiled NASA images showing temperature anomalies from the 1880s to the current decade provides clear visual evidence that fluctuations in Earth’s temperature have decidedly spiked, most notably from the 1930s on.

According to NASA, the global sea level rose about 6.7 inches in the last century, likely from sea ice melted from those rising temperatures created by an increase in carbon emissions, an effect known as the Greenhouse Gas Effect. In recent years, this has had a palpable effect on coastal and island communities; ask residents of New Orleans, Louisiana or of Haiti, or the Philippines if they believe climate change is real. Thanks to Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Ike and Tropical Storm Ketsana, residents of these locales have more firsthand experience with the effects of climate change than any of us would wish.

According to media center Deepcor, the following cities are likely to become submerged in the near future, if trends continue: Guanzhou, China; Mumbai, India; Kolkata, India; Guataquil, Ecuador; Shenzen, China; Miami, Florida; Tianjin, China; New York City, New York and Newark, New Jersey; Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam; New Orleans, Louisiana; Jakarta, Indonesia; Abidjan, Ivory Coast; Chennai, India; Surat, India; Zhanjiang, China; Tampa and St. Petersburg, Florida; Boston, Massachusetts; Bangkok, Thailand; Xiamen, China and Nagoya, Japan.

When you look at it like that, we are truly all in this together.

“Human activities are changing Earth’s climate. At the global level, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases       have increased sharply since the Industrial Revolution. Fossil     fuel burning dominated this increase. Human-caused increases in greenhouse gases are responsible for most of the observed global average surface warming of roughly  1.5°F over the past 140 years. Because natural processes cannot quickly remove        some of these gases (notably carbon dioxide) from the atmosphere, our past,     present and future emissions will influence the climate system for millennia,” states the American Geophysical Union.

Satellite imagery from NASA collected from 2000 to 2014 shows the Aral Sea has all but disappeared, as has rainforest in Brazil.

“Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems,” states the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its fourth assessment report. In fact, it uses the word “irreversible” a grand total of 14 times in that report.

The plain and simple fact is that once sea ice is melted, there is no way to remove it from the oceans and re-freeze it; some damage has been done that cannot be undone.

The good news is our species can be damnable clever and adaptive.

Feldheim, Germany recently became the World’s first energy self-sufficient community, utilizing a combination of solar, wind and biomass facilities for its power sources.

El Hierro in the Spanish Canary Islands claims to have beaten Germany to the punch, using wind and water power plants. The tiny island-nation invested $110 million in Gorona del Viento power plant, which produces up to 48 gigawatt-hours per year to feed the country’s needs.

And then there is the bioreactor algae farm in Geneva, Switzerland above a highway that generates Oxygen and energy whilst consuming carbon dioxide emissions from the vehicles below it.

These are just a small sampling of the many, many innovations humankind has devised in recent years in reaction to the new world we are living in, and which underscore our capacity for adaptation.

Because our consumption of fossil fuels is undoubtedly warming our planet and creating a situation that may be difficult for our species – and others – to survive, but time will tell if we apply our minds and energy to evolving in-step with these changes.

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Sources:

http://deepcor.com/news/1267/global-warming-is-a-global-issue

http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/nov/10/we-must-manage-global-warming-risks-by-cutting-carbon-pollution-ipcc

http://sciencepolicy.agu.org/files/2013/07/AGU-Climate-Change-Position-Statement_August-2013.pdf

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/science/green/141006/time-lapse-gifs-nasa-environment-impact-climate-change-deforestation-mountaintop-mining

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-10/german-village-first-to-become-energy-self-sufficient/5879360

http://n.pr/Ywji3s

http://www.iflscience.com/environment/urban-algae-farm-gobbles-highway-air-pollution

 

How Government Can Activate Your Cameras, Record Audio From Your Phone Or Skype Conversation

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Written by: Tiobe

 

Now that you know the extent to which government agencies like the National Security Agency (NSA) collect your phone and Internet data, thanks largely to the efforts and bravery of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, you may or may not have learned about protecting that data via encryption.

Unfortunately, even if you have taken steps to encrypt your data, now that effort may be negligible; Italian company Hacking Team has created software called Remote Control System, software it claims can “defeat encryption.”

The Intercept published the manuals for Remote Control System, detailing how government employees can infect a device, steal passwords, activate cameras, export emails, and record audio from phone or Skype calls, without leaving the typical traces, using proxy servers to hide its trail.

It is essentially malware that can be installed via USB stick in-person, via email/phishing scam or as a tag-along with standard software installation. It can also use wi-fi hot spots. Remote Control System costs users between 200,000 to one million Euros.

Hacking Team sells Remote Control System exclusively to governments. Hacking Team clients reportedly include: Azerbaijan, Colombia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Hungary, Italy, Kazakhstan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Oman, Panama, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan.

Nine of these nations are listed as “authoritarian” in The Economist’s 2012 Democracy Index.

To date, Remote Control System has been used to target Ethiopian journalists in Washington DC, in Morocco against media company Mafakinch and against human rights activist Ahmed Mansoor in the United Arab Emirates.

“We sell Remote Control System to institutions in more than 40 countries on five continents; all of Europe, but also the Middle East, Asia and United States of America,” said Hacking Team CEO and co-founder David Vincenzetti in a 2011 l’Espresso interview.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Vincenzetti attacked the authors of The Intercept piece on Hacking Team’s Remote Control System.

“Instead of a balanced look at a complex subject, this article is the familiar perspective of activists such as Morgan Marquis-Boire, one of its authors. The writers seem astonishingly unconcerned about, or naively unaware of the criminal and terrorist uses of secret communications over mobile devices and the Web. In this case, they go so far as to begin by mocking the concerns of even the most respected law enforcement organizations… The manuals published by The Intercept appear to be stolen documents and are clearly out of date,” said Vincenzetti in his response letter to The Intercept. “Rational thinkers would agree that there is a proper balance between the right to privacy and society’s need to be protected from crime and terrorism.”

No word yet on how team privacy will respond to Vincenzetti’s software.

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Sources:

https://citizenlab.org/2014/02/mapping-hacking-teams-untraceable-spyware/

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/30/hacking-team/