0 New research reveals conspiring conspiracy theorists

Conspiracy theories - such as those surrounding the death of Princess Diana - are more likely to be believed by people who are willing themselves to conspire, new research at the University has shown.

In a paper to be published in the British Journal of Social Psychology, Dr Karen Douglas and Dr Robbie Sutton, two researchers from the School of Psychology^[1], found that - in keeping with the psychological process called projection - an individual’s perception that "I would do it" informs his or her perception that "they did it".

The research, titled Does it take one to know one? Endorsement of conspiracy theories is influenced by personal willingness to conspire^[2], considered the responses of around 250 UK undergraduates to 17 major alleged conspiracies, such as the 'assassinations' of Princess Diana and John F. Kennedy, the 'faking’ of the moon landings and the 'orchestration' of the 9/11 attacks by the US government.

In the first study, participants were asked whether they would personally play a role in such conspiracies, if they had been in a position to do so. An example of this was 'If you were in the position of the government, would you have ordered the attack on the Twin Towers?' The more that participants indicated a willingness to conspire, the more they found the same conspiracy theories to be plausible, interesting, and worth considering.

Further, the researchers found that participants who were highly Machiavellian - defined as willing to exploit others for personal gain - were more likely to indicate willingness to conspire, and as a result, were more likely to believe in conspiracy theories.

In the second study, half of the participants were asked to remember a time that they had helped someone. The research team reasoned that this would temporarily enhance participants' sense that they are moral people. As expected, these participants, when compared to a control group, were less willing to conspire, and as a result, were less likely to take conspiracy theories seriously.

'We wanted to test a new explanation of why conspiracy theories are endorsed in an internet age when people have access to a matrix of often conflicting information from a variety of sources,' said Dr Douglas.

'We found that in their search for explanations under such uncertain and confusing conditions, people rely partly on projection - the assumption that others would behave much as they would.

'We're not saying however that all conspiracy theorists are immoral or that they have arrived at their beliefs through projection. It's important to note that other factors may lead people to believe in conspiracy theories. Also, our research says nothing about the truth or objective plausibility of such theories. However what we have shown is that one reason some people endorse conspiracy theories is because is they project their own moral tendencies onto the supposed conspirators', she said.

http://www.kent.ac.uk/news/homepagestories/new-research-reveals-conspiring-conspiracy-theorists/2011

0 The Real Whitehouse Situation Room Photo... During Bin Laden's "Death".

Click picture for Larger size

0 Could mainstream news media use this kind technology for Protest/Crowd control coverage?

Could mainstream news media use this kind technology for "false flag" or "Protest/Crowd control" coverage?...adding or removing the crowd...or even "buildings" as it sees fit, in an effort to make the TV viewer less or more concerned?.

It's been done many times before with far less style..but still produced the same goal.

Think for example the jubilation of the crowds during the pulling down of Saddam's statue at the end of the Iraq war,

all that took was a certain camera angle to make it seem that there actually were crowds....

click for larger

A far pan of the footage shows how set up the scene really was, for more on this see:

http://youtu.be/yyn8Kb_do8g or http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/NYI304A.html

Yes this technology makes your favourite TV show look more flashy...but use it to "Trick" the public... and it paints a very scary future for us all.

0 Dr Sanjay Gupta Forgets the script on Anderson Coopers show when talking about Bin Ladens DNA

Obama's choice of Surgeon General 2009, though he withdrew..many think he maybe just hasn't had his
"take one for the team & reap the rewards" moment yet.
Dr Gupta, talking about how the DNA Test done on Osama Bin Laden only took 5 hours....rather than the at least
48 hours it would normally take, loses the script and gets nicely re-directed by Cooper...who then also struggles...with the most comical nonsensical piece of ballcrap story to come out of Washington in....oooh...a decade?

0 Photo of dead 'Osama' reported to be found on website from last December?

The below story is from
http://whatreallyhappened.com/
as the original source at
http://www.muslm.net/vb/showthread.php?t=410982
is now suddenly no longer available...
Mike Rivero caught it just in time ;o)

Well, I am no expert, but it looks to me from the date stamps on this web page like the picture blasted all over Pakistan TV of the 'Osama' that was killed today ...

... might be a photo that was floating around the internet for the last few months...

And it appears to be photoshopped!

Here is the real Osama from about 15 years ago.

Now flip it left to right...

And compare the lower half with today's photo of the
dead 'Osama'!

There are other signs of photoshop as well, such as blurred edges on the beard and an obvious difference in sharpness between the eyes and the mouth, It looks like someone took a dead body and pasted the real Obama's mouth onto it to make it look more like him. Did Obama just fall for a dirty trick by Pakistan's ISI? Inquiring minds want to know! :) Mike Rivero

0 France says U.S. economy will get a boost from bin Laden's death

French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde on Monday welcomed the killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and said his death could bolster consumer confidence and economic growth in the United States.

Christine Lagarde

"The U.S. economy is like the American people. It reacts very quickly either positively or negatively," Lagarde told France 2 television. "I wouldn't be surprised if this event prompted a pick-up in confidence."
News that a U.S.-led operation had killed bin Laden in a firefight in Pakistan caused the dollar to rebound from a three-year low on Monday, and Lagarde said his killing would give a lift to U.S. stocks and other financial securities.
The death of the terrorist leader who masterminded the deadly September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, would help heal a wound that had been open for nearly a decade, she said.
Bin Laden had been the object of a search since he eluded U.S. soldiers and Afghan militia forces in a large-scale assault on the Tora Bora mountains of Afghanistan in 2011.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/02/us-binladen-france-economy-idUSTRE7411K920110502

I've got just one thing to say to that....

"LOL! how stupid do they think you are??"

0 Fox News December 2001: Bin Laden Already Dead

Source:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,41576,00.html

0 Had Essex Police overlooked rules governing the use of unmanned aircraft in the UK?

Essex Police to sell 'spy in the sky'

ESSEX Police is to sell off an unmanned aircraft dubbed the ‘spy in the sky’ because it has never been used.
The Force confirmed the machine, which was bought in May 2008 at a cost of £22,000, would be sold because it ‘does not offer value for money’.
The drone had never been licensed, despite the Force’s intentions of using it to monitor large events and track criminals.
An Essex Police spokesman said: “We own an air robot which, to date, has not been deployed operationally while clarification was obtained regarding licensing legislation.
“We have since made an assessment of our assets and we are in the process of selling the drone.

“We would hope to get the £22,000 back but like most technology, the price would have dropped over the years.”
The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) confirmed that Essex Police had not applied for a licence for the drone.
The CAA said it needed to be consulted over any use of the drones, which can fly up to 400ft and reach speeds of 30mph.
Essex Police also needed to gain permission to fly within 164ft of people and within 492ft of buildings.

Robert Chambers, chairman of Essex Police Authority when the decision to buy the drone was made, said: “I’m quite happy it’s not going ahead because I’d rather see police on the ground looking at things.

“Buying it was probably one of the mistakes I made, so I hold my hands up and say sometimes you get it wrong.”

He said it was a shame money had been invested but, in the context of the authority’s budget, it only equated to “half a police officer”.

A spokesman for the CAA said: “We’ve had no communication with Essex Police.

“The police can be exempt from a certain number of rules governing the use of unmanned aircraft provided they can show they are able to use them safely.”

http://www.yellowadvertiser-today.co.uk

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech

http://www.gazette-news.co.uk/news

0 Richard Gage Explains 9/11 Truth On Fox 2 Detroit

Richard Gage, the architect at the forefront of the activist group Architects & Engineers For 9/11 Truth, is given some rare mainstream TV airtime, garnering an interview with Detroit’s FOX 2. Somewhat surprisingly, anchor Huel Perkins actually lets him talk at some length:

LINKS:
www.ae911truth.org/

www.myfoxdetroit.com/dpp/news/local

0 The reasons to buy silver explained in layman's terms........in 4 mins.

Keep in mind this video is from 2008...at that time Silver was $15 per oz,

now just 3 years later silver is touching $49 per oz...and in some circles is predicted to possibly hit $200 per oz in the near future.

0 New Windows 8 Will Recognize Your Face

Forget about passwords and fingerprint readers, Windows laptops of the future may authenticate simply by looking at you.

Using a leaked early build of Windows 8, the hackers at Windows8italia discovered a sensor programming interface with the ability to "detect human presence." Presumably, this would allow the computer to power on when the user draws near.

A big piece of this puzzle is already in place with Microsoft's Kinect, an Xbox 360 controller that tracks motion in three dimensions. Kinect already uses facial recognition to log users into Xbox Live, so bringing the technology to Windows seems like a logical step.

Microsoft reportedly thinks so, too. Leaked planning documents from last year suggest that users could log in simply by sitting down in front of the computer, eliminating the extra step of entering a password.

Of course, as CrunchGear's Devin Coldewey points out, you'd have to get over the paranoia of having a camera that constantly scans the room, looking for you.

Read more: http://techland.time.com/2011/04/22/windows-8-may-recognize-your-face/#ixzz1KXhH2cTJ

0 Credit Card Reform in Action

0 Facebook Says It May Be Allowing 'Too Much' Free Speech In Some Nations

Facebook is reportedly negotiating with Chinese partners to launch the social network in China, where it is currently blocked from use.

But expanding into China requires abiding by Chinese laws, which require web companies to censor everything from search results to status updates.

Though Facebook says it is dedicated to making the world a "more open and connected" place--a mission that clashes with the Chinese government's frequent crackdowns on Internet expression--a spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that it is considering censoring the content that appears on its site in nations abroad.

While he did not mention China specifically, Facebook lobbyist Adam Conner told the Journal, "Maybe we will block content in some countries, but not others."

(Facebook's director of international communications noted only that the company was "studying and learning about China" but has so far "made no decisions about if, or how, we will approach it.")

Facebook has remained relatively mum on the use of the site by protestors in Tunisia, Egypt and beyond as a tool for organizing demonstrations.

Conner suggested that the company may be bringing "too much" freedom of expression in some nations.

"We are occasionally held in uncomfortable positions because now we're allowing too much, maybe, free speech in countries that haven't experienced it before," Conner said.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/20/facebook-free-speech-censorship_n_851499.html

0 Multiple Military Blackhawk choppers land in downtown Miami on "Domestic Security Task Force exercise"

Residents in the neighborhood saw and heard several military-style, “pitch-black” helicopters flying around and hovering on top of Brickell buildings Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning.

Turns out that it was a training exercise by the Southeast Regional Domestic Security Task Force. In other words, a Homeland Security operation, that few other authorities apparently knew about, including the U.S. Coast Guard.

Lt. Russ Tippett, spokesman for the coast guard happens to live in Brickell, and said the choppers didn’t make it easy to sleep, as the drill went on for hours.

“It was extremely loud and annoying,’’ Tippett said, theorizing at first that it may have been a U.S. Customs Operation.

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue didn’t know about it, referring media calls to the City of Miami’s Fire Rescue. A spokesman there assumed it was a film shoot.

Sgt. Bill Williams, who oversaw the operation for the Miami-Dade Police Department, was not immediately available for details.

“I couldn’t see them a lot of the time, but I could hear them because there are echoes around the buildings,” said Neilson Paty, who lives in Brickell Bay. “We see helicopters every day, but it was very obvious that these are not tourist or U.S. Coast Guard helicopters.”

A Miami police spokesman said the helicopters were conducting an “operational” training drill. He was not allowed to comment on details of the drill.

Paty said he is understanding of the city having its reasons to not inform residents about the drill and that he is not upset for not getting any alerts of the commotion.

“It was loud enough to wake up some people, but it wasn’t overwhelming enough to disturb the peace or something like that,” he said.

On Tuesday, Miami police officers in Brickell said that it was all part of a planned Homeland Security exercise, but confusion about the helicopters was rampant about 6 a.m. Wednesday.

It all began about 9:15 p.m. Tuesday, when at least three large Black Hawk-like choppers landed in a parking lot of the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts on Biscayne Boulevard and 14th Street.

The choppers then charged over the Brickell and Miami river area. Men who appeared to be SWAT team members were also seen taking part in the exercise.

Witnesses were tweeting as the event unfolded.

"Three choppers just dropped a group of men on top of the Bank of America building in Brickell," tweeted a man identified as Ianik Drouin, about 9:45 p.m.

"I just saw one of the brickell choppers turn so quickly, it had to go sideways," tweeted Sarah Elles about midnight.

Diana Pedroni also had trouble sleeping.

"Oh not again! #brickellchoppers flying on top of my building," tweeted Pedroni about midnight.

About 1 a.m., Eddie Prieto was surprised to find out he may have to endure more of it for the rest of the month.

"Five more niths? Boo! RT @Brickellinfo #DoD will be conducting drills through April 25th," tweeted Prieto about 1 a.m.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/19/2176185/military-style-helicopters-over.html#ixzz1KGZCedKV

0 Chernobyl-2 Exclusive: RT at secret Soviet facility inside dead zone

It was the world's worst nuclear disaster, but 25 years on, the battle to contain it continues. Building a new sarcophagus over the Chernobyl site is the most pressing issue, as a meeting of donor countries is held in Ukraine.

0 White Sky Diary London UK. *Yellow Gas, Instant Cloud's and possible UFO's ?

WHITE SKY DIARY - ENTRY 1

Captured in the skies above London.
Yellow gassy substance expands to form an 'instant cloud'.
As soon as the cloud reaches full expansion it is visited by several high speed flying objects.
NOTE: The objects fly THROUGH / UNDER and ABOVE the cloud, and are notably different to the flies and other insects seen at the beginning of the video.
The high speed objects were NOT visible at the time of filming.
Can anybody identify these objects?
Has anybody else noticed these instant clouds?
ARTIFICIAL CLOUD MAKING PATENT IN ACTION?
NASA BLACK PROJECT?
NATURAL PHENOMENON?
ALIENS?
Talk to me, all comments welcome here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzmxGw-iIp0&feature=channel_video_title

0 London is urged to issue smog alert as weather gets warmer

Boris Johnson today faced calls to issue a smog alert for central London.

Green Party mayoral candidate Jenny Jones said Londoners should be made aware of a poor air quality "episode" that is set to worsen with the sunny weather.

Dim outlook: how air pollution over the City can cloud view of landmarks

In a letter to the Mayor, she said he had a duty to help protect the health of vulnerable Londoners and the hundreds of thousands of visitors who will descend on the capital for the royal wedding weekend unaware of the danger to their health.

London is expected to breach its European air quality limits within the next 24 hours. A site in Marylebone Road has tipped the capital over the maximum number of breaches allowed.

Ms Jones said: "London is currently experiencing an air pollution episode and this is likely to carry on through the next week.

"The Government have issued smog alerts on occasions and I feel that the Mayor should step forward to help protect the health of vulnerable Londoners and those visiting the capital. He should be making people aware of what they are breathing in and the risks to their health.

"It is important information for people to know if they suffer from a pre-existing respiratory problem."

She added: "We have the prospect of hundreds of thousands of visitors flocking to central London to stand around all day for the royal wedding, in one of the most polluted cities in Europe."

The Greens urged Mr Johnson to advertise the Airtext service which predicts air pollution.

During previous high pollution levels the Environment Department has issued smog alerts for vulnerable people.

The Mayor's own health impact study estimated up to 4,267 deaths in London in 2008 were attributable to long-term air pollution.

Cher Piddock, the Asthma UK Adviceline nurse, said: "High levels of pollution have been linked to an increased risk of asthma attacks, so people who have pollution as a trigger should avoid going out if air quality is poor, and always carry their inhaler. They should also keep windows shut whenever possible."

A spokeswoman for the Mayor said: "Information on air pollution is widely available, including in most daily newspapers such as the Evening Standard. In addition we encourage Londoners to sign up to the excellent airText service (http://www.airtext.info/) which provides free text, e-mail or voicemail alerts of elevated levels of pollution."

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/evening standard

0 Jean Charles De Menezes CCTV Footage

This is a video that I put together a awhile ago...I have featured it here now, as I am pretty disgusted that "media"..even "alternative" has started to refer to him as

" The Brazilian guy that got shot on the London tube"...

0 Anti-internet piracy laws 'infringe human rights'

Laws designed to block access to piracy websites have been thrown further into doubt after a senior advisor to EU judges suggested such measures could infringe human rights.

Uk telegraph

Advocate General Pedro Cruz Villalón said similar laws in Belgium brought in to force broadband providers to detect and block unlawful filesharing were “a restriction on the right to respect for the privacy of communications and the right to protection of personal data”.

He also said such a system would restrict the fundamental right to freedom of information.

Opponents of stronger copyright enforcement online have seized on the opinion. They claim it means laws such as Britain's Digital Economy Act, which grants the government or courts powers to force ISPs to block piracy websites, are illegal.

Ofcom is already investigating the feasibility of the laws, which have never been used.

The Advocate General’s opinion was published as part of an ongoing dispute between Scarlet, a Belgian ISP, and SABAM, a rights holder group.

Scarlet took its case to the European Court of Justice after SABAM won a court order in 2007 which would force it to build a system to identify and block unlawful downloads of copyright material.
Mr Cruz Villalón recommended that the ECJ should overturn the Belgian court order.
“Neither the filtering system, which is intended to be applied on a systematic, universal, permanent and perpetual basis, nor the blocking mechanism, which can be activated without any provision being made for the persons affected to challenge it or object to it, are coupled with adequate safeguards,” he said.
If the court agrees with the Advocate General, it is not clear exactly what impact its ruling would have on the Digital Economy Act’s website blocking provisions.
The Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt ordered Ofcom to review the laws in February, saying “it is not clear whether the site blocking provisions in the Act could work in practice”.
At the same time the government opened talks between ISPs and the music industry to encourage a voluntary agreement on a list of websites that would be blocked, which would avoid any need to use the Digital Economy Act.

0 Moving liquefied ground by Earthquake in Japan

In Chiba prefecture next to Tokyo

0 Spammers Continue to Exploit the Disaster in Japan

From Symantec Blog:

http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/spammers-continue-exploit-disaster-japan

Symantec has blogged previously about spammers exploiting the recent catastrophic situation in Japan. Since then, Symantec has observed additional variations in spam attacks in which the spammers are continuing to exploit the tragedy, even as the earthquake and tsunami relief efforts are in progress. Similar to what we have seen in the past, virus attacks in the form of messages containing links to images in the message body were observed in the third week of March. Such attacks, along with scam emails, are usually prevalent after such disasters have occurred. The subject line and screenshot of a sample message body of the virus attack can be seen below.

Subject: Novo tsunami atinge Sendai e Japao declara estado de emergencia em usina nuclear
[Subject: New tsunami hits Japan Sendai and declares state of emergency in nuclear plant]

As seen in the screenshot above, what appears to be a video is in fact just a link to an image. Once the link is clicked, the user is asked to download and install an executable file (“XAR485849834.exe” – screenshot below) that is malware related to a Brazilian banking Trojan. The link to the image hxxp://xxx.<removed>trade.com/globo.com.html leads the user to download the malware payload from the attacking machine. After it has been successfully installed, the malware gathers the user’s Internet banking details and other sensitive information.

Similar to the sample above, another variation of the spam attack has a message that lures the user into watching a video of the devastating tsunami in Japan. The From and Subject lines of the spam message are below.

From: "Veja o video gravado no momento do tsunami no japao." <tsunami@terra.com.br>
Subject: Veja o video gravado no momento do tsunami no japao.

The English translation of the subject line and body of the spam message (in Portuguese) is below.

Subject: Watch the video recorded at the time of the tsunami in Japan.

Camera man was able to shoot everything
View video

What appears to be a video is again just an image that is composed of a link to the attacking machine that downloads the malware. The IP addresses involved in the above spam attacks are traced back to Brazil.

The scammers have also been exploiting the relief efforts by sending 419 scam emails that have been prevalent ever since the natural disaster took place. In another variation of the Nigerian scam that has been observed recently, the fake message urges people to help the survivors of the earthquake and tsunami while the country is battling a nuclear crisis.

The message lists the various organizations working on relief and recovery in the region. However, towards the end the message, the scammer requests a donation in the form of a wire transfer payment through a popular service. The scammer also asks that the sender emails the complete details of the transaction (as mentioned on the receipt) to an email address that quite obviously belongs to the scammers. Scammers favor wire transfer services because payments are irreversible, untraceable, and require minimal identity checks. The IP address 82.128.7.139—which is involved in the scam email—was traced back to Lagos, Nigeria. This IP has been blacklisted because of its past involvement in such scams.

Symantec recommends that our readers reach out to the earthquake and tsunami victims through legitimate and secure channels so that the help that you send reaches the intended recipients. Moreover, be cautious of downloading certain file types, particularly executables (.exe). Any emails containing or leading to this type of application extension should be considered suspicious, particularly if it's coming from an unknown sender.

2 Bin Laden is dead.....Long live Bin Laden.

Who's keeping the terror myth alive?

In the trigger-happy post-9/11 world, the favoured way to instigate a war is to demand that the designated "evildoer" prove a negative.

Iraq was invaded because it couldn't prove that it didn't have WMDs. Iran is under constant threat of attack unless it can demonstrate that it's not seeking nuclear weapons. And now Pakistan is being chastised for allegedly harbouring Osama bin Laden—who in all probability has been dead and buried for eight years.

But with the hunt for the elusive bin Laden having already cost thousands of lives and trillions of dollars, perhaps Americans should demand conclusive proof that Israel hasn’t conned them into fighting a phoney “war on terror.”

0 CIA Veteran says Bin Laden is a diversion and not capable of 9/11 attacks

Former CIA official Milt Bearden talks about Bin Ladens non-existent involvement in 911 and how the CIA trained Usama Bin Laden.

I would like to add that everything stated in this video by
Mr Bearden is now admitted by the white house and here are some quotes to confirm that claim;

"We've never made the case, or argued the case that somehow Osama bin Laden was directly involved in 9/11. That evidence has never been forthcoming." —Dick Cheney, "Interview of the Vice President by Tony Snow", March 29, 2006 www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/03/20060329-2.html

"9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Laden's Most Wanted page. He has not been formally indicted and charged in connection with 9/11 because the FBI has no hard evidence connected Bin Laden to 9/11." —FBI agent Rex Tomb, June 6, 2006

And to read what Bin Laden himself said concerning 911 one week after 911 go to CNN's official site

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/16/inv.binladen.denial/
below:

And remember that everything he states here is totally contrary to what is said in the videos that have been proven to be fake of Bin Laden confessing to 911.

0 6 year old girl groped then drug tested by TSA...for your "Protection"

Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
April 13, 2011

The parents of a six year old girl who was subjected to an enhanced pat-down at the hands of the TSA appeared confused and disturbed in an interview on ABC News’ Good Morning America today as they called for a change in security procedures.

Selena and Dr. Todd Drexel, of Bowling Green, Ky., were thrust into the spotlight this week after a video of their daughter, Anna, being searched at New Orleans Armstrong International Airport went viral on the internet.

The couple said they allowed the video to be uploaded to Youtube in order to gauge other opinions on the incident which they feel was very wrong.

The video (below) shows the child in some distress as she is intimately probed by a stranger while her parents look on powerless.

LIttle Anna’s reaction to the incident speaks volumes. She was upset and distressed because she thought she had done something wrong and was being punished by the so called authorities. The untainted innocence of the child’s view of the incident tells you that there is something very very wrong with the way millions of Americans are allowing their government to act in the name of security.

To pick out a six year old child a a possible security threat and frisk her for dangerous weapons in an American airport is utterly insane, however it is far from an isolated incident, as we have previously documented.

If anyone else abducted someone’s child and then sexually molested them they would be rightly called a pedophile and locked up for a long time, but when the government does it not only is it deemed acceptable, but it also trains a whole generation of children that being kidnapped by an adult and having their genitals groped is normal.

Parents Say TSA Made It Clear “There Would Be Trouble” If They Refused To Allow 6-Year Old Daughter To Be Groped

0 Racist? Angry? The answer may be in a pill

A pill to enhance moral behaviour; a treatment for racist thoughts; a therapy to increase your empathy for people in other countries?

These may sound like the stuff of science fiction but, with medicine moving closer to altering our moral state, society should be preparing for the consequences, according to a book reviewing scientific developments in the field.

Drugs such as Prozac, which alters a patient's mental state, already have an impact on moral behaviour but scientists predict that future medical advances may allow much more sophisticated manipulations.

The field is in its infancy but "it's very far from being science fiction", says the deputy director of the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics and a Wellcome Trust biomedical ethics award winner, Dr Guy Kahane.

"Science has ignored the question of moral improvement so far but it is now becoming a big debate," he says. "There is already a growing body of research you can describe in these terms. Studies show that certain drugs affect the ways people respond to moral dilemmas by increasing their sense of empathy, group affiliation and by reducing aggression."

Researchers have become interested in developing biomedical technologies capable of intervening in the biological processes that affect moral behaviour and moral thinking, says a Wellcome Trust research fellow at Oxford University's Uehiro Centre, Dr Tom Douglas. He is a co-author of Enhancing Human Capacities, published this week.

"Drugs that affect our moral thinking and behaviour already exist but we tend not to think of them in that way," he says. "[Prozac] lowers aggression and bitterness against environment and so could be said to make people more agreeable. Or oxytocin, the so-called love hormone ... increases feelings of social bonding and empathy while reducing anxiety. Scientists will develop more of these drugs and create new ways of taking drugs we already know about."

But would pharmacologically induced altruism, for example, amount to genuine moral behaviour? "We can change people's emotional responses but quite whether that improves their moral behaviour is not something science can answer," Kahane says.

He also admits it is unlikely that people would rush to take a pill that would improve their morals.

"Becoming more trusting, nicer, less aggressive and less violent can make you more vulnerable to exploitation," he says. "On the other hand, it could improve your relationships or help your career."

Kahane does not advocate putting morality drugs in the water supply but does suggest that if administered widely, they might help humanity tackle global issues.

"Relating to the plight of people on the other side of the world or of future generations is not in our nature," he says. "This new body of drugs could make possible feelings of global affiliation and of abstract empathy for future generations."

The chairman in ethics in medicine and director of the centre for ethics in medicine at the University of Bristol, Professor Ruud ter Meulen, warns that while some drugs can improve moral behaviour, others - and sometimes the same ones - can have the opposite effect.

"While oxytocin makes you more likely to trust and co-operate with others in your social group, it reduces empathy for those outside the group," he says.

He says deep brain stimulation, used for Parkinson's disease, has had unintended consequences, leading to cases in which patients begin to steal or become sexually aggressive.

Meulen suggests moral-enhancement drugs might be used in the criminal justice system. "These drugs will be more effective in prevention and cure than prison," he says.

0 Report: FBI device didn't record bomb plot

Prosecutors in the Portland tree lighting bomb plot say the FBI attempt to record the suspect's first words about a plot failed because the recorder died, according to a report in The Oregonian.

The newspaper reports that prosecutors wrote in court documents filed Thursday that other agents still overheard the July 30 conversation between bombing suspect Mohamed Mohamud and an undercover agent.

Mohamud is charged with plotting to detonate a van filled with what he thought were explosives via a remote cell phone trigger during Portland's Christmas Tree Lighting event in Pioneer Courthouse Square. About 10,000 people were gathered in the square that night.

FBI agents arrested Mohamud immediately after they say he attempted to detonate the device. However, Mohamud's lawyers appear to be building a case that the Somali was illegally entrapped.

Mohamud is charged with attempting to ignite a weapon of mass destruction.

Link to original story
http://projectmindwake.blogspot.com/2010/11/oregon-fbi-supply-weapon-of-mass.html

0 UK Home secretary wants plan to collect details of flights in and out of Europe to be expanded to include all flights within EU

Britain is trying to set up an EU-wide network of travel databases to record the movements and personal details of millions of air passengers within Europe

The home secretary, Theresa May, is hoping that, when they meet on Monday, European justice and home affairs ministers will back a massive expansion of EU proposals, which as they stand would apply only to flights in and out of Europe and see travellers' details anonymised after 30 days.

Theresa May, the home secretary, is meeting European justice and home affairs ministers on Monday to discuss proposals for collecting passenger records.

May, who was elected on a pledge to scale back the "database state", has been lobbying hard for the data – known as passenger name records (PNR) – to also be collected for flights within Europe, tripling the number of journeys tracked. She wants the data to be stored for up to six years.

The home secretary has already won the backing of 17 other EU member states for the move but is heading for a civil liberties clash with the European parliament and the German government.

She has argued that the expansion is needed to combat terrorism but critics say it will involve the storage of a huge amount of personal data, leaving room for random profiling.

PNR data is already collected for flights between Europe and America, with the airlines required to pass on passenger booking details to authorities.

The 19 separate items of personal information involved include home address, passport number, credit card details, mobile phone number and the traveller's itinerary.

Read More http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/07/air-passenger-data-collection-europe

0 Does Government Own Your Remotely Backed Up Computer Files, Your Emails, or Your Cell Phone GPS Info?

Did you know that there are no laws to prevent government agencies from raiding your computer's remotely hosted back up files, your third party emails, your cloud computing files, or your cell phone GPS location records? Well, there aren't.

As the law stands today government can go into your private computer files or trace your cell phone location without a warrant.

As a result of this lapse in protection form unlawful search and seizure a new group of concerned parties intends to change the law with the Digital Fourth Amendment campaign. (http://www.digitalfourthamendment.org/)

The problem is not necessarily that government is out to steal all our computing information, but that the laws have simply not caught up to today's technology. The laws that cover how policing agencies and governments can access your emails, computer files, and cell phone GPS records are currently governed by rules that are decades out of date. These rules were written in the 1980s, long before the Internet came along, before cloud computing was invented, before email, and well before cell phones that could track your whereabouts became pervasive.
You see, today all your personal information that is stored in third party storage space is not considered to be the kind of personal property that would require a court-issued warrant for government to access. If you have email stored at Google, if you use a cloud computing service, or if you have a third party data back up service it is all open for government to view without a warrant because it is in the actual possession of a third party. Currently none of these computer records are considered your private records.
This also holds true for cell phone GPS location records. As the law stands today government can access your cell phone location records and find out where you've been and all without a by your leave from the courts.
The Digital Fourth Amendment campaign aims to change that and bring the laws against unlawful search and seizure into the digital world of the 21st century.

0 You Never Explain Why They Want To Do Us Harm! What's Their Motivation? Helen Thomas

When are the US people...and the World for that matter, going to wake up to this Farce that calls itself.. HOMELAND SECURITY

0 Will Wheaton - Yesterday, I was touched -- in my opinion, inappropriately -- by a TSA agent at LAX"

Wil Wheaton is an American actor and writer. As an actor, he is best known for his portrayals of Wesley Crusher on the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, Gordie LaChance in the film Stand by Me and Joey Trotta in Toy Soldiers. As a writer, he is best known for his blog, Wil Wheaton Dot Net.

The following is taken from his blog posted on the 6th april 2011.

"Yesterday, I was touched -- in my opinion, inappropriately -- by a TSA agent at LAX.

I'm not going to talk about it in detail until I can speak with an attorney, but I've spent much of the last 24 hours replaying it over and over in my mind, and though some of the initial outrage has faded, I still feel sick and angry when I think about it.

What I want to say today is this: I believe that the choice we are currently given by the American government when we need to fly is morally wrong, unconstitutional, and does nothing to enhance passenger safety.

I further believe that when I choose to fly, I should not be forced to choose between submitting myself to a virtually-nude scan (and exposing myself to uncertain health risks due to radiation exposure)¹, or enduring an aggressive, invasive patdown where a stranger puts his hands in my pants, and makes any contact at all with my genitals."

Read More on his blog here http://wilwheaton.typepad.com

Hopefully his story will change a few public perceptions of the real agenda behind the TSA "Pant-downs" and X-ray Scanners.

Below is what probably should have happened.....never be without your phaser.

0 Massive anti-Israel rally held in Cairo, demands freedom for Gaza.

Over one million Egyptian protesters in Cairo's Liberation square have demanded their military rulers to abandon Israel and lift the blockade on the besieged Gaza strip.
Protesters voiced their anger at Tel Aviv by burning the Israeli flag and demanding the Liberation of Palestine, a Press TV correspondent said.

They promised to stand by Gazans, who have been suffering Israeli attacks and its four-year long crippling siege.

Many protesters headed toward the US Embassy from Liberation Square to protest Israel's deadly attacks on Gaza.

The Israeli flag was torn to pieces, when protesters tried to raise Palestinian flag above the Israeli embassy.

The development comes two months after a historic revolution ousted President Hosni Mubarak.

Protesters also demanded the prosecution of officials belonging to the former regime --mainly the ousted president Mubarak and his family.

Egypt's toppled regime under Mubarak served the interests of Israel by assisting and keeping silent on the killing of Gazans.

Egypt has imposed a blockade on Gaza since the democratically elected Hamas government took control of the territory in 2007. Since then Israel has imposed a crippling blockade on the territory triggering a humanitarian crisis.

A major Egyptian political party, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), has recently demanded that the country's Supreme Council of the Armed Forces takes action in breaking the siege of Gaza.

Egypt's political parties say the Gaza blockade serves the interests of Israel and the US and threatens regional stability and independence.

This is while Israeli officials have been repeatedly threatening to launch a fresh major offensive against Gaza.

They say such an onslaught could be even more destructive and deadly than the one at the turn of 2009, which killed over 1,400 Palestinians -- many of them women and children.

Breaking news - www.breakingnews.com

Laws designed to block access to piracy websites have been thrown further into doubt after a senior advisor to EU judges suggested such measures could infringe human rights.

Parents Say TSA Made It Clear “There Would Be Trouble” If They Refused To Allow 6-Year Old Daughter To Be Groped