Confirmation of Dredd Blog Gulf Reports

Recall that a commission was set up by President Obama to study the handling of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico (The National Commission on the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill).

That oil spill commission has now confirmed what Dredd Blog was reporting before, during, and after the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.

From this blog's perspective we saw, about a month before the disaster, that the Obama Administration had lost its way by using The W Compass.

This blog sounded the alarms the very day that Obama said he was going to open offshore waters to deep water drilling for oil.

Yes, we saw that The Obama Administration had become adrift in an ocean of oil baron propaganda, that the drift was going to lead to a bad place, and that Obama's saying "the technology is now mature and is now quite safe" did not make it so.

When the Deepwater Horizon disaster struck about a month later, following the president's boasting on behalf of big oil, we foresaw that the federal government would panic and then go into propaganda mode because it had egg all over its face and oil all over the states weakened most by Katrina.

We gave a 65 million year history of disasters in the Gulf, kept up the pressure in the Danger Lurks In The Deep Water and Cleanup Begins In The Deep PR Waters.

Whew! that was a tiring span of time for all of us.

Now, it is being widely reported that the Oil Spill Commission is in general agreement with Dredd Blog on many of these issues.

So President Obama, are we really in good hands with the oil state?

The Cuckoo's Egg Hatched Again - 2

We have been doing a series about the weakness in election systems brought on by the means and methods used to develop software / hardware systems empowering those election systems.

We associate election systems to a notion of freedom through our secular belief system.

When you come right down to it, "freedom" is a feeling, a powerful essence that was captured in an old Creme song:

Pom pom pom pom pom pom, I Feel Free

Feel when I dance with you,
We move like the sea.
You, you're all I want to know.
I feel free, I feel free, I feel free.

I can walk down the street, there's no one there
Though the pavements are one huge crowd.
I can drive down the road; my eyes don't see,
Though my mind wants to cry out loud.

I feel free, I feel free, I feel free.

I can walk down the street, there's no one there
Though the pavements are one huge crowd.
I can drive down the road; my eyes don't see,
Though my mind wants to cry out loud,
Though my mind wants to cry out loud.

Dance floor is like the sea,
Ceiling is the sky.
You're the sun and as you shine on me,
I feel free, I feel free, I feel free.

(I Feel, Creme). Governments are very, very, very well aware of this, so they use that knowledge to their advantage, not primarily for wee the people (a.k.a. "the public").

Joseph Stalin was one of the government players who was well aware of the reality. He touched upon it with a saying attributed to him: "The voters decide nothing, those who count the votes decide everything".

This nuanced revelation into the inner workings of his despotic mind means that as long as the voters feel everything is fine with their election system, you can make elections come out any way you want to so long as "you are counting" the votes. If the voters feel free, that is all that matters.

Over the past decade the U.S. government, after suffering a coup by neoCons of the right, has hammered the little people with feelings about security.

The "I feel fine" sentiment has been challenged incessantly with "I feel fear", the purpose being to direct tax dollars in the direction the neoCon government wanted to take the nation, wars and more wars.

They did all that initially through "winning elections" (The Supreme Court Five in Bush v Gore cast the deciding 5 votes).

Each and every time election officials feel all mavericky then want to go rogue by challenging anyone who doubts the security of their election system, that system gets its ass kicked pronto.

A recent episode under the skin, under the gaze, yes, under the feel good daze of the Washington D.C. crowd makes this abundantly clear:

The District of Columbia is conducting a pilot project to allow overseas and military voters to download and return absentee ballots over the Internet. Before opening the system to real voters, D.C. has been holding a test period in which they've invited the public to evaluate the system's security and usability.

This is exactly the kind of open, public testing that many of us in the e-voting security community — including me — have been encouraging vendors and municipalities to conduct. So I was glad to participate, even though the test was launched with only three days' notice. I assembled a team from the University of Michigan, including my PhD students, Eric Wustrow and Scott Wolchok, and Dawn Isabel, a member of the University of Michigan technical staff.

Within 36 hours of the system going live, our team had found and exploited a vulnerability that gave us almost total control of the server software, including the ability to change votes and reveal voters’ secret ballots. In this post, I’ll describe what we did, how we did it, and what it means for Internet voting.

(Hacked Egg Heads, emphasis added). The import of this is tremendous because easily hackable election systems like this are the most widely used systems across the land.

Just because election officials' being lax about voting machine integrity is an election crime, which is a State Crime Against Democracy (SCAD), that does not prevent SCAD after SCAD from happening, but neither does our addiction to feeling good no matter what is really happening.

Dr. David Jefferson of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, one who is scientifically aware of the vulnerability of electronic voting machines, praised the team who showed how easy it is for hackers to throw an election.

When the hacker team testified before the District of Columbia government officials at a public meeting last Friday, they also pointed out a shocker:

Halderman also reported that while he and his students had control of the system, they witnessed hackers from China and Iran prodding those routers and switches.

(Washington Post). The feeling I have about this is that we have foreign governments spending vast amounts on our elections, while at the same time they hack into our election computers.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

The End of MOMCOM?

We have reported the awareness the military has concerning the effect of global warming on military tactics and strategy.

We have reported on the imperialism induced by national addiction to oil, together with the growing tension all that brings to the table of foreign relations.

Still, somehow it seems out of place for MOMCOM to remove the "O" out of the name, to remove the oil from the military oil media complex doesn't it? (MGMCOM ... military green media complex?)

But evidently that is what is happening, albeit on a small scale for the time being:

The 150 Marines of Company I, Third Battalion, Fifth Marines, will be the first to take renewable technology into a battle zone, where the new equipment will replace diesel and kerosene-based fuels that would ordinarily generate power to run their encampment.

Even as Congress has struggled unsuccessfully to pass an energy bill and many states have put renewable energy on hold because of the recession, the military this year has pushed rapidly forward. After a decade of waging wars in remote corners of the globe where fuel is not readily available, senior commanders have come to see overdependence on fossil fuel as a big liability, and renewable technologies — which have become more reliable and less expensive over the past few years — as providing a potential answer. These new types of renewable energy now account for only a small percentage of the power used by the armed forces, but military leaders plan to rapidly expand their use over the next decade.

(NY Times). The military showing more saavy than the congress underscores a travesty. Perhaps that will begin to change if the White House and military step out and set an example.

The military has controlled the development of a lot of science, so I am struggling to see a silver lining on the dark clouds approaching.

Perhaps the military could look at the notion of The Methanol Economy, as well as tidal generators for development within our existing infrastructure.

Corp Germ > Corp Seed > Corp Monster - 2

In the first post of this series, Corp Germ > Corp Seed > Corp Monster, Dredd Blog exposed the false notion of history which the neoCon Tea Baggers who use the term "free market" tend to have.

We noted that they are voracious practitioners of revisionist history so as to distort the writings, beliefs, and ideology of those historical figures they claim to be following.

In other Dredd Blog posts we equate these neoCon Tea Baggers to The Ferengi of Star Trek infamy.

Now that they have a majority of "brethren" on the Supreme Court they have decided to revolutionize, through what they claim to have disdain for - judicial activism, the constitutional law concerning The First Amendment.

Not only that, in so doing, they have dabbled into The Separation of Powers Doctrine in as much as they have removed from Congress the right to regulate corporate campaign contributions.

The Ferengi have now been unleashed upon Wee The People.

From the cases The Supreme Five Ferengi are taking on, it looks like that revolution of First Amendment Law may continue for a while.

Like the guy spinning the roulette wheel says, "where she stops nobody knows".

The next post in this series is here.

Water Everywhere But Here

The deadly serious nature of potable water supply was discussed in Global Warming & Potable Water over at the Ecocosmology Blog a while back.

Other deadly serious threats to civilization have been mentioned by Dredd Blog posts such as Embryonic Look At Civilization's Future - 2, along with a post urging us not to forget we have no way out but to address the serious immediate threats to the survival of civilization.

Now The Online Journal Nature points out that 80% of the Earth's population lives in unsecure potable water zones (if you don't subscribe to Nature, the article is discussed here and here).

The stark truth of the report is alarming:

The world's rivers are in crisis including in North America and Europe where governments have invested trillions of dollars to clean up freshwater supplies, a study showed Wednesday.

"Threats to human water security and biological diversity are pandemic," Charles Vorosmarty of the City University of New York, co-lead author of the report in the journal Nature, told Reuters.

The international team of scientists estimated that almost 80 percent of the world's population -- or about 5 billion people -- lived in areas with high levels of threat to water security, caused mainly by river mismanagement and pollution.

(Reuters, emphasis added). The propaganda of government (MOMCOM today) sells fear in the form of making the citizenry afraid of Islam, Communism, Socialism, and other Don Quixote type boogie men.

MOMCOM has been peddling security so as to be able to engage in wars for oil, yet MOMCOM really cares nothing for civilian concerns, seeing as how MOMCOM obsesses over violent solutions to every problem.

Governments are fiddling with madness while the people of all nations are rushed headlong toward unprecedented calamity.

They seem not to have the capacity to care for anything other than their own political career; they work to develop the capacity to stay in a complete state of denial about the deaths of hundreds of millions of the citizens of the Earth; they FAIL the test.

Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 3

In light of the post over at the Ecocosmology Blog, entitled "A Lovely Planet In The Neighborhood - 2?", it is time to once again get scientifically rebellious Dredd bloggers.

Yes, it is time once again to stimulate some grey matter, to disturb Big Brother, and to rattle the chains of the scientific establishment, an elitist bureaucracy within the world bureaucracy of warlords.

While it is true that in the prior episode we kicked up some dust, take note that at several times in the past Dredd Blog has kicked over the traces in other rebel science posts here, here, here, and here, for examples.

But for the current post, lets not only remember why it is important to be cosmic adults, lets also show once again how immature the governments on this planet really are.

The Ecocosmology Blog post reveals how the hopey spacey travelly thingy that NASA science is selling is a pig in a poke.

That science is almost wholly based on imperialistic military concepts (see Science According To MOMCOM) which are funded so massively it tends to corrupt our science away from the better direction where mature science would tend to go.

The bullies who run scientific development today have been held back many grades, spending all their time at the War Colleges where research is composed of experiments into how many bodies a bullet can go through, or how many WMD will fit on the tip of a petroleum product fuelled missile on its way to destroy something in order to save it.

Since it is unlikely that we will receive cosmic help from them, many contemplate a "someone from somewhere out there" who could help us survive ourselves on this planet.

With that in mind, could the planet 20.5 light years away have evolved alien life who have mastered space travel, after having mastered warmonger impulses, and after learning not to destroy their own home world?

The odds are much better for that than the odds are for earthlings ever travelling to that planet prior to our destruction of our current civilization.

These odds are increased by noting that the star, a red dwarf, is very old, if our science about stars is correct.

That means the six planets orbiting the star Gliese 581 are likely old too, and life could be so old that it is wise.

So, this could be a Knowing moment, but "knowing" of the unearthly type, yes, knowing of the rebel science type.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

Inside Job: $CAD With Money

The use of the word "$CAD" in the title (a take off on "SCAD") means State Crimes Against Democracy conducted by theft of the public fisc.

The Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC yesterday was a mind blower to many folks, because it focused on the issue.

Dylan had on a guest who created "Inside Job", a documentary about the banksters who plundered the treasury, and who are still doing so wantonly.

This is another one of those situations where the government is complacent in some degree, clearly making this a broad based State Crime Against Democracy (SCAD).

Dredd Blog takes that position because it is a federal crime to steal public money by deception or similar means:

§ 648. Custodians, generally, misusing public funds

Whoever, being an officer or other person charged by any Act of Congress with the safe-keeping of the public moneys, loans, uses, or converts to his own use, or deposits in any bank, including any branch or agency of a foreign bank (as such terms are defined in paragraphs (1) and (3) of section 1(b) of the International Banking Act of 1978), or exchanges for other funds, except as specially allowed by law, any portion of the public moneys intrusted to him for safe-keeping, is guilty of embezzlement of the money so loaned, used, converted, deposited, or exchanged, and shall be fined under this title or in a sum equal to the amount of money so embezzled, whichever is greater, or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both;

(Cornell Law School). A creative U.S. Attorney could use these statutes to prosecute what has happened on Wall Street for a decade, but there are even more statutes to contemplate:

§ 653. Disbursing officer misusing public funds

Whoever, being a disbursing officer of the United States, or any department or agency thereof, or a person acting as such, in any manner converts to his own use, or loans with or without interest, or deposits in any place or in any manner, except as authorized by law, any public money intrusted to him; or, for any purpose not prescribed by law, withdraws from the Treasury or any authorized depositary, or transfers, or applies, any portion of the public money intrusted to him, is guilty of embezzlement of the money so converted, loaned, deposited, withdrawn, transferred, or applied, and shall be fined under this title or not more than the amount embezzled, whichever is greater, or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both;

(Cornell Law School). The scope of federal law reaches far, down into state banks and other banks that participate in utilizing public funds:

§ 656. Theft, embezzlement, or misapplication by bank officer or employee

Whoever, being an officer, director, agent or employee of, or connected in any capacity with any Federal Reserve bank, member bank, depository institution holding company, national bank, insured bank, branch or agency of a foreign bank, or organization operating under section 25 or section 25(a) of the Federal Reserve Act, or a receiver of a national bank, insured bank, branch, agency, or organization or any agent or employee of the receiver, or a Federal Reserve Agent, or an agent or employee of a Federal Reserve Agent or of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, embezzles, abstracts, purloins or willfully misapplies any of the moneys, funds or credits of such bank, branch, agency, or organization or holding company or any moneys, funds, assets or securities intrusted to the custody or care of such bank, branch, agency, or organization, or holding company or to the custody or care of any such agent, officer, director, employee or receiver, shall be fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned not more than 30 years, or both; ...

As used in this section, the term “national bank” is synonymous with “national banking association”; “member bank” means and includes any national bank, state bank, or bank and trust company which has become a member of one of the Federal Reserve banks;

(Cornell Law School). The little roots of federal law even go deep into the lending and insurance systems across the nation:

§ 657. Lending, credit and insurance institutions

Whoever, being an officer, agent or employee of or connected in any capacity with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, National Credit Union Administration, Office of Thrift Supervision, the Resolution Trust Corporation, any Federal home loan bank, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Farm Credit Administration, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Federal Crop Insurance Corporation, the Secretary of Agriculture acting through the Farmers Home Administration or successor agency, the Rural Development Administration or successor agency, or the Farm Credit System Insurance Corporation, a Farm Credit Bank, a bank for cooperatives or any lending, mortgage, insurance, credit or savings and loan corporation or association authorized or acting under the laws of the United States or any institution, other than an insured bank (as defined in section 656), the accounts of which are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or by the National Credit Union Administration Board or any small business investment company, or any community development financial institution receiving financial assistance under the Riegle Community Development and Regulatory Improvement Act of 1994, and whoever, being a receiver of any such institution, or agent or employee of the receiver, embezzles, abstracts, purloins or willfully misapplies any moneys, funds, credits, securities or other things of value belonging to such institution, or pledged or otherwise intrusted to its care, shall be fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned not more than 30 years, or both;

(Cornell Law School). Any attempt to cover up or misrepresent the value of assets ("toxic assets") would fall into the financial criminal statutes as well:

§ 1005. Bank entries, reports and transactions

Whoever, being an officer, director, agent or employee of any Federal Reserve bank, member bank, depository institution holding company, national bank, insured bank, branch or agency of a foreign bank, or organization operating under section 25 or section 25(a) of the Federal Reserve Act, without authority from the directors of such bank, branch, agency, or organization or company, issues or puts in circulation any notes of such bank, branch, agency, or organization or company; or

Whoever, without such authority, makes, draws, issues, puts forth, or assigns any certificate of deposit, draft, order, bill of exchange, acceptance, note, debenture, bond, or other obligation, or mortgage, judgment or decree; or

Whoever makes any false entry in any book, report, or statement of such bank, company, branch, agency, or organization with intent to injure or defraud such bank, company, branch, agency, or organization, or any other company, body politic or corporate, or any individual person, or to deceive any officer of such bank, company, branch, agency, or organization, or the Comptroller of the Currency, or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or any agent or examiner appointed to examine the affairs of such bank, company, branch, agency, or organization, or the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; or

Whoever with intent to defraud the United States or any agency thereof, or any financial institution referred to in this section, participates or shares in or receives (directly or indirectly) any money, profit, property, or benefits through any transaction, loan, commission, contract, or any other act of any such financial institution — Shall be fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned not more than 30 years, or both.

(Cornell Law School). The creator of the documentary Inside Job was asked by Dylan Ratigan why not one, zero, nada, of the banksters had been prosecuted for the criminal enterprise that brought our economy down, that took millions of homes, millions of jobs, along with security and peace of mind from millions of American men, women, and children.

He said because Eric Holder is not willing to prosecute the criminals because he is soft on these types of crimes against democracy, which converts the situation into State Crimes Against Democracy due to complacency.

Here are a few Dredd Blog Posts on, or related to, this subject:

State Crimes Against Democracy - 5

Hood Robbin' From Poor Givin' To Rich

When Accountability Is A Plague

In conclusion, the banksters were said to be "too big to fail", but as it turns out they are Too Big To Jail.