Julian Assange: 'Western Civilization Has Produced a God, the God of Mass Surveillance'

Seung-yoon Lee, CEO and Co-founder of Byline, recently conducted an exclusive three-hour interview with Julian Assange in the Embassy of Ecuador in London. The interview will be serialized in three parts over the next month.
In part one, Assange talks about how we now live in surveillance society, if Facebook and Google are spying on us and how on earth WikiLeaks out-smarted the United States to rescue Edward Snowden from Hong Kong. 

Seung-Yoon Lee (SY): You recently wrote in the New York Times that "not only do we live in a surveillance state but in a surveillance society." Can you explain what you mean by this?
JA: We've increasingly become accepting of the surveillance that exists at all levels of society. It's hard to escape from that in any traditional way. But I think there are ways to escape. On one hand, we are taking into ourselves the notion that there should be various form of surveillance of individuals -- that we can be surveilled. At the level of national security, this is still fresh. Other national intelligence agencies engage in bulk Internet monitoring. But over time, there will arise an acceptance that this is simply how society is -- as has already arisen with other forms of surveillance. At that point, society develops a type of self-censorship, with the knowledge that surveillance exists -- a self-censorship that is even expressed when people communicate with each other privately. There are examples of this in history, when everyone believes that the person they are talking to is not trustworthy or the communications medium is not trustworthy. That was the situation in East Germany, not because of mass electronics surveillance, but because up to 10 percent of people were at some stage of their lives informants for the state. A double language evolved where no one was saying what they really meant. And conformity was produced because of this low-level fear.

Those predictions in the name of "Science" are more dangerous than astrology

 

 B.M. Hegde

Angelina Jolie had her ovaries removed recently, to counter a possible 50 per cent chance of getting cancer in that part of her body. A few years ago she had had her breasts removed for the same reason. Sooner than later she may have more of her organs removed, and possibly replaced by artificial ones!

Not surprising if you believe these doctors, who could be called cancerologists. There is a 50 per cent chance of any human being contracting any disease. Does that warrant getting our organs removed to remain safe from cancer? If it is that easy, a lot more people will be coughing up money to get their organs removed. I remember my student-days when we used to advise parents to have their children’s tonsils, even appendix, removed lest they cause problems. Now we think that was foolish. Science has advanced by leaps and bounds.

With the latest science many conclusions could be drawn that seem to be true today.

The future is not there. It is yet to be born. The past is dead. The human body is not a machine put together by joining organs. It is a bundle of energy and a colony of 129 trillion human cells, each of which can have an independent existence in isolation. We also are home to ten times that number of germ cells at a ratio of 1:10. The human body works as one whole and not in bits and pieces.

Healing has to be Whole Person Healing (WPH). This is now scientifically accepted by the IOM in the U.S., thanks to Professor Rustum Roy’s efforts. Organs cannot be treated in isolation. In a dynamic system, prediction is impossible unless we know the total initial state of the organism. Writing in the British Medical Journal, Professor W.J. Firth, the physicist, shows how foolish it is for doctors to predict the unpredictable future of their patients. (BMJ 1991; 303: 1565)

Pray, how could anyone advise a patient to have her organs removed for fear of getting cancer there with 50:50 chances? That said, I must hasten to add that this is very sensible medical business. Cancer is a $1.72-trillion industry and growing by leaps and bounds.

The drugs are expensive and are not being tested properly. We have been able to conquer cancer. Money seems to be the only driving force in this business.

Scientists and rationalists condemn our poor astrologers for seeking to predict human future. I agree with them there. But the same people do not condemn this kind of quackery? Why are there such double standards? In fact, the latter is more dangerous as it is done in the name of “Science”.

What is science? I was sure Dolly would die a premature death due to old age diseases as she was created from her mother’s cell.

That happened. Eric Drexler, a young PhD from MIT, started a company, called, if I remember right, Furutistic Inc. He claimed to produce custom-built human beings without mother and father (self-replicating nanobots). He collected billions of dollars from venture capitalists.

His own teacher, the Nobel Laureate Richard Smalley, had to warn the world this is an impossibility. The company closed down, declaring Chapter 11! This is how one makes money through science.

All that is fine with our thinkers, but they are allergic to astrologers. Weather predictions do not come true correctly. Edward Lorenz then had a new hypothesis of the “Butterfly Effect”. In the human body which is non-linear and holistic things happen due to butterfly effect every minute. No one, not even the best scientist, can predict the human future using the present science.

Poor Angelina Jolie, she has been taken for a ride. At this rate what will be left of her body? I wonder how this business thrives in today’s world where the media should keep a watch. On the contrary, the media are helping them by advertising their work. Look at the news of Angelina’s ovaries. They make headline news all over the world. How her removed ovaries are making so much sense to the lay reader?

(Professor Hegde is a Padma Bhushan Awardee 2010, a cardiologist and former Vice-Chancellor of Manipal University. drbmhegde@gmail.com )

Source -The Hindu 

US Worried about Russian missile Defense System

 

The Washington Free Beacon reports that “Russia’s military has completed work on a new missile defense radar in southern Russia that has some U.S. military officials worried Moscow is building up offensive and defensive strategic forces in destabilizing combination.”
“The large radar station near Armavir, located near the Black Sea and designed to detect missiles launched from Europe and Iran, is nearly complete, said U.S. officials.”
“The radar deployment comes as Russia is seeking legal restrictions on U.S. and NATO missile defenses in Europe that are designed to protect the continent and the United States from long-range Iranian missiles.”
The paper also reports that “U.S. officials said Russia’s military restricted publication of photographs of the controversial Yars-M missile… However, one photo of the new missile’s prohibited view was published last year.”
Topic A

MSC OSCAR - Biggest Cargo Ship of the World

Able to hold 19,224 standard 20ft-long containers, the Oscar is the world's biggest carrier ship, in terms of volume. Built by Daewoo in South Korea at a cost of $140m (£93m) and named after the eight-year-old son of Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) president and chief executive Diego Aponte, she is 395.4m (1,297ft) long - a few metres greater than the height of New York's Empire State building, if the antenna on top is not taken into account.

MEA clarification on nuclear deal draws flak---- The Hindu

The government had made it clear that there would be no changes to the Civil Nuclear Liability for Damage Act (2010).

There has been sharp criticism of the government’s contention that United States-based suppliers of nuclear reactors and parts will not be directly liable in case of a nuclear accident, nor can they be sued by Indian nuclear operators unless the contract they sign clearly states it. The clarification of the government’s position was released by the Ministry of External Affairs on Sunday, after it had been shared in a memorandum with U.S. officials.

In it the government had made it clear that there would be no changes to the Civil Nuclear Liability for Damage Act (2010), but that liability for suppliers would apply only if it was written into the contract. The government also stated that Section 46, which relates to victims of an accident being able to sue under ‘tort laws’ does not relate to suppliers at all, and the Parliament debate over the CLND law in 2010 had seen amendments on the issue rejected.

However, Left-party members, who had tried to push for those amendments counter this. “I think that it is illegal for the MEA to contend that the suppliers are not included in ‘tort’ liability, and we will take up all these issues in parliament.” CPI leader D. Raja told The Hindu. Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari also questioned why Indian insurance companies had to bear the brunt of the liability. “The explanation given seems to be in derogation of the law and the will of the people,” he said. Former Chairman of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board Dr. A. Gopalakrishnan also criticised the government’s position saying it “violates the intent and spirit of the CLND,” and accused the Modi government of trying to “facilitate the business interests of the foreign and domestic companies, in utter disregard of the devastating human suffering which is sure to follow a potential severe nuclear accident.”

Interestingly, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who had attended the early negotiations of the nuclear contact group that hammered out the recent agreement, had argued just the opposite when he was Leader of the Opposition in September 2013. In an article available on the BJP website, he had argued that the supplier must be made liable mandatorily and not as an option. “Any attempt to permit NPCIL to abdicate the right given to an operator, would be compromising… and contrary to the provisions of Ssection 17(b) of the Act,” he had argued at the time. When contacted about the agreement on Sunday conflicting with the BJP’s previous stand, Mr. Jaitley made no comment.

On the issue of tracking nuclear material by the U.S., the MEA spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin said that “there would only be IAEA safeguards”, not U.S. safeguards. However, he didn’t reply to the specific question on whether India has agreed for the first to time to share data with the U.S., as The Hindu had reported last week.

Antarctic huts are put online by Google map service

Google took several images with fish-eye lenses and then stitched them together to allow users to explore Shackleton's hut

Images of the Antarctic huts used by polar explorers Sir Ernest Shackleton and Robert Falcon Scott have been posted online as part of the latest extension to Google's Maps service.

The prefabricated wooden cabins were erected in 1908 and 1911 respectively, and were used as bases for the men's attempts to reach the south pole.
Users can navigate the 360-degree photographs to see some of the kit and supplies used by both expeditions.

India to be released a sequel to "HIGGS BOSON"

Mumbai: While physicists across the world are still celebrating the recent detection of the Higgs particle, also known as ‘The God Particle’ by the CERN scientists, here’s exciting news for India too. India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) near Madurai in Tamil Nadu plans to release a sequel to the Higgs boson.


The India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) is a proposed Particle Physics research project to primarily study atmospheric neutrinos in a deep cave under Ino Peak near Theni, Tamil Nadu in India.

“The discovery has given us a lot of confidence. It shows that we are going in the right direction,” said Naba K Mondal, senior professor and spokesperson for the Neutrino Observatory (INO). The INO, to be commissioned by 2017, will enable scientists to go beyond the Standard Model, validated by the Higgs discovery.

Save your PC DATA from virus attack

 With Secure online PC Backup

What does MyPCBackup do?

MyPCBackup uses a small desktop application to backup all of your computers to the cloud.
Your files are constantly backed up and you can access them at anytime from any device in the world.
Click 'Play' on the video to see what MyPCBackup can do for you.

• 1. Select The Files You Want to upload

  MyPCBackup will backup the files and folders that you choose. Once the initial backup is complete, MyPCBackup will automaticaly save any changes to the files or any new files added.
  You can set your backup schedule and MyPCBackup will run in the background, without you having to do anything.
  
  
  
  

  • 2. Your Files Are Uploaded To The Cloud

    MyPCBackup will backup the files and folders that you choose. Once the initial backup is complete, MyPCBackup will automaticaly save any changes to the files or any new files added.
    You can set your backup schedule and MyPCBackup will run in the background, without you having to do anything.
    
    

    • 3. Access Your Files From Anywhere, At Anytime

      MyPCBackup will backup the files and folders that you choose. Once the initial backup is complete, MyPC Backup will automaticaly save any changes to the files or any new files added.
      You can set your backup schedule and MyPCBackup will run inthe background, without you having to do anything.
      
      Try your Free Trail--For Download---Click
      http://track.mypcbackup.com/?hash=39ffe0b5
      
      
    
    

"Internet Doomsday" virus can blackout on monday

BOSTON (Reuters) - About a quarter-million computer users around the world are at risk of losing Internet access on Monday because of malicious software at the heart of a hacking scam that U.S. authorities shut down last November.

Some blogs and news reports hyped the risk of an outage, warning of a potential "blackout" and describing the Alureon malware as the "Internet Doomsday" virus.

Yet experts said only a tiny fraction of computer users were at risk, and Internet providers would be on call to quickly restore service. They said they considered the threat to be small compared with more-prevalent viruses such as Zeus and SpyEye, which infect millions of PCs and are used to commit financial fraud.

As of this week, about 245,000 computers worldwide were still infected by Alureon and its brethren, according to security firm Deteque. That included 45,355 computers in the United States.

The viruses were designed to redirect Internet traffic through rogue DNS servers controlled by criminals, according to the FBI. DNS servers are computer switchboards that direct Web traffic.

When authorities took down the rogue servers, a federal judge in New York ordered that temporary servers be kept in place while the victims' machines were repaired. The temporary servers will shut down at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Monday, which means the infected PCs that have not been fixed will no longer be able to connect to the Internet.

Some U.S. Internet providers, including AT&T Inc and Time Warner Cable, have made temporary arrangements so that their customers will be able to access the Internet using the address of the rogue DNS servers.

Information on how to identify and clean up infections can be found on a website that a group of security firms and other experts set up: http://www.dcwg.org.
"It's a very easy one to fix," said Gunter Ollmann, vice president of research for security company Damballa. "There are plenty of tools available."

Many of the machines that remain infected are probably not in active use since most victims were notified of the problem, said security expert Johannes Ullrich, who runs the Internet Storm Center, which monitors Web threats.

The United States has charged seven people for orchestrating the worldwide Internet fraud. Six were arrested in Estonia, while the seventh, who was living in Russia, is still at large. Tallinn has so far extradited two of the men to New York where they appeared in Manhattan federal court.

The case is USA v. Tsastsin et al, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 11-cr-878.

Facebook's email switch prompts criticism by users

Facebook is facing a backlash from users after replacing email addresses listed in members' contacts with those provided by its @facebook.com system.

The company said it had acted to make details "consistent" across its site.
If Facebook's email system takes off it could drive more traffic to the firm's pages helping boost advertising sales.
But some users have branded the move "annoying" and "lame" and publicised instructions on how to display original addresses instead of the Facebook ones.
Facebook first announced plans for the move in April, although the news attracted little attention at the time.
"We are providing every Facebook user with his or her own Facebook email address because we find that many users find it useful to connect with each other, but using Facebook email is completely up to you," said a statement from the company.
Emails sent to @facebook.com addresses appear alongside posts sent via the network's internal message system, allowing users to pick up both types of communication from the same place.
Annoyed users One analyst told the BBC the effort could backfire.
"It reeks of the same move Google did with its Buzz product when it automatically opted people in, and users recoiled against the action," said Anthony Mullen, interactive marketing analyst at Forrester Research.
"This is a direction Facebook needs to move in - your email is a proxy for your identity on the internet and Facebook want to usurp people's pre-existing email identities with their own to help drive up traffic to its site and lock users into its service.
"The problem is the lack of transparency - it has acted without asking for members' permission first."
Messages posted to the rival social network Twitter suggested the move had annoyed some users.
"Warnings would have been nice Facebook, don't just go and change email addresses," tweeted Josselyn Arundell from Manchester.
"More stunningly bad work from Facebook," posted London-based Darren Gough.
"Good idea to get people to use it. Poorly executed!!!" added Brent Jagodnik from California.
Few messages supported the move.
Users wishing to undo the change can do so by clicking on the "about" link in their profile and then clicking the "edit" button next to their contact information.
They then need to click make their Facebook email address "hidden from timeline" and then - if they wish - make one or more of their other preferred addresses visible.
bbc

Free software and basic freedom

Specifically mentioned alongside his few contact details is a request to use free telephony. A request for Skype ID is met with a remark, ‘That is non-free (freedom-denying) software.' For this campaigner of freedom since 1983, computing with freedom is a political, ethical and moral choice that every one needs to make, keeping in mind the fact that it affects the community.

One of Richard Stallman's most famous interventions in free software was the GNU General Public Licence (GPL), which he devised around 1985 as a general licence applicable to any program. The licence codifies the concept of “copyleft,” the central idea of which gives “everyone permission to run the program, copy the program, modify the program and distribute modified versions, but not permission to add restrictions of their own.”

Mr. Stallman was recently in India to promote the use of free software.

Besides campaigning against restrictive and surveillance features of proprietary software companies, the Free Software Foundation, launched by Mr. Stallman, provides a repository of information on free applications in various fields. For instance, in music, it offers details of online music stores that provide “Internet music without the guilt” and a variety of audio books without digital restrictions or formats exclusivity. Mr. Stallman himself uses a netbook that runs with 100 per cent free software even at the BIOS level.

And this has considerable implications in newly emerging technology such as smartphones. While quite a few people believe that Android OS is free software because of its use of the Linux kernel, Mr. Stallman is firm that it is not. “The executables in Android cannot be modified by the user but only by the manufacturer despite the fact that the source code is open,” he says. “So, you access the source code and write your version but the device will not support it. This goes against the freedom to run your own version. Just the source code being open is only theoretical freedom,” he adds.

A lot of work in creating free alternatives is on, he points out, including Replicant. “One problem with a lot of proprietary software is the problem of digital surveillance. Your own computer can be turned against you, and this is possible because proprietary software have intrusive features,” Mr. Stallman says.

The free software movement, on the other hand, works towards software programmes that can be controlled by the users individually and collectively, he points out. And clearly, this can be used to counter surveillance. For instance, one of the projects on the anvil is a browser add-on that will block the appearance of Facebook ‘like' buttons in other websites. This is important because such buttons offer social networking sites a chance to monitor user behaviour even when the user is not logged into the social networking site, he says.

The Hindu