James L. Paris's Blog, page 190

The Real Threat of Bioterror

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large

I���m a big fan of the Alive After the Fall package. The basis of Alive After the Fall is Scripturally-foretold electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks that can plunge an affected area into darkness, and the practical steps you can take to make it through the event should it strike the area in which you live. One feature I especially like about the Alive After the Fall package is the wealth of information it offers on survival topics beyond the more singular issue of EMP attacks. One of the bonus special reports that���s included as a part of the package is Surviving a Biochemical Attack, and it contains a lot of solid information on a topic few consider nowadays���but should.

Earlier this year, when the Ebola outbreaks in West Africa were dominating the news, thoughts among many turned to the possibility of whether radical Islamist terrorist groups might seek to ���weaponize��� Ebola so that it might be used to kill scores of people through an act of terrorism. The prospect over terrorist use of Ebola as a weapon has been debated in think tanks and by politicians around the world for some time, in light of its high degree of infectiousness and its pronounced mortality rate. Many experts see Ebola as a poor choice for a biological weapon, citing the requirement that it must be transmitted by bodily fluids, and that anthrax is far superior, because the spores can be dried and milled to the form of particles subject to inhalation.

The debate over what sort of biological agent might be most effectively used to terrorize large numbers may go on, but what we do know is that the subject of an attack of some kind occurring against a civilian population is a reasonable one to have. The Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense declared earlier this year that the U.S. government is ���gravely and insufficiently��� prepared to deal with a biological attack on American soil. Panel co-director Asha George said, ���We���re going to see the use of biological weapons eventually. When I say eventually I don���t mean decades from now.��� Spain���s state secretary for security, Francisco Martinez said last year that, based on listening in to conversations held in chat rooms used by terrorists, that ISIS was planning to initiate ���lone wolf��� attacks using biological agents. The threat is real.

In Surviving a Biochemical Attack, readers are treated to a solid overview of the wide variety of biochemical agents that are good candidates for ���weaponization��� in some form. The report also discusses how to prepare, how to develop a disaster plan, and much more.

Including Surviving a Biochemical Attack, the material received in the complete Alive After the Fall package comes in the form of 15 different digital reports, each covering a different survival topic, that total just under 600 pages. What���s more, your purchase is accompanied by a 60-day, money-back guarantee, so if you find it necessary, for any reason, to ask for a refund, you can have one for up to two months after you buy the product. Anyway, I wanted to take this opportunity to discuss another component of this great package with you. If you are like me, and always in the market for more information on managing distressed, even deadly, conditions, you should get a lot of mileage from Alive After the Fall. Click here to learn more.

Outdoor Gear Retailer REI Decides to Stay Closed on Black Friday

 By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large

Outdoor gear retailer REI has made some big waves by announcing that it will remain closed on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and the unofficial first day of the Christmas shopping season. Not only has the company decided to stay closed on what has become the biggest shopping day of the year, but it will even be paying its employees for the day they���re not working.

I, for one, think it���s great if REI wants to do this, and the company���s Facebook page has been bombarded with messages in support of its decision. The move has prompted many to criticize those retailers who will be open on Black Friday. To be fair, the retailers about which I���ll bet they���re thinking���like the Wal-Marts and the Targets���are, unlike REI, publicly held. That means they are owned by shareholders who would certainly not be pleased if the stores were closed on the biggest shopping day of the year. As a privately held company, REI has no such considerations, and has a great deal more latitude to do what it wants this way; it���s suggestive of popular fast food restaurant chain Chick fil A, also privately held, which has remained closed on Sundays, despite the fact that the rest of its competition is very much open. There would be a massive shareholder revolt if, say, Target decided it wasn���t opening on Black Friday ��� in truth, the company would likely face legal action from the shareholder base if it tried that.

Besides, is it really the mere fact that businesses are open the day after Thanksgiving that is troubling to many, or is it the insanely-expanded hours they now typically keep on that day? I suspect what has turned people off to so-called Black Friday is the excess. A store is open on a busy shopping day ��� so what? But what does ���open��� mean on Black Friday? Does it mean 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., like the standard hours (more or less) of a regular retail location? Not anymore. Now, it means open later in the day on Thanksgiving, stay open through the rest of that night and all through the next day, until around midnight. It���s reached the point where stores are opening so early the day after Thanksgiving, or are now opening on Thanksgiving, that employees are having to significantly alter or outright cancel family plans altogether.

Like I said, if REI wants to do this, fantastic, and how nice for those employees that they will be paid, as well. That said, it���s not reasonable for those of us applauding this decision to use it as the basis to criticize the ���usual suspect��� retail giants merely for being open on what is, ultimately, just another business day.

 

100 Hours Behind Bars With Ted Bundy

Author Stephen Michaud shares the chilling account of the more than 100 hours he spent interviewing serial killer Ted Bundy. Bundy was guilty and he had no intention of admitting it, at least not openly. However, they did see a possible way to finesse the situation. Although Bundy was not ready to say, "I did it," he clearly wanted to discuss himself and what he'd done. So Michaud offered him a way to do that, to "speculate" about the murders, and the person who committed them, in the third-person. "Ted jumped at the suggestion," Michaud recalls. "It wasn't long before we were deep into his macabre world, exploring regions of the criminal psyche I hadn't guessed existed." Michaud also admits (for the first time publicly) that he misled prison officials by representing that he was a private investigator working on behalf of Bundy's legal defense.

Hillary Clinton's Missing Millions

A review of several years of the Clintons' tax returns have raised a mysterious question - how has $50 million dollars of their fortune disappeared? Puerto Rico wants approval to file for bankruptcy so they can borrow more money. Deed theft scams are on the rise again, why banks are considering negative interest rates on saving accounts, and Donald Trump under fire for questionning Ben Carson's Seventh Day Adventist denomination.

Disabled Man Forced to Crawl Off United Airlines Flight To Use The Rest Room

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large

United Airlines is apologizing after a disabled man crawled off one of their planes in an attempt to use the bathroom. D���Arcee Neal flew into Washington last week from San Francisco, which was a five-hour flight. Neal has cerebral palsy, and his disability makes it difficult to use the small facilities on the aircraft. A wheelchair that was supposed to be ready for him at the gate was delayed over a mix-up. Neal had already waited for the rest of the passengers to disembark, which took about 15 minutes, and he then waited another 15 minutes for the wheelchair before he decided he could wait no longer.

Despite being told to continue to wait for the wheelchair, Neal made the decision to get off of the plane any way he could so that he could use a terminal restroom. Neal crawled up the aisle, while flight attendants watched, to the gangway. Finally, he was met there by a wheelchair. To make matters even worse, Neal was on the flight because he was returning home from a meeting with Uber, where he was talking with them about accessibility policies for the disabled. United has apologized to Neal, and offered him $300 for his trouble, which he accepted. According to reports, United also suspended the manager on duty.

Director Tarantino Taking Heat in Wake of Participation in Anti-Cop Rally

 By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large

Quentin Tarantino is hearing it loud and clear after taking part in an anti-cop rally held in the wake of the slaying of another NYPD officer. The Patrolmen���s Benevolent Association, New York City���s police union, is clamoring for a boycott of Tarantino films after the director referred to cops as ���murderers��� while speaking to a crowd of protestors in a Saturday rally in Washington Square Park.

The director of films like Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Inglourious Basterds later admitted the unfortunate timing of the rally, given the killing last Tuesday of Police Officer Randolph Holder in a shootout in Harlem. He said, however, that the rally had been planned, and that people were already traveling to be there. What���s revealing is that Tarantino sees the timing of the rally as the problem���and not the fact that there was a rally.

Patrick Lynch, the head of the PBA, referring to Tarantino���s choice of projects, said in a statement that ���The police officers that Quentin Tarantino calls ���murderers��� aren���t living in one of his depraved big-screen fantasies ��� they���re risking and sometimes sacrificing their lives to protect communities from real crime and mayhem.��� ���New Yorkers need to send a message to this purveyor of degeneracy that he has no business coming to our city to peddle his slanderous ���Cop Fiction.��� ���
We should all send him the same message.

How To Be Completely Invisible Online

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large

One of the areas of Internet security that is increasingly intriguing to me is this idea that you can be on the Internet anonymously. I like that. Every time I turn around, it seems as though someone else is trying to intrude on my life���or into my wallet���simply by virtue of the fact that I am online.  

I���ve written before about the wonderful Patriot Privacy Kit digital book, and how I think it serves as a great manual for staying safe while roaming around online. I���ve previously highlighted the great information it has to offer on the subject of password protection, email security, even browser security (yes���even just using a less secure browser can bring a lot of grief into your life), to name just a few. Well, here���s another important area about which you���ll want to know more - having the ability to surf the web anonymously. Everyone who uses the Internet has an IP (Internet Protocol) address, and that is the route through which everyone and everything on the other side of your computer travels to send you information. It is your online address in every bit the way your residential address serves to tell the world how you can be physically located.

How would you like to be on the web���while hiding your location?

You can do it through the use of something called an ���Internet proxy.��� With an Internet proxy, other IP addresses are used to hide yours. The Patriot Privacy Kit discusses this subject, and even provides resource information to services you can access to make your move to Internet anonymity.

Of course, The Patriot Privacy Kit provides a wealth of useful information on how to stay safe online, above and beyond the topic of ���invisibility. The broad list of subjects covered is substantial, and includes such areas as how to protect yourself from NSA spy efforts, how to secure your computer hardware and software platforms, how to be a good steward of your all-important passwords, and how to use email more securely (do you even know that you simple use of email can present a security threat to you?). That, however, isn���t all ��� not even close. The book also looks at what you need to know to be safe as a regular user of social media, including the ubiquitous Facebook. Want more? The Patriot Privacy Kit has it, including information on how to secure your sensitive information offline, which is something I talk about constantly ��� most identity theft, even in this day and age, occurs due to the theft of key personal information in a physical form, like unsecured or improperly disposed-of documents.

What���s more, The Patriot Privacy Kit comes with a fantastic money-back guarantee, which means you can read and use the information through and through���and if you���re still not satisfied, you can get all of your money back, with no fuss. How great is that?

Other Course Benefits:

 Move Past LifeLock: While a fantastic system that I recommend, it only protects about 10% of what really matters.
Avoid NSA flag words
Secure E Mail Options
Secure Internet Browsing Options
Password Security
How To Clean And Protect Your Computer
Lock Down Your Home Internet Connection
Properly Use A Firewall
How To Use Programs That Will Hide Your IP Address

If you���re not concerned about Internet security, you should be ��� it���s just too dangerous now to be online without some ���armor��� to protect you. I���ve talked about The Patriot Privacy Kit before, and I will undoubtedly do so again ��� there���s just too much great information to ignore this manual. To learn more, click here.

Florida Man Busted for Running Fake Warrant Scam

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large

The scams, they just keep on coming. I���ve often wondered if people who put these things together spent the same amount of time applying their brains and their efforts to something legitimate, would they get to enjoy both money and the opportunity to spend it?

Take the case of Toney Calhoun, of Jacksonville, Florida. Calhoun was just sentenced to five years in prison for running a nationwide warrant scam. Warrant scams are just the latest in a long list of scam ���types��� that have innocent parties forking over their dough in fear, conjured by the admittedly-effective scam artist on the other end of the phone. In Calhoun���s case, he and a couple of associates operated something called TAC & Associates, based in Jacksonville. Calhoun and his pals, now co-defendants themselves, would call victims all over the country, identifying themselves as detectives and managing to convince these folks that they had warrants out for their arrest. Calhoun would offer them the opportunity to keep from being arrested���if they agreed to send money to him. As mentioned, Calhoun was recently convicted, on charges that included conspiracy to engage in a pattern of racketeering activity and false impersonation of a law enforcement officer.

As I alluded to a little earlier in this piece, warrant scams are pretty popular now. Here are some things to keep in mind: You might wonder how someone could fall for something like this; after all, having been arrested is a big deal, isn���t it? Surely a person who���s been arrested would know if he has a warrant out there somewhere. Not so fast. The scammers have already thought of that, so they typically inform the innocent party that the warrant is for something small; an overdue debt, jury duty that was missed, etc., the kind of thing that might cause you to really think that a warrant of some kind with your name on it might actually be out there. Remember, too, that if you really are jammed up with the police somehow, they���re not going to call you out of the blue���mostly because police don���t call; they will show up to your location in person, or you may receive a certified or otherwise very official piece of mail. Just as is the case with IRS scams, the police, as an official government agency will call you on the phone in only the most unusual of circumstances, and at that, you will likely be expecting the call, because it is part of an ongoing dialogue you know you���re already having with them.

My advice to people, whenever they get an odd call like this, is to simply hang up. It may seem rude, you may even be concerned that you���ll get yourself deeper into trouble, but just do it. Like I said, these agencies don���t call people out of the blue, but many innocent folks, when taken by surprise, will get sucked into the trap if the scammer can keep them on the line. Just hang up. Believe me, if you really are in trouble with the authorities, they���ll make sure you know it, in no uncertain terms.

City In The Sky Over China - Evidence Of A Parallel Universe?

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large

Conspiracy theorists, prophecy mavens, and others who are regularly intrigued by unusual phenomena have had a field day recently with striking images over China that make it appear as though there is a ���floating city��� in the skies. Thousands of residents of the Guangdong province reported seeing the city floating above Foshan, and, a few days later, residents of Jiangxi reported seeing the same thing.

As you might expect, theories have emerged that attribute the ���floating city��� to everything from a secret NASA project, to proof of a parallel universe, to the onset of the rapture. As usual, however, whenever strange events in the atmosphere like this occur, weather experts are typically quick to chime in to explain them away. In this case, the image is being attributed to a ���Fata Morgana,��� which is a unique type of mirage that appears right above the horizon.

Biblical Ark Of The Covenant Found?

Researcher, Author, and filmmaker, Harry Moskoff joins Jim for a fascinating discussion about his search for the biblical Ark Of The Covenant. Moskoff shares his theory that the most prized find in archaeological history may be within an elaborate tunnel system below the temple mount. He also discusses why they CIA has been tracking the search for biblical artifacts, the reason that governmental powers are preventing a search of the tunnels, the involvement of the Knights Templar, his thoughts on the Da Vinci Code, what role the Ark might play in Bible prophecy, and more.