Steve Bull's Blog, page 54
April 18, 2024
EU Officials Dodge Their Own Surveillance Law
Do as I say – not as I do. That’s the essence of a leak that claims to expose high-ranked EU officials as more than simply politicking hypocrites when it comes to implementing the extremely controversial legislation affecting online privacy and encryption.
Namely, interior ministers from EU member countries reportedly want to exempt themselves – but not only – from the looming Child Sexual Abuse (CSAM) Regulation (aka, “chat control“), expected to be adopted as early as in June.
Pushed by supporters as being exactly what it says on the tin – the proposed new rules are at the same time criticized as a vehicle for indiscriminate mass surveillance of everyone’s online communications, and a way to weaken true encryption deployed by platforms – a vital component of internet security, once again, affecting everyone who goes online, children included.
German member of European Parliament (MEP), Pirate Party member, and lawyer Patrick Breyer, who has been investing a lot of time and energy in drawing EU public’s attention to the dangers that come with the regulation, is now quoting leaked documents published by the French site Contexte, which may or may not prove the context of the already troubled proposed rules, just got even worse.
That’s because, according to Contexte, “EU interior ministers want to exempt professional accounts of staff of intelligence agencies, police and military from the envisaged scanning of chats and messages.”
In addition to ministers, police, and spies, anything that’s labeled as “professional secret” is also supposed to be exempt from this highly invasive (when it comes to everybody else in the EU) type of content scanning.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
April 17, 2024
More climate-warming methane leaks into the atmosphere than ever gets reported – here’s how satellites can find the leaks and avoid wasting a valuable resource
Far more methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is being released from landfills and oil and gas operations around the world than governments realized, recent airborne and satellite surveys show. That’s a problem for the climate as well as human health. It’s also why the U.S. government has been tightening regulations on methane leaks and wasteful venting, most recently from oil and gas wells on public lands.
The good news is that many of those leaks can be fixed – if they’re spotted quickly.
Riley Duren, a research scientist at the University of Arizona and former NASA engineer and scientist, leads Carbon Mapper, a nonprofit that is planning a constellation of methane-monitoring satellites. Its first satellite, a partnership with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Earth-imaging company Planet Labs, launches in 2024.
Duren explained how new satellites are changing companies’ and governments’ ability to find and stop methane leaks and avoid wasting a valuable product.
Methane plumes detected by plane at a Georgia landfill surrounded by homes. Carbon MapperWhy are methane emissions such a concern?
Methane is the second-most common global-warming pollutant after carbon dioxide. It doesn’t stay in the atmosphere as long – only about a decade compared to centuries for carbon dioxide – but it packs an outsized punch.
Methane’s ability to warm the planet is nearly 30 times greater than carbon dioxide’s over 100 years, and more than 80 times over 20 years. You can think of methane as being a very effective blanket that traps heat in the atmosphere, warming the planet.
What worries many communities is that methane is also a health problem. It is a precursor to ozone, which can worsen asthma, bronchitis and other lung problems. And in some cases, methane emissions are accompanied by other harmful pollutants, like benzene, a carcinogen.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Humans: the Movie
What follows is a story involving a movie watched by animals. The pacing of the movie to be described might seem like a very odd choice, but it simply mirrors the pacing of human life on the planet. A vivid visual imagination on your part will help to bring the story to life. So, put on your creative cap and let’s dive in!
Picture a small-town movie theater on a street so quiet and unimposing that the surrounding prairie and forest sidle right up to the back of the theater. The marquee advertises a feature film called The Human Saga.
As the afternoon shadows lengthen, a trickle of woodland creatures start to emerge from the forest, mosey up to the theater, pay for tickets, and go in. You notice rabbits, a fox, a group of turkeys, a band of raccoons, some stoats, newts, a skunk (who will be lucky enough to sit next to it?), a hoppy group of frogs, some chittering squirrels, a family of porcupines, a pair of doves, an ancient looking tortoise, a doe and her two fawns, and even a mama bear with cubs. They and many others have all come to absorb a tale of what these humans are all about. It’s a long movie: almost three hours chronicling the almost 3 million years of humans on Earth. But it’s fine: no one is in a big hurry.
The animals amicably settle into their seats, enjoying candy, popcorn, and a hot dog here and there. They’re relaxed, but wide-eyed with excitement for this special treat.
Opening SceneThe curtains rise, and the opening scene dazzles the crowd, bathing them in orange light as a bright sunrise radiates from the screen…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Purpose Of War According To George Orwell (1984)
Some food for thought from George Orwell’s ‘1984’…
Does anything really ever change? (emphasis ours)
The primary aim of modern warfare is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living.
Ever since the end of the nineteenth century, the problem of what to do with the surplus of consumption goods has been latent in industrial society. From the moment when the machine first made its appearance it was clear to all thinking people that the need for human drudgery, and therefore to a great extent for human inequality, had disappeared. If the machine were used deliberately for that end, hunger, overwork, dirt, illiteracy, and disease could be eliminated within a few generations. And in fact, without being used for any such purpose, but by a sort of automatic process — by producing wealth which it was sometimes impossible not to distribute — the machine did raise the living standards of the average human being very greatly over a period of about fifty years at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries.
But it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction — indeed, in some sense was the destruction — of a hierarchical society. In a world in which everyone worked short hours, had enough to eat, lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed a motor-car or even an aeroplane, the most obvious and perhaps the most important form of inequality would already have disappeared. If it once became general, wealth would confer no distinction. It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
2020: The Year The System Showed Its Real Face
As we grew up, nearly all of us were inundated with stories of our glorious national fathers, our beautiful democracies, and so on. And being young, we for the most part believed them. The system gave us our prosperity, our comfort, our medicine, our sense of importance.
Soon enough we learned that the system was also stupid and perverse, but we found a way around that contradiction by blaming one segment of the system or another: The Blues or the Greens or the Reds were the problem; it could not, must not, be that the system itself is the problem.
Then came 2020, and the system revealed its true face.
I suppose I should be fair and add that the system wasn’t always as rotten as it is now, but regardless, it wasn’t able to prevent the rot that overtook it.
2020, In A Nasty Little Nutshell
The system would like everything except the daily outrages (one for the Blues, one for the Reds) to go down the Memory Hole. So I think it’s important to recap the revelations of 2020:
The system decreed who could work and who couldn’t. This was not done democratically; it was done by edict. “Democracy” did nothing to stop it.
People were arrested for going to church or synagogue. This was the real disgrace of the police forces. Are there any orders from their paymasters they won’t enforce upon us?
Political gangs roam the streets, beating, threatening and burning. Make no mistake, these are covertly authorized political gangs, serving political ends. This vile tactic goes back to ancient Rome at least, where gangs of thugs beat opponents in the streets.
“Science” said one thing then the opposite, supporting whatever power wanted...
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
IMF Warns Biden’s Fiscal Profligacy Poses “Significant Risks” To Global Economy ‘In Great Election Year’
The IMF said the the quiet part out loud today (admittedly wrapped in 100s of pages of PhD-ese) in their benchmark Fiscal Monitor this morning: pointing out that America’s recent economic performance is partially the result of the country’s unsustainable borrowing, and that the US’ massive fiscal deficits have stoked inflation and pose “significant risks” for the global economy.
“The exceptional recent performance of the United States is certainly impressive and a major driver of global growth, but it reflects strong demand factors as well, including a fiscal stance that is out of line with long-term fiscal sustainability,” the IMF wrote in its latest World Economic Outlook. They added that: “Fiscal policy developments in major economies, notably in the United States, have implications for global financing conditions.”
The IMF said the US had exhibited “remarkably large fiscal slippages”, with the fiscal deficit hitting 8.8 per cent of GDP last year – more than double the 4.1 per cent deficit figure recorded for 2022, calculating that ‘Bidenomics’ (and its Inflation Reduction Act) had contributed 0.5 percentage points to core inflation (due to its fiscal profligacy).
Who could have seen that coming?
The fund further said in its Fiscal Monitor report that it expected the US to record a deficit of 7.1 per cent next year – more than three times the average for other advanced economies. It also raised concerns over Chinese government debt as Beijing copes with weak demand and a housing crisis.
The US and China were among four countries the fund named that “critically need to take policy action to address fundamental imbalances between spending and revenues.”
The others were the UK and Italy.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The longest — and probably largest — proof of our current climate catastrophe ever caught on camera.
It was the largest such event ever filmed.
Exposure LabsPhotographer James Balog and his crew were hanging out near a glacier when their camera captured something extraordinary.
They were in Greenland, gathering footage from the time-lapse they’d positioned all around the Arctic Circle for the last several years.
They were also there to shoot scenes for a documentary. And while they were hoping to capture some cool moments on camera, no one expected a huge chunk of a glacier to snap clean off and slide into the ocean right in front of their eyes.
A glacier falls into the sea.
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Massive swells created by large chunks of glacier falling away.
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For nearly an hour and 15 minutes, Balog and his crew stood by and watched as a piece of ice the size of lower Manhattan — but with ice-equivalent buildings that were two to three times taller than that — simply melted away.
A representation demonstrating the massive size of ice that broke off into the sea.
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As far as anyone knows, this was an unprecedented geological catastrophe and they caught the entire thing on tape. It won’t be the last time something like this happens either.
But once upon a time, Balog was openly skeptical about that “global warming” thing.
Balog had a reputation since the early 1980s as a conservationist and environmental photographer. And for nearly 20 years, he’d scoffed at the climate change heralds shouting, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”
“I didn’t think that humans were capable of changing the basic physics and chemistry of this entire, huge planet. It didn’t seem probable, it didn’t seem possible,” he explained in the 2012 documentary film “Chasing Ice.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Warning as Microplastics Escape Gut to ‘Infiltrate’ Brain
Microplastics are everywhere—in our food, our water and even the air. In fact, by some estimates we ingest about a credit card’s worth of plastic every single week. But what actually happens when these tiny plastic particles get inside our bodies?
Microplastics are any plastics smaller than 5 millimeters (0.2 inches) long. They are often found in industrial waste and beauty products but can also form larger pieces of plastic breakdown over time. Many of these plastic pieces end up in our oceans, which are estimated to contain somewhere between 50 trillion and 75 trillion pieces of micro- and larger plastics, according to UNESCO’s Ocean Literacy Portal.
“They appear to be everywhere,” said Eliseo Castillo, an associate professor in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the University of New Mexico, in a statement.
Microplastics are all around us. According to new research, they can spread all around our bodies too.SVETLOZAR HRISTOV/GETTYThe widespread nature of these plastic particles is particularly concerning as the chemicals they contain have been shown to disrupt our body’s natural release of hormones, potentially increasing our risk of reproductive disorders and certain cancers. They can also carry toxins on their surface, like heavy metals.
Previous research has shown that microplastics might affect the balance of healthy bacteria in our guts. But according to research by Castillo and his team, these particles don’t just stay put in our digestive systems.
In a study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, Castillo and his colleagues exposed a group of mice to microplastics in their drinking water, equivalent to the concentrations we are exposed to on a daily basis.
After four weeks, the team found that these microplastics had extended far beyond the mice’s guts, infiltrating tissues in their livers, kidneys and even their brains.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
AI, Gold and Nuclear War
AI, Gold and Nuclear WarSo-called artificial intelligence (AI) is taking the world by storm. Meanwhile, gold has shot up like a rocket over the past couple of months.
In mid-February, gold was trading at $1,990. Two months later, gold is trading above $2,400 — a $410 gain in just two months.
So here’s a question:
Is there a connection between AI and gold? It seems like an odd question. But as it turns out, the answer is yes. And surprisingly, there has been for decades. It involves the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
In the early 1980s, the KGB was deeply concerned about the possibility of a nuclear first strike by the United States. At the time, Yuri Andropov was head of the KGB.
Andropov’s fear of a nuclear first strike by the U.S. was based in part on the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan and Reagan’s plan to install Pershing II intermediate-range missiles in Europe.
Those missiles could be armed with nuclear warheads and could strike the Soviet Union within minutes of being launched. This put Soviet nuclear forces on a hair-trigger alert. They adopted a “launch on warning” posture.
This means that as soon as credible evidence of a planned first strike was discovered, the Soviet Union would launch its own first strike to avoid destruction of its forces.
The irony was that the U.S. had no actual plans to launch a first strike, but the Soviet Union didn’t know that. Reagan’s speeches about the “evil empire” did nothing to calm Soviet concerns.
AI and Nuclear Readiness
In response, the Soviets developed a primitive (by today’s standards) AI system called VRYAN. That’s a Russian acronym for: sudden nuclear missile attack.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Fact Checkers Caught Looking the Other Way (Again!) As Pfizer Nabbed Spreading Vaccine Misinformation and “Bringing Discredit” on the Entire Industry
Pfizer’s COVID vaccine corruption adds further evidence that fact checkers are the pharmaceutical industry’s partners in crime.
A UK pharmaceutical body has accused Pfizer of “bringing discredit” on their entire industry after Pfizer’s senior executives promoted the COVID vaccine on social media before it had even been licensed, breaching the regulatory code five times by making misleading claims, ignoring industry standards, and marketing unlicensed medicines.
This is the sixth time the body has reprimanded Pfizer over COVID-19 vaccine promotion, a list that includes an incident in late 2021, when Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla was found to have given misleading statements about children’s vaccines during a BBC interview. That same year, CNN Business named Bourla “CEO of the Year,” and his estimated worth is now over $35 million.
Last week’s ruling against Pfizer by the Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority (PMCPA) further emphasizes the breadth of Pfizer’s lies about their COVID vaccine. PMCPA found that Pfizer began violating industry standards in 2020 to promote their COVID vaccine, meaning Pfizer was misleading the public about their vaccine throughout the pandemic, even before announcing preliminary results of their COVID-19 clinical trials in late 2020.
How bad are we talking here? Put it this way: PMCPA’s blunt rulings against Pfizer are doubly surprising because the UK pharmaceutical industry set up PMCPA in 1993 as a self-regulating body that is staffed with industry insiders. One wonders how more often the PMCPA would have called out Pfizer for violating regulations if it was actually independent of the very corporations it’s supposed to watch over.
Seriously, people. It’s that bad.
But prepare yourself, it’s gonna get worse.
