Colbert: Anonymous Crushes HBGary

You may remember a few months back when Aaron Barr, CEO of computer security firm HBGary, tried to finger some of the key members of hacker collective Anonymous and got burned. Colbert lays out the context for that little drama as being part of a coverup by Bank of America involving the Justice Department and Wikileaks while at the same time lampooning everyone like a ninja. Check out the video and see for yourself.

[UPDATE]

On a related note, members of Anonymous have just claimed responsibility for taking down more than 40 underground childpr0n websites and releasing over 1500 user names to the public. Is Anonymous branching out in their mission or its it just a few members deciding to take the Robin Hood act to the next level?

Judge Nullifies Human Gene Patents

genes

A federal judge on Monday nullified patents associated with human genes known to detect early signs of breast and ovarian cancer.

It was the first time a federal court has invalidated a patent on genes. The American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the case, said the New York federal court decision “calls into question the validity of patents now held on approximately 2,000 genes.”

U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet agreed with the civil rights group that the patents were invalid because they covered the most basic element of every person’s individuality. “Products of nature do not constitute patentable subject matter absent a change that results in the creation of a fundamentally new product,” Sweet wrote in a 152-page opinion.

The lawsuit claimed the patents were so broad they barred scientists from examining and comparing the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes at the center of the dispute. The patents issued more than a decade ago covered any new scientific methods of looking at these human genes that might be developed by others.

Lockheed Looks Beyond Weapons

Lockheed Martin Corp.’s history is built on making jets, missiles and other weapons of war. But lately, its growth plans also call for securing more U.S. government contracts for an array of behind-the-scenes services throughout the world—everything from managing military bases and embassies to helping write constitutions for developing nations.

Lockheed is making its move through Pacific Architects & Engineers Inc., a little-known Los Angeles company it acquired last year. For more than five decades, PAE quietly worked on Army bases and provided facilities-management services to the State Department. That meant such work as maintaining fresh paint at the U.S. embassy in Moscow to providing logistics for African Union peacekeepers in Darfur, Sudan. Half of the company’s revenue comes from the State Department.

Lockheed, of Bethesda, Md., sees PAE as a vehicle to provide more crucial—and lucrative—services to governments and other entities. PAE has developed expertise in areas such as disaster relief, peacekeeping missions and election monitoring. Such work has historically been the State Department’s turf.

As the Defense Department’s budget begins to plateau and U.S. forces are stretched thin, Lockheed needs to find ways to grow beyond big weapons systems. To capitalize on the changing nature of military activity around the globe, the company is seeking a role in everything from the occupation of Iraq to disaster response to antiterror efforts.

“We believe that the definition of global security is changing. Expanding, actually,” Lockheed Chairman and Chief Executive Bob Stevens said.

CorpWatch

World Biggest Problem: Organized Crime

cocain cartel
Organized crime may have brought in more than $2 trillion in revenue last year, about twice all the military budgets in the world combined, according to the “2007 State of the Future” report, published by the Millennium Project of the World Federation of United Nations Associations, by Jerome C. Glenn and Theodore J. Gordon.

The report called organized crime one of the most pressing global issues that needs to be addressed in the next 10 years, along with global warming, terrorism, corruption, unemployment, and income disparities.

But the report noted success in tackling other issues, saying the world has made progress on ending poverty, improving access to education and settling conflicts. It also says the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Africa has begun to level off.

KurzweilAI

US Set To Outlaw Prejudice Based On Genetic Profiles

AFTER BEING BLOCKED for years by Republican leaders in the US House, New York Representative Louise Slaughter’s bill to ban genetic discrimination passed the chamber last week with 420 votes, and President Bush has vowed to sign it if it reaches his desk. The appeal of the measure is clear: As more hereditary disorders become detectable through genetic testing, more people are at risk of being denied employment or health coverage on the basis of their genetic makeup. And that threat could keep people from coming forward for genetic testing.

genomeYet the antidiscrimination measure has been held up because Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, has placed a hold on the bill. He should let the Senate get on with passing the bill, whose importance will only grow as technology evolves.

Already, researchers can screen for genes linked to more than 1,000 diseases. Tests indicating that a patient has an elevated probability of developing breast cancer, for instance, are highly useful in planning medical treatment. But that knowledge can also be devastating, and not just because patients hear their future health troubles foretold.

Slaughter’s bill would prohibit insurers from denying coverage to or raising premiums on a healthy person on the basis of genetic test results. Employers would be forbidden from making hiring or promotion decisions on the basis of genetic information. The measure would apply nationwide but would not prevent states from enacting tougher bills—as Massachusetts already has.

Boston Globe

We Are What We Grow

This perverse state of affairs is not, as you might think, the inevitable result of the free market. Compared with a bunch of carrots, a package of Twinkies, to take one iconic processed foodlike substance as an example, is a highly complicated, high-tech piece of manufacture, involving no fewer than 39 ingredients, many themselves elaborately manufactured, as well as the packaging and a hefty marketing budget. So how can the supermarket possibly sell a pair of these synthetic cream-filled pseudocakes for less than a bunch of roots?

farm billFor the answer, you need look no farther than the farm bill. This resolutely unglamorous and head-hurtingly complicated piece of legislation, which comes around roughly every five years and is about to do so again, sets the rules for the American food system — indeed, to a considerable extent, for the world’s food system. Among other things, it determines which crops will be subsidized and which will not, and in the case of the carrot and the Twinkie, the farm bill as currently written offers a lot more support to the cake than to the root. Like most processed foods, the Twinkie is basically a clever arrangement of carbohydrates and fats teased out of corn, soybeans and wheat — three of the five commodity crops that the farm bill supports, to the tune of some $25 billion a year. (Rice and cotton are the others.) For the last several decades — indeed, for about as long as the American waistline has been ballooning — U.S. agricultural policy has been designed in such a way as to promote the overproduction of these five commodities, especially corn and soy.

NYTimes

Bush Poised to Veto Long-Sought Labor Reform

One of the most important bills for working Americans of the last 10 years is likely to go down in defeat, even though Democrats control Congress. The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is an anti-union-busting measure that would restore the right to form unions, a right working people have enjoyed mostly on paper since the “Reagan revolution” stacked the deck against workers trying to organize. The House passed the bill last month, but it’s widely expected to be defeated in the Senate, and if it does survive, it will almost certainly fall to George Bush’s veto pen.

bush vetoIf EFCA is defeated, it will carry little or no political cost, largely because America’s corporatocracy has done a bang-up job of framing the debate. A coalition of big business groups conducted a wildly misleading poll, one that gave respondents the (false) idea that the bill will diminish rather than protect workers’ rights—specifically, their right to a fair vote about whether to unionize. They’ve taken that spin and synchronized it across the whole of the conservative communications infrastructure—from business-funded think tanks to right-wing blogs, to the Wall Street Journal editorial page to lawmakers walking the halls of Congress.

alternet

Vast Forests With Trees Each Worth £4,000 Sold For a Few Bags of Sugar

lamokoLamoko, 150 miles down the Maringa river, sits on the edge of a massive stretch of virgin rainforest in central Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). On February 8 2005, representatives of a major timber firm arrived to negotiate a contract with the traditional landowners.

Few in the village realised that the talks would transform all their lives, but in just a few hours, the chief, who had received no legal advice and did not realise that just one tree might be worth more than £4,000 in Europe, had signed away his community’s rights in the forest for 25 years.

In return for his signed permission to log thousands of hectares for exotic woods such as Afromosia (African teak) and sapele, the company promised to build Lamoko and other communities in the area three simple village schools and pharmacies. In addition, the firm said it would give the chief 20 sacks of sugar, 200 bags of salt, some machetes and a few hoes. In all, it was estimated that the gifts would cost the company £10,000.

It was the kind of “social responsibility” agreement that is encouraged by the World Bank, but when the villagers found out that their forest had been “sold” so cheaply, they were furious.

guardian uk

The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism by Hakim Bey

taz

Landmark Ruling Celebrated as a Victory for Religious Freedom, Environmental Justice & Cultural Survival

Flagstaff, AZ—On Monday, March 12th the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued its ruling to protect a mountain held holy by more than 13 Native American Nations. The slopes of the San Francisco Peaks, located in Northern Arizona, have been at the center of a historical and lengthy battle that has pitted economic interests on public lands against environmental integrity, public health and cultural survival..A local ski resort planned to expand and use treated waste effluent to make snow.

Yesterday, a federal court appeals panel issued the unanimous decision written by Judge William A. Fletcher. “We reverse the decision of the district court in part. We hold that the Forest Service’s approval of the Snowbowl’s use of recycled sewage effluent to make artificial snow on the San Francisco Peaks violates [Religious Freedom Restoration Act] RFRA, and that in one respect the Final Environmental Impact Statement prepared in this case does not comply with NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act].”

More than 100 supporters gathered at an afternoon press conference near the base of the Sacred Peaks to celebrate. Tribal Leaders, Environmental Groups and representatives of the community based group the Save the Peaks Coalition spoke of the victory.

“This is a very important decision that sets great precedent for people who are concerned with Native American rights and religious freedom” said Howard Shanker, of the Shanker Law Firm, PLC, representing the Navajo Nation, the White Mountain Apache Tribe, the Yavapai-Apache Tribe, the Havasupai Tribe, Rex Tilousi, Dianna Uqualla, the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Flagstaff Activist Network.

“Because of this decision in the 9th circuit, other tribes throughout the nation could have the ability to rely on this case to help protect sites that are sacred to them and culturally and religiously important” Mr. Shanker said.

The Comforts of Madness: Novelist J G Ballard Explains Why Consumerism is a New Fascism

J G Ballard knows about selling. As a young man he briefly peddled children’s encyclopaedias, working the psychological relationship between the middle-class hawker and the punter bent on self-improvement. “Selling is like wooing a girl,” says Ballard. Ballard “believed in” The Waverley because he had read it as a boy. Whenever he was bored his mother had told him, ”’Go and read The Eight Volumes.’ That was her name for them,” he chuckles. “It was the nearest thing to television.”

Ballard’s new novel, Kingdom Come (Fourth Estate, £15.99), puts his usual Cassandra-like spin on the dangers of retail therapy. In Brooklands, a Thames Valley motorway town dominated by its domed shopping mall, the most taxing moral decision is which washing machine to buy. But even the sedated want sensation. At night, the shoppers who flock to the Metro-Centre reincarnate as mobs of sports fans, parading their St George T-shirts and attacking immigrants.

indy uk

US threatens trade sanctions against Sweden because of thepiratebay

According to this well done Swedish news piece, the USA has threatened Sweden with trade sanctions through the US dominated WTO if Sweden refuses to close down the file-sharing website “thepiratebay.org”. ThePirateBay has been considered legal under Sweden’s fair use laws, and many Swedish support their right to freely distribute media such as music and movies; similar to their laws which allow them to pick mushrooms and lingamberries on other peoples land. Bowing to international pressure, on May 31st more than 50 Swedish police raided 10 locations and confiscated all the servers which supported the torrent-tracker. Persecution is pending, the site is running at some level, and there is a huge political stink escalating in Sweden over this issue right now. Check out this news report and decide for yourself what’s up…

news report from youtube

Drugs Firm Blocks Cheap Blindness Cure

A major drug company is blocking access to a medicine that is cheaply and effectively saving thousands of people from going blind because it wants to launch a more expensive product on the market.

Ophthalmologists around the world, on their own initiative, are injecting tiny quantities of a colon cancer drug called Avastin into the eyes of patients with wet macular degeneration, a common condition of older age that can lead to severely impaired eyesight and blindness. They report remarkable success at very low cost because one phial can be split and used for dozens of patients.

But Genentech, the company that invented Avastin, does not want it used in this way. Instead it is applying to license a fragment of Avastin, called Lucentis, which is packaged in the tiny quantities suitable for eyes at a higher cost. Speculation in the US suggests it could cost £1,000 per dose instead of less than £10. The company says Lucentis is specifically designed for eyes, with modifications over Avastin, and has been through 10 years of testing to prove it is safe.

Your Telco Owes You $1,000

If your telephone company is one of the companies that decided to take financial compensation from the federal government in exchange for illegally proving your records to them they owe you $1,000. Now IANAL but this seems pretty damn clear cut to me.

The Stored Wire and Electronic Communications and Transactional Records Access, Section 2703© outlines exactly five reasons that a phone company can disclose your records to the fed:

a warrant
a court order
the customer’s consent
for telemarketing enforcement
administrative subpoena

Keep in mind that the NSA does not have subpoena power and it is easy to see that not only is your federal government breaking the law by stripping you of your expectation of privacy in your papers and effects but that the Telcos are breaking the law by supplying this info to the Fed.

Section 2707 of the Communications Act says that the phone company are liable for $1000 per individual violation of the Act and outlines a private right of action to any customer “aggrieved by any violation.”

So there you go, a clear cut explanation of why your phone company ( unless you are lucky enough to be a Qwest customer ) owes you $1,000. If there is one thing that big corporations understand is profit and loss – I think handing out millions of thousand dollar checks will get their attention.

this damn blog