An all-out war between two powers possessing molecular nanotechnology would be disastrous to human life and natural resources. Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) type principles may prevent many potential wars, since anything of value being fought over would most likely be destroyed in the process.
Security (or defense) of its citizens is the first duty of any government. National defense entails the protection and safety of a nation's secrets and its citizens, and freedom from foreign dictation. Military security implies the capacity of a nation to defend itself, and is defined as, "a condition that results from the establishment and maintenance of protective measures that ensure a state of inviolability from hostile acts or influences."
"Science and technology are advancing to the point that structuring matter at the nanometer scale (1nm = 10-9m) is becoming routine. Nanotechnology (NT) is predicted to produce revolutionary changes, bringing far-reaching consequences in many areas."
Ultimately, "technology will become nanotechnology and disappear from our physical presence." Nanotechnology is the study and manipulation of the new properties that emerge as material dimensions are reduced the limits of the nanoscale. The classical laws of Newtonian physics break down at this ultra-small scale and give way to quantum mechanics, resulting in remarkable differences in material behavior. Scientists and engineers are able to exploit these unusual properties through nanostructured devices. Nano is the direction of future technological progress, and military scientists and engineers have a duty to study these effects and apply what they learn to the protection of their people.
Facebook is spying on people around the world ‘just like America’s NSA.
Facebook has been accused of spying on users in a fashion similar to methods used by America's National Security Agency (NSA).
The Belgian Privacy Commission has brought a lawsuit against the social network, after accusing it of 'trampling all over European privacy laws'.
Frederic Debussere, a lawyer representing the privacy commission, made the comparison with the NSA during opening statements.
The Guardian reports that Mr Debussere, referring to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden's revalations, told a Belgian court at a hearing in Brussels on Monday: 'When it became known that the NSA was spying on people all around the world, everybody was upset.
'This actor [Facebook] is doing the very same thing, albeit in a different way.'
The data protection authority, which accuses Facebook of tracking non-users and those who have logged out of their accounts for advertising purposes, is threatening Facebook with a fine of 250,000 euros each day.
In May, the commission accused the social network of tracking people online without consent while dodging questions from national regulators.
The commission published a report analysing changes the company made to its privacy policy in January and said: 'Facebook tramples on European and Belgian privacy laws'.
Facebook has spent years earning a notorious reputation for sacrificing users' privacy for increased advertising revenue. Now the social networking giant may be in serious legal trouble with the European Union for violating EU laws about tracking Internet users without their consent.
A report issued by ICRI/CIR and iMinds-SMIT for the Belgian Privacy Commission claims that Facebook is tracking Internet users — even those who are not logged into a Facebook account — and capturing their browsing habits across the web. In many cases, the tracking involves users who do not even have a Facebook account.
The method by which Facebook tracks users is the ubiquitous "Like" button found on most websites. Sites that have the button must allow certain computer scripts to run. These scripts allow Facebook to see what websites users visit even if the users do not click the button. Facebook then uses that information to allow advertisers to direct their ads to targeted users. The practice is controversial in the United States and illegal in the European Union. The issue at stake is that if users agree to have their browsing habits tracked across the Web, it is a valuable service; if they do not, it is an invasion of their privacy. The "Like" button simply appearing on a website does not amount to a user's consent.
To make matters worse, Facebook also ignores "Do Not Track" requests from users who activate that setting in browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. In doing so, Facebook joins ranks with Google and Yahoo as well as a slew of disreputable sites.
These tracking policies — which went into effect June 2014 — are a reversal of the social network's previous policies which were introduced after a $15-billion class action suit for invasive practices in 2011. With the introduction of the "Like" button on non-Facebook pages, Facebook initially claimed the privacy issue to be a bug in the software. The company now sells the bug as a feature to advertisers.
The issue is deeper than just whether Facebook can see what other sites users visit — though that is disturbing enough on its own. There are serious security concerns as well, because the scripts used create a back door that hackers and others can manipulate to further invade the privacy and security of users.
After coming under fire for using persistent cookies (small programs that are loaded on users' computers to maintain certain settings and allow tracking), Facebook introduced the "Tracking Pixel." It is a 1x1 gif file, invisible to the naked eye in most cases, which allows the company to track users even after they leave the site. Since users who do not even have a Facebook account and have not agreed to Facebook's privacy policy are tracked as well, such tracking cannot be consensual. Because the pixel is invisible, very few users (whether they have an account or not) could even be aware of it.
As the EU case continues to be investigated, it is likely that Facebook will face serious legal problems and sizable fines. EU laws do more to protect the privacy of individuals than do those in America. Fortunately, there are steps American Internet users can take to protect themselves while they wait for their laws to catch up to those in the European Union. In a previous article, The New American outlined several methods for Internet users to protect themselves from privacy-invading tools used by both overreaching governments and nosy corporations.
Many of the tips in that article would secure users from the types of security issues related to Facebook's invasion of users' privacy. Downloading and installing a browser that is more privacy-friendly would be a great starting point. The Firefox browser, which can be downloaded for free from www.mozilla.org, fits the bill nicely. It is much more secure than Internet Explorer, even with the default settings, and can be made even more secure by changing a few settings and installing a few add-ons.
By disabling all third-party cookies and setting Flash to run only on sites the user approves, many of the scripts required for tracking will not work. To make it even more difficult for governments and corporations to track users, we also recommend downloading and installing the HTTPS Everywhere plugin from www.eff.org. This will force a secure connection on all sites that offer it. It's not perfect, but it's the same level of security/encryption used by banking websites.
For blocking ads altogether, users can install the AdBlock Plus add-on from Firefox's settings and never see another ad. The practical benefit of this (besides getting rid of Internet clutter in the form of ads and popups) is that each of those ads may have its own tracking capabilities. Preventing them from working goes a long way to protecting users' identities and systems.
Finally, to lock down all the types of scripts that aid in tracking, users can install the NoScript add-on and block all scripts from running. Be aware that this may cause some features of websites to stop working and other websites to not display at all. The settings can be adjusted on a site-by-site basis, though, and at least users will have both knowledge about — and control over — what is happening on their machines and with their data.
Users who take these steps will be much more difficult (if not impossible) to track. The cost in convenience is a worthwhile tradeoff for the added security and privacy.
Please review our Comment Policy before posting a comment
The Electoral College is a process, not a place. The founding fathers established it in theConstitution as a compromise between election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens.
The Electoral College process consists of the selection of the electors, the meeting of the electors where they vote for President and Vice President, and the counting of the electoral votes by Congress.
The Electoral College consists of 538 electors. A majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the President. Your state’s entitled allotment of electors equals the number of members in its Congressional delegation: one for each member in the House of Representatives plus two for your Senators. Read more about the allocation of electoral votes.
Under the 23rd Amendment of the Constitution, the District of Columbia is allocated 3 electors and treated like a state for purposes of the Electoral College. For this reason, in the following discussion, the word “state” also refers to the District of Columbia.
The presidential election is held every four years on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. You help choose your state’s electors when you vote for President because when you vote for your candidate you are actually voting for your candidate’s electors.
Most states have a “winner-take-all” system that awards all electors to the winning presidential candidate. However, Maine and Nebraska each have a variation of “proportional representation.” Read more about the allocation of Electors among the states and try topredict the outcome of the Electoral College vote.
After the presidential election, your governor prepares a “Certificate of Ascertainment” listing all of the candidates who ran for President in your state along with the names of their respective electors. The Certificate of Ascertainment also declares the winning presidential candidate in your state and shows which electors will represent your state at the meeting of the electors in December of the election year. Your state’s Certificates of Ascertainments are sent to the Congress and the National Archives as part of the official records of the presidential election. See the key dates for the 2012 election and information about the roles and responsibilities of state officials, the Office of the Federal Register and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and the Congress in the Electoral College process.
The meeting of the electors takes place on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December after the presidential election. The electors meet in their respective states, where they cast their votes for President and Vice President on separate ballots. Your state’s electors’ votes are recorded on a “Certificate of Vote,” which is prepared at the meeting by the electors. Your state’s Certificates of Votes are sent to the Congress and the National Archives as part of the official records of the presidential election. See the key dates for the 2012 election and information about the roles and responsibilities of state officials and the Congress in the Electoral College process.
Each state’s electoral votes are counted in a joint session of Congress on the 6th of January in the year following the meeting of the electors. Members of the House and Senate meet in the House chamber to conduct the official tally of electoral votes. (On December 28, 2012, President Obama signed Pub.L. 112-228, as passed by both houses of Congress, moving the day of the vote count from January 6, 2013 (a Sunday) to January 4, 2013.) See the key dates for the 2012 election and information about the role and responsibilities of Congress in the Electoral College process.
The Vice President, as President of the Senate, presides over the count and announces the results of the vote. The President of the Senate then declares which persons, if any, have been elected President and Vice President of the United States.
The President-Elect takes the oath of office and is sworn in as President of the United States on January 20th in the year following the Presidential election.
Does my vote count? Understanding the electoral college
by David Walbert
No, the electoral college is not the worst team in the ACC. It's the group of people who actually elect the president of the United States. How the electoral college works is one of the more complicated parts of the American electoral process — or can be, at least, when things don't go smoothly. This guide will explain how the electoral college works; discuss the origins and development of the electoral college as some controversial elections; and examine how much your vote actually "weighs" in an election.
The people of the United States elect a president every four years, but not directly. Here's how it works.
In November of a presidential election year, each state holds an election for president in which all eligible citizens may vote. Citizens vote for a "ticket" of candidates that includes a candidate for president and a candidate for vice president.
The outcome of the vote in each state determines a slate of electors who then, in turn, make the actual choice of president and vice president. Each state has as many electors as it has senators and members of the House of Representatives, for a total of 538. (The District of Columbia gets three electors even though it has no representation in Congress.)
In December, the electors meet in their respective state capitols to cast their ballots for president and vice president. States may or may not require their electors to vote with the popular majority, and they may or may not give all of their electors to the winner of the statewide popular vote. (See "A Work in Progress," below.)
These ballots are opened, counted, and certified by a joint session of Congress in January.
If no candidate wins a majority of the electoral votes or if the top two candidates are tied, the House of Representatives selects a president from among the five candidates with the most votes. Each state's delegation has a single vote. The Senate selects a vice president by the same process. (This hasn't happened since 1876, but it almost happened in 2000.)
What does this mean in practice? It means, as everyone learned or was reminded in 2000, that the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide does not necessarily become president. There is no national election for president, only separate state elections. For a candidate to become president, he or she must win enough state elections to garner a majority of electoral votes. presidential campaigns, therefore, focus on winning states, not on winning a national majority.
It also means that — at least in theory — electors can thwart the popular will and vote for a candidate not supported by the voters of their state. In practice, however, electors are pledged to cast their votes in accordance with the popular vote, and "faithless electors" who go against the popular vote are extremely rare. Had there been a faithless elector in 2000, however, Al Gore might have become president! (See the historical perspective below for more about this.)
Further reading and assignment
A number of websites provide more detailed information about the electoral process.
Project Vote Smart offers a detailed but less formal explanation of the electoral process, with dates for the 2004 election. If the National Archives' website seems a bit stuffy to you, try Project Vote Smart first.
When you're finished, put away all of your reading material (including this handout) and write a one-paragraph summary, in your own words, of how the electoral college works. Really write it out — don't just think about it! You may find, when you try to write it down, that you don't understand it as well as you thought you did. If that happens, go back and re-read the materials. Because it's organized by Frequently Asked Questions, the National Archives' website may be most helpful for this.
II. Why not a popular vote? (an historical perspective)
When we're debating whether some aspect of the Constitution makes sense, it's useful sometimes to think of the Constitution as an experiment — as a work in progress. Some of its original framers referred to it that way, as a Great Experiment in democracy. In 1787, no republic like the United States existed anywhere in the world. The "founding fathers" were making things up as they went along, looking at history, philosophy, and what they did and didn't like about existing governments in Europe and America. And not all of them agreed — in fact, many of them disagreed completely, even on important issues such as how much power the people should have.
The electoral college was a compromise on two important issues. The first was how much power the people should have, and the second was how much power small and large states should have.
Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today's president Ben Aris in Berlin and Duncan Campbell in Washington Saturday 25 September 2004 23.59 BST Last modified on Wednesday 1 October 2014 09.38 BST Share on Pinterest Share on LinkedIn Share on Google+ Shares 86,886 Save for later George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany. The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism. His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy. The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. The debate over Prescott Bush's behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty. Remarkably, little of Bush's dealings with Germany has received public scrutiny, partly because of the secret status of the documentation involving him. But now the multibillion dollar legal action for damages by two Holocaust survivors against the Bush family, and the imminent publication of three books on the subject are threatening to make Prescott Bush's business history an uncomfortable issue for his grandson, George W, as he seeks re-election. Advertisement While there is no suggestion that Prescott Bush was sympathetic to the Nazi cause, the documents reveal that the firm he worked for, Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), acted as a US base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s before falling out with him at the end of the decade. The Guardian has seen evidence that shows Bush was the director of the New York-based Union Banking Corporation (UBC) that represented Thyssen's US interests and he continued to work for the bank after America entered the war. Tantalising Bush was also on the board of at least one of the companies that formed part of a multinational network of front companies to allow Thyssen to move assets around the world. Thyssen owned the largest steel and coal company in Germany and grew rich from Hitler's efforts to re-arm between the two world wars. One of the pillars in Thyssen's international corporate web, UBC, worked exclusively for, and was owned by, a Thyssen-controlled bank in the Netherlands. More tantalising are Bush's links to the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC), based in mineral rich Silesia on the German-Polish border. During the war, the company made use of Nazi slave labour from the concentration camps, including Auschwitz. The ownership of CSSC changed hands several times in the 1930s, but documents from the US National Archive declassified last year link Bush to CSSC, although it is not clear if he and UBC were still involved in the company when Thyssen's American assets were seized in 1942. Three sets of archives spell out Prescott Bush's involvement. All three are readily available, thanks to the efficient US archive system and a helpful and dedicated staff at both the Library of Congress in Washington and the National Archives at the University of Maryland. Advertisement The first set of files, the Harriman papers in the Library of Congress, show that Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder of a number of companies involved with Thyssen. The second set of papers, which are in the National Archives, are contained in vesting order number 248 which records the seizure of the company assets. What these files show is that on October 20 1942 the alien property custodian seized the assets of the UBC, of which Prescott Bush was a director. Having gone through the books of the bank, further seizures were made against two affiliates, the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation. By November, the Silesian-American Company, another of Prescott Bush's ventures, had also been seized. The third set of documents, also at the National Archives, are contained in the files on IG Farben, who was prosecuted for war crimes. A report issued by the Office of Alien Property Custodian in 1942 stated of the companies that "since 1939, these (steel and mining) properties have been in possession of and have been operated by the German government and have undoubtedly been of considerable assistance to that country's war effort". Prescott Bush, a 6ft 4in charmer with a rich singing voice, was the founder of the Bush political dynasty and was once considered a potential presidential candidate himself. Like his son, George, and grandson, George W, he went to Yale where he was, again like his descendants, a member of the secretive and influential Skull and Bones student society. He was an artillery captain in the first world war and married Dorothy Walker, the daughter of George Herbert Walker, in 1921. In 1924, his father-in-law, a well-known St Louis investment banker, helped set him up in business in New York with Averill Harriman, the wealthy son of railroad magnate E H Harriman in New York, who had gone into banking. One of the first jobs Walker gave Bush was to manage UBC. Bush was a founding member of the bank and the incorporation documents, which list him as one of seven directors, show he owned one share in UBC worth $125. The bank was set up by Harriman and Bush's father-in-law to provide a US bank for the Thyssens, Germany's most powerful industrial family. August Thyssen, the founder of the dynasty had been a major contributor to Germany's first world war effort and in the 1920s, he and his sons Fritz and Heinrich established a network of overseas banks and companies so their assets and money could be whisked offshore if threatened again. By the time Fritz Thyssen inherited the business empire in 1926, Germany's economic recovery was faltering. After hearing Adolf Hitler speak, Thyssen became mesmerised by the young firebrand. He joined the Nazi party in December 1931 and admits backing Hitler in his autobiography, I Paid Hitler, when the National Socialists were still a radical fringe party. He stepped in several times to bail out the struggling party: in 1928 Thyssen had bought the Barlow Palace on Briennerstrasse, in Munich, which Hitler converted into the Brown House, the headquarters of the Nazi party. The money came from another Thyssen overseas institution, the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvarrt in Rotterdam. By the late 1930s, Brown Brothers Harriman, which claimed to be the world's largest private investment bank, and UBC had bought and shipped millions of dollars of gold, fuel, steel, coal and US treasury bonds to Germany, both feeding and financing Hitler's build-up to war. Between 1931 and 1933 UBC bought more than $8m worth of gold, of which $3m was shipped abroad. According to documents seen by the Guardian, after UBC was set up it transferred $2m to BBH accounts and between 1924 and 1940 the assets of UBC hovered around $3m, dropping to $1m only on a few occasions. Read more > http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar
THE ROVING EYE Bilderberg strikes again By Pepe Escobar
"It would have been quite impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries ..." - David Rockefeller, Bilderberg club permanent member, 1991
This conversation never happened. Well, it actually did. Date: March 5 to 8, 2005. Location: the isolated, fully-booked Dorint Sofitel Seehotel Ueberfahrt in Rottach-Egern, 60 kilometers east of Munich, Germany. Essential amenities: luxury rooms, a lake, a golf course, no suits - and no wives. Participants: 120-odd Western movers and shakers - politicians, tycoons, bankers, captains of industry, so-called strategic thinkers - invited for the 2005 meeting of the ultra-secretive Bilderberg club. Security: absolutely draconian. Global media coverage: non-existent.
Talk about white man's burden: Bilderberg is strictly "Western" elite, ie American-European. Bilderberg resolutely excludes Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. Bilderberg operates in strictly master of the universe territory: what we say goes. Only when events happen will corporate media report them, even though selected media people would have been aware of what has been decided weeks or even months in advance. The New York Times, the Big Three American networks, the Financial Times have all been represented at many Bilderbergs. But they are constrained by the silence of the lambs (see Asia Times Online's report on Bilderberg 2003 in Versailles The masters of the universe May 22, 2003)
Bilderberg has an address - in Leiden, Holland - and even a phone number - always on female answering-machine mode. No website though. In an annual ritual, Bilderberg meeting places and agendas have to be painstakingly uncovered by a small group of independent sleuths like Briton Tony Gosling or American James Tucker - who has been following Bilderberg for 30 years. Tucker is publishing a book on Bilderberg later this year. Historian Pierre de Villemarest and journalist William Wolf have already publishedFacts and Chronicles Denied to the Public, volumes 1 and 2, which include a secret history of Bilderberg. Belgian sociologist Geoffrey Geuens from the University of Liege has also included a full chapter on Bilderberg in one of his books. Although Geuens condemns Bilderberg's obsessive secrecy, he does not subscribe to conspiracy theories: he prefers to study how Bilderberg unmasks the way power works and the incestuous relations between politics, economics and the media.
Although it may seem shocking to watch the 112th Congress, there was a time when national leaders were swift and decisive in getting things done. In November 1910, in the space of less than two weeks, a group of government and business leaders fashioned a powerful new financial system that has survived a century, two world wars, a Great Depression and many recessions.
Of course, the Jekyll Island conference, which met that month, was dodgy even by the standards of the Gilded Age: a self-selected handful of plutocrats secretly meeting at a private resort island to draw up a new framework for the nation’s banking system. Add in the gnarly live oaks and dripping Spanish moss of coastal Georgia, and the baronial becomes baroque.
The group's original plan wasn't ratified by Congress, but one very much like it was adopted and became the basis of the Federal Reserve system that remains in place today.
At the time, the Panic of 1907 was still fresh in everyone’s mind. J.P. Morgan had resolved that panic by locking the heads of major banks in his library overnight, and strong-arming them into a deal to provide sufficient liquidity to end the runs on banks and brokerages.
No one was happy with that expediency, and in 1908 Congress passed the Aldrich-Vreeland Act, which formed the National Monetary Commission. Senator Nelson Aldrich, a Rhode Island Republican and sponsor of the act, embarked on a fact-finding mission to Europe, where he met with government ministers and bankers.
The panic had shown that the existing financial system, founded on government bonds, was brittle and ponderous. But, although voters were eager for a more robust and responsive system, there was no support at the time for a central bank either from the public or from industrialists. Both were suspicious of such government interference.
The Jekyll Island collaborators knew that public reports of their meeting would scupper their plans. The idea of senior officials from the Treasury, Congress, major banks and brokerages (along with one foreign national) slipping off to design a new world order has struck generations of Americans as distasteful at best and undemocratic at worst -- and would have been similarly received at the time. So the meeting of the minds was planned under the ruse of a gentlemen’s duck-hunting expedition.
Aldrich, an archetype of his age, was a personal friend of Morgan, and Aldrich's daughter was married to John D. Rockefeller Jr. He found in the European central banks a useful model. Although the financial system in the U.S. was functional enough to stoke the engines of a growing industrial economy, it was a classic example of the persistence of interim solutions. The models Aldrich found in Europe were more efficient and effective.
What he lacked was a way to graft those characteristics onto the American economy without retarding it. Hence the duck hunt.
Aldrich invited men he knew and trusted, or at least men of influence who he felt could work together. They included Abram Piatt Andrew, assistant secretary of the Treasury; Henry P. Davison, a business partner of Morgan's; Charles D. Norton, president of the First National Bank of New York; Benjamin Strong, another Morgan friend and the head of Bankers Trust; Frank A. Vanderlip, president of the National City Bank; and Paul M. Warburg, a partner in Kuhn, Loeb & Co. and a German citizen.
The men made their way to the island by private railway car and ferry.
000) was found to slow down the dissolution and dispersion of chemicals.
