Capitalism and Consumerism... now what?
- sirdroseph - Apr 12, 2021 - 5:31am
Race/Ethnicity-Genetics Connection
- sirdroseph - Apr 12, 2021 - 5:25am
Media Bias
- sirdroseph - Apr 12, 2021 - 5:16am
Radio Paradise Comments
- sunybuny - Apr 12, 2021 - 5:12am
Guns
- sirdroseph - Apr 12, 2021 - 4:37am
The Netherlands - second
- Blackbirds - Apr 12, 2021 - 2:42am
Two sexes or ? Gender as a non-binary concept
- Jiggz - Apr 12, 2021 - 1:55am
A Brave Woman
- Jiggz - Apr 12, 2021 - 1:48am
Counting with Pictures
- ScottN - Apr 11, 2021 - 7:49pm
• • • The Once-a-Day • • •
- Lazy8 - Apr 11, 2021 - 4:02pm
What Makes You Cry :) ?
- Red_Dragon - Apr 11, 2021 - 3:16pm
Those Lovable Policemen
- Red_Dragon - Apr 11, 2021 - 2:54pm
Pernicious Pious Proclivities Particularized Prodigiously
- R_P - Apr 11, 2021 - 2:16pm
Today in History
- Red_Dragon - Apr 11, 2021 - 8:41am
Poetry Forum
- GeneP59 - Apr 11, 2021 - 8:28am
Death Metal
- westslope - Apr 11, 2021 - 8:21am
Mixtape Culture Club
- miamizsun - Apr 11, 2021 - 7:01am
Extraordinary Machine
- miamizsun - Apr 11, 2021 - 6:50am
Iran
- Red_Dragon - Apr 11, 2021 - 6:48am
Bring Back the New RP Fonts!
- GeneP59 - Apr 10, 2021 - 7:56pm
Play the Blues
- rhahl - Apr 10, 2021 - 4:50pm
Tech & Science
- R_P - Apr 10, 2021 - 2:37pm
New Music
- R_P - Apr 10, 2021 - 11:30am
Live Music
- sirdroseph - Apr 10, 2021 - 5:53am
Taxes, Taxes, Taxes (and Taxes)
- rhahl - Apr 10, 2021 - 5:27am
Economix
- sirdroseph - Apr 10, 2021 - 4:50am
Race in America
- sirdroseph - Apr 10, 2021 - 4:22am
Freedom of speech?
- sirdroseph - Apr 10, 2021 - 4:11am
So, where do you go, what happens?
- oldviolin - Apr 9, 2021 - 6:15pm
Automotive Lust
- R_P - Apr 9, 2021 - 3:07pm
MQA Stream Coming to BLUOS
- scoots_mcgoo - Apr 9, 2021 - 3:05pm
Funny Videos
- KurtfromLaQuinta - Apr 9, 2021 - 2:56pm
First World Problems
- Lindo525 - Apr 9, 2021 - 2:45pm
COVID-19
- miamizsun - Apr 9, 2021 - 2:22pm
Bug Reports & Feature Requests
- haresfur - Apr 9, 2021 - 12:47pm
Immigration
- black321 - Apr 9, 2021 - 12:04pm
LeftWingNutZ
- sirdroseph - Apr 9, 2021 - 10:47am
The War On You
- sirdroseph - Apr 9, 2021 - 8:44am
Things You Thought Today
- oldviolin - Apr 9, 2021 - 8:34am
Trump
- R_P - Apr 9, 2021 - 7:21am
Dialing 1-800-Manbird
- miamizsun - Apr 9, 2021 - 4:49am
Joe Biden
- sirdroseph - Apr 9, 2021 - 4:08am
What Did You Do Today?
- ScottFromWyoming - Apr 8, 2021 - 9:36pm
KEEP YOUR MONEY!
- haresfur - Apr 8, 2021 - 2:37pm
Recommended documentaries
- Red_Dragon - Apr 8, 2021 - 2:24pm
partial incompatibility with Symantec's Moon Mind2?
- BillG - Apr 8, 2021 - 9:51am
Things that make you go Hmmmm.....
- sirdroseph - Apr 8, 2021 - 5:06am
True Confessions
- oldviolin - Apr 7, 2021 - 10:36pm
A designers worst nightmare
- kcar - Apr 7, 2021 - 10:00pm
Talk Behind Their Backs Forum
- geoff_morphini - Apr 7, 2021 - 9:34pm
Beer
- GeneP59 - Apr 7, 2021 - 10:29am
Breaking News
- Red_Dragon - Apr 7, 2021 - 10:00am
Philosophy (Meaty Metaphysical Munchables!)
- cc_rider - Apr 7, 2021 - 8:08am
Country Up The Bumpkin
- rhahl - Apr 7, 2021 - 6:22am
Questions.
- R_P - Apr 6, 2021 - 8:07pm
Unusual News
- haresfur - Apr 6, 2021 - 5:15pm
Is there any DOG news out there?
- kcar - Apr 6, 2021 - 4:15pm
Baseball, anyone?
- GeneP59 - Apr 6, 2021 - 2:58pm
workplaces that work
- sirdroseph - Apr 6, 2021 - 4:05am
And the good news is....
- haresfur - Apr 5, 2021 - 8:50pm
Name My Band
- oldviolin - Apr 5, 2021 - 5:32pm
RP via Bluesound - Lagging
- jarro - Apr 5, 2021 - 4:33pm
In My Room
- kcar - Apr 5, 2021 - 2:50pm
RP Daily Trivia Challenge
- ScottFromWyoming - Apr 5, 2021 - 11:23am
Republican Party
- Red_Dragon - Apr 5, 2021 - 10:33am
Israel
- westslope - Apr 5, 2021 - 7:22am
What the hell OV?
- oldviolin - Apr 4, 2021 - 8:10am
RP song titles in cache
- conkyjoe - Apr 4, 2021 - 7:37am
Photography Forum - Your Own Photos
- Blackbirds - Apr 4, 2021 - 6:07am
Iphone app "my favourites"
- BillG - Apr 3, 2021 - 9:14pm
FLAC Streaming
- jarro - Apr 3, 2021 - 1:04pm
Latin Music
- R_P - Apr 3, 2021 - 12:03pm
MIXES
- miamizsun - Apr 3, 2021 - 6:33am
Electronic Music
- Manbird - Apr 2, 2021 - 7:44pm
Derplahoma!
- ScottFromWyoming - Apr 2, 2021 - 1:31pm
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Index »
Regional/Local »
USA/Canada »
Those lovable acronym guys & gals
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R_P


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Posted:
Jan 1, 2021 - 2:00pm |
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The Man Who Refused to SpyThe F.B.I. tried to recruit an Iranian scientist as an informant. When he balked, the payback was brutal.
Iranians visiting or residing in the U.S. routinely hear from the Bureau. Half a dozen Iranian nationals and Iranian-Americans have described such approaches to me, and they have typically done so with trepidation, because the Iranian government sees any returning national who has had dealings with a U.S. intelligence agency as a potential spy. Some Iranians told me of polite conversations with federal agents, cards exchanged, refusals accepted. Others described repeated demands, veiled threats, and legal trouble lasting years. The Bureau recruits counterintelligence assets in much the same way it turns witnesses in domestic racketeering cases: agents look for vulnerabilities to use as leverage in pressuring people to become informants. They find discrepancies in immigration paperwork or identify petty sanctions violations, sometimes threatening an indictment to bolster their demands.
(...)
If there was ever a force equal to Asgariâs will, it was the bureaucratic inertia of ICE. The immigration attorneys he consulted were largely stymied by the agencyâs impenetrable structure. One said, âIâm just throwing shit at a wall, and every once in a while the wall throws something back.â Another fruitlessly chased Asgariâs paperwork from one office to another: ICEâs Enforcement and Removal Operations, the F.B.I., Customs and Border Protection, the ICE regional headquarters in Detroit, the local headquarters in Cleveland. At one point, Asgari urged me to call ICE officials in Detroit and Cleveland who had signed documents addressed to him. None of them ever answered their phones.
ICE occasionally sent representatives to meet with detainees and discuss their cases. They were just following procedures, they told Asgari, and had no authority to evaluate the logic or the justice of the measures they enforced. Asgari answered the representatives by telling them an Iranian joke. A man sees two groups of workers, one digging a trench along the road and the other following behind to fill it up and cover it. The bystander, confounded, asks the workers what they are doing. They say that the government hired three contractors: one to dig, one to install a pipeline, and the third to cover it. The second contractor never showed up, a worker says, adding, âSo we are doing our job.â Such, Asgari concluded, was ICE.
(...)
Asgari still viewed America with affection. He marvelled that, in every prison, he could pick up a phone and talk to journalists, and that journalists could publish what they wanted without fear of being censored. But what he appreciated most was the independence of the American judiciary.
âI appeared as an Iranian in front of an American judge,â he reflected. âThis American judge ruled against an F.B.I. agent in my favor. I was privileged to witness the way he handled the trial, from jury selection to the end, the way he advocated impartiality and fairness. I believe these are global values that should be respected by all governments, including my own.â He added, âMy attorneys, who put their heart into this thingâthey were employees of the same government that was on the other side of this case.â
(...)
Prison was a crucible of human relations, and for the most part Asgariâs faith in them had emerged stronger from the experience. In a pod, you couldnât hide behind an avatar, a bank account, or an accomplishmentânot even behind the self-importance of a busy schedule. Governments might seek to dominate or obliterate one another, but human beings, forced into intimacy and the roughest equality, tended to be coöperative, Asgari had found. He had always been a scholar of microstructures, and now he understood that the atoms of a societyâfrom which all its properties emanatedâwere people in their elemental state. The bonds among them were the structureâs deepest source of strength.
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R_P


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Posted:
Jul 16, 2020 - 2:05pm |
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R_P


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Posted:
Jul 15, 2020 - 12:07pm |
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Secret Trump order gives CIA more powers to launch cyberattacksThe secret authorization, known as a presidential finding, gives the spy agency more freedom in both the kinds of operations it conducts and who it targets, undoing many restrictions that had been in place under prior administrations. The finding allows the CIA to more easily authorize its own covert cyber operations, rather than requiring the agency to get approval from the White House.
Unlike previous presidential findings that have focused on a specific foreign policy objective or outcome â such as preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power â this directive, driven by the National Security Council and crafted by the CIA, focuses more broadly on a capability: covert action in cyberspace.
The âvery aggressiveâ finding âgave the agency very specific authorities to really take the fight offensively to a handful of adversarial countries,â said a former U.S. government official. These countries include Russia, China, Iran and North Korea â which are mentioned directly in the document â but the finding potentially applies to others as well, according to another former official. âThe White House wanted a vehicle to strike back,â said the second former official. âAnd this was the way to do it.â
The finding has made it easier for the CIA to damage adversariesâ critical infrastructure, such as petrochemical plants, and to engage in the kind of hack-and-dump operations that Russian hackers and WikiLeaks popularized, in which tranches of stolen documents or data are leaked to journalists or posted on the internet. It has also freed the agency to conduct disruptive operations against organizations that were largely off limits previously, such as banks and other financial institutions.
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R_P


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Posted:
Jun 14, 2020 - 11:38am |
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Barr also directed the JTTF to âidentify criminal organizers and instigators,â even though antifa has no organizational structure and the FBIâs own internal assessments donât support the claim that antifa is somehow weaponizing protests
(...)
Eli Anderson, a 19-year-old college student on summer break back home in Cookeville, decided to organize an impromptu Black Lives Matter rally in the Cookeville public square on Tuesday, June 2. A little after 3 p.m., Anderson and his friends announced on their Instagram stories that there would be a peaceful protest in the city square at 5 p.m. A friend picked Anderson up at 4:30 p.m. to head to the rally when he got a call from his mother saying, âThe FBI is here and I donât know what is happening.âAnderson rushed home. By the time he got there, the two agents were gone and his mother was in a state of panic. She told Eli they had flashed FBI credentials.
âThe agents told her they had been monitoring my social media and believed that I might have information about antifa coming to town,â Anderson said. âIâm like, âWhat the fuck is antifa?â I had never even heard of it before.â
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R_P


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Posted:
May 27, 2020 - 5:19pm |
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R_P


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Posted:
May 14, 2020 - 12:16pm |
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R_P


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Posted:
Feb 11, 2020 - 5:43pm |
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The CIA's âMinervaâ SecretThe U.S. intelligence community actively monitored for decades the diplomatic and military communications of numerous Latin American nations through encryption machines supplied by a Swiss company that was secretly owned by the CIA and the German intelligence agency, BND, according to reports today by the German public television channel, ZDF and the Washington Post.
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Proclivities

Location: Paris of the Piedmont Gender:  
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Posted:
Apr 12, 2019 - 11:11am |
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R_P


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R_P


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Posted:
Jan 6, 2019 - 1:10pm |
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R_P


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Posted:
Nov 13, 2018 - 2:29pm |
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Secret CIA Document Shows Plan to Test Drugs on Prisoners
Perhaps the most striking element of the document is the CIA doctorsâ willful blindness to the truth of what they were doing. CIA doctors decided that waterboarding actually âprovided periodic reliefâ to a prisoner because it was a break from days of standing sleep deprivation. Similarly, CIA doctors decided that when a different prisoner was stuffed into a coffin-sized box, this provided a ârelatively benign sanctuaryâ from other torture methods. CIA doctors described yet another prisoner â who cried, begged, pleaded, vomited, and required medical resuscitation after being waterboarded â as âamazingly resistant to the waterboard.â Incredibly, CIA doctors concluded that the torture program was âreassuringly free of enduring physical or psychological effects.â
The truth is that CIA torture left a legacy of broken bodies and traumatized minds. Today, with a president who has vocally supported torture and a new CIA director who was deeply complicit in torturing prisoners, itâs more important than ever to expose the crimes of the past. Recognizing the roles played by the lawyers, doctors, and psychologists who enabled torture is critical to making sure it never happens again.
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R_P


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Posted:
Nov 9, 2018 - 9:54am |
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ScottFromWyoming

Location: Powell Gender:  
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Posted:
May 25, 2018 - 9:10pm |
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R_P wrote:
Well, you can tell by the way I use my walkI'm a Hoover man, no time to talk
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R_P


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Posted:
May 25, 2018 - 6:17pm |
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R_P


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Posted:
May 17, 2018 - 8:47pm |
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Bipartisan scumbaggeryGina Haspel confirmed as CIA director after key Democrats vote in favor(...) Haspel received robust backing from former intelligence, diplomatic, military and national security officials. Among those who supported her nomination were six former CIA directors and three former national intelligence directors.
On the opposing side are groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, which says she should have stood up against the interrogation practices then. More than 100 former US ambassadors who served both Republican and Democratic presidents sent the Senate a letter opposing Haspel, saying that despite her credentials, confirming her would give authoritarian leaders around the world the license to say US behavior is “no different from ours”.
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R_P


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Posted:
May 9, 2018 - 10:19am |
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R_P


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Posted:
Mar 20, 2018 - 11:56am |
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The NSA Worked to “Track Down” Bitcoin Users, Snowden Documents RevealInternet paranoiacs drawn to Bitcoin have long indulged fantasies of American spies subverting the booming, controversial digital currency. Increasingly popular among get-rich-quick speculators, Bitcoin started out as a high-minded project to make financial transactions public and mathematically verifiable — while also offering discretion. Governments, with a vested interest in controlling how money moves, would, some of Bitcoin’s fierce advocates believed, naturally try and thwart the coming techno-libertarian financial order. It turns out the conspiracy theorists were onto something. Classified documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden show that the National Security Agency indeed worked urgently to target Bitcoin users around the world — and wielded at least one mysterious source of information to “help track down senders and receivers of Bitcoins,” according to a top-secret passage in an internal NSA report dating to March 2013. The data source appears to have leveraged the NSA’s ability to harvest and analyze raw, global internet traffic while also exploiting an unnamed software program that purported to offer anonymity to users, according to other documents. Although the agency was interested in surveilling some competing cryptocurrencies, “Bitcoin is #1 priority,” a March 15, 2013 internal NSA report stated. (...)
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R_P


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Posted:
Mar 16, 2018 - 10:27pm |
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R_P


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Posted:
Mar 1, 2018 - 9:29pm |
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miamizsun

Location: (3261.3 Miles SE of RP) Gender:  
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Posted:
Jan 25, 2018 - 5:07am |
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a couple of things THE NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY maintains a page on its website that outlines its mission statement. But earlier this month, the agency made a discreet change: It removed “honesty” as its top priority. Since at least May 2016, the surveillance agency had featured honesty as the first of four “core values” listed on NSA.gov, alongside “respect for the law,” “integrity,” and “transparency.” The agency vowed on the site to “be truthful with each other.” On January 12, however, the NSA removed the mission statement page – which can still be viewed through the Internet Archive – and replaced it with a new version. Now, the parts about honesty and the pledge to be truthful have been deleted. The agency’s new top value is “commitment to service,” which it says means “excellence in the pursuit of our critical mission.”
IN A DRAMATIC moment on the Senate floor Monday afternoon, as the upper chamber rushed a spending bill through to end the government shutdown, the top Republican and Democrat on the Intelligence Committee warned that the bill contains language that would kneecap Congress’s ability to oversee secret covert actions and surveillance programs. Their effort to amend the language was rebuffed. The intelligence community, in its latest grasp, has gone too far even for Richard Burr. The Republican chair of the Senate Intelligence committee has long been one of the Senate’s staunchest advocates for the intelligence agencies, leading the fight to reauthorize surveillance programs and fighting to bury the results of the Senate’s five-year investigation into CIA torture. But he took to the Senate floor Monday to warn that it would compromise Congress’s ability to oversee secret intelligence programs. “This language could erode the powers of the authorizing committee,” Burr said. “Effectively, the intelligence community could expend funds as it sees fit without an authorization bill in place and with no statutory direction indicating that an authorization bill for 2018 is forthcoming.” The provision, first reported by The Intercept, appeared in the House version of the spending bill last week and modified the 70–year-old-law that first chartered the CIA. It removed language that requiring intelligence agencies to spend money according to Congress’s instructions, and replaced it with a provision that allows the agencies to move money around freely and without Congress’s knowledge. Blackwater founder Erik Prince has recently pitched the administrationon a private intelligence force that would report directly to President Donald Trump and CIA Director Mike Pompeo.
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