The Search for Captain America

Scientists are working on mutations to generate immortality.  This is not a comic book.  Early experiments have greatly extended the lifespan of bioengineered worms, enhancing their genetic integrity and giving them resistance to many things that would normally kill them.  Again, this is not a comic book.  Or a horror movie.

Caenorhabditis Elegans, or C. Elegans for scientists who don't want to waste half their life saying the first word, are the all rounders of the genetic modification world.  An extremely simple and easy-to-incubate lifeform, they nevertheless model many vital genetic aspects and have been used in everything from cancer studies to biological computing prototypes.

Harvard medical school staff have engaged in (Elegans) immortality research based on a simple observation: certain cell lines are immortal.  You'll be gone by the end of the century, and your current skin'll be gone before the end of the month, but in your very existence the immortality of the first primate lives on.  While "somatic" cells (the cells that make everything except babies) wither and die, the "germ" cells (sperm and ova for us) make new organisms, which then replicate and make new germ cells, and are effectively immortal.

There's more to this than Reader's Digest essays on living on through your children - germ cells are far, far better at staying alive than their somatic siblings.  Specially designed to convey genetic information to offspring (the entire point of a species), germ cells express enhanced immune abilities and resistance to many genetic stresses which break up regular cells.  And the Harvard team have tricked their somatic cousins into acting the same way.

By modifying the DAF-16 transcription factor the team gifted the millimeter-scale worms with extended lifespans, and if you guessed that there are an insane number of extra effects beyond "one single gene tweak" then congratulations on understanding genetics better than Hollywood does.

Don't worry about overcrowding or hiring Soylent chefs just yet, though.  While the research is applicable to mammalian cells in many ways, the simple fact is that you are your neurons, not your germ cells, and those neural cells are pretty different from the C Elegans model.  It's certainly conceivable that we could adapt neurons the same way (though conceiving isn't something we'll want to do when everyone lives eternally), but unless the Einstein and Feynmann of genetics already exist and are the same person, you're one or two generations too early.

23 and Me

Accelerating research.Making an impact.

You can make a difference by participating in a new kind of research—online, from anywhere.

As a customer, you can answer online survey questions, which researchers can link to your genetic data to study topics from ancestry to traits to disease. Your contribution helps drive scientific discoveries.

You can always choose to opt into or out of research.

The power of one.

On average, a customer who chooses to opt into research contributes to over 230 studies on topics that range from Parkinson's disease to lupus to asthma and more. Which diseases matter to you? Which diseases impact your family? You can choose which questions to answer.

Everyone has a story about a loved one affected by serious disease. We believe that collectively we can make an impact with our genetic data.

Bringing experts together.

We have received four grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health to fund our research and have identified hundreds of new genetic associations. We regularly publish our research in leading, peer-reviewed scientific journals.

We collaborate with some of the best and brightest talent in the world of genetics research.

ACADEMIC:

University of Chicago

MRC Epidemiology Unit at Cambridge University

Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

Stanford University

INDUSTRY:

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Biogen

Genentech

Pfizer

P&G Beauty

Federal Agency Issues Cease and Desist…but guess what?

Shortly before Thanksgiving of 2013 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ordered the genetic-testing company immediately to stop selling its flagship product, its $99 “Personal Genome Service” kit. In response, the company cooed that its “relationship with the FDA is extremely important to us” and continued hawking its wares as if nothing had happened. They continue to do so to this very day. It turns out big Pharma owns the FDA, and lowly bureaucrats are not going to tell it what to do. Although the agency is right to sound a warning about 23andMe, it’s doing so for the wrong reasons.

Since late 2007, 23andMe has been known for offering cut-rate genetic testing. Spit in a vial, send it in, and the company will look at thousands of regions in your DNA that are known to vary from human to human—and which are responsible for some of our traits. For example a site in your genome named rs4481887 can come in three varieties. If you happen to have what is known as the GG variant, there is a good probability that you are unable to smell asparagus in your urine; those blessed with the GA or AG varieties are much more likely to be repulsed by their own pee after having a few spears at Spargelfest.

At first, 23andMe seemed to angle its kit as a fun way to learn a little genetics using yourself as a test subject. (“Our goal is to connect you to the 23 paired volumes of your own genetic blueprint... bringing you personal insight into ancestry, genealogy, and inherited traits,” read the company’s website.) The FDA had little problem with the company telling you why you had dry ear wax (rs17822931) or whether you’re likely to sneeze when you look at a bright light (rs10427255).

That phase didn’t last for long, because there is much more interesting stuff in your genome than novelty items. Certain regions signal an increased risk of breast cancer, the impending onset of metabolic diseases, and sensitivity to medications. 23andMe—as well as a number of other companies—edged closer and closer to marketing their services as a way of predicting and even preventing health problems. And any kit

intended to cure, mitigate, treat, prevent, or diagnose a disease is, according to federal law, a "medical device" that needs to be deemed safe and effective by the FDA. Since mid-2009, 23andMe has been negotiating with the agency, and in July 2012, the company finally began the process of getting clearance from the FDA to sell the kit that it had already been selling for five years.

Everything seemed rosy until, in what a veteran Forbes reporter calls “the single dumbest regulatory strategy [he had] seen in 13 years of covering the Food and Drug Administration,” 23andMe changed its strategy. It apparently blew through its FDA deadlines, effectively annulling the clearance process, and abruptly cut off contact with the agency in May. Adding insult to injury the company started an aggressive advertising campaign (“Know more about your health!”), leaving little doubt about the underlying medical purpose of 23andMe’s Personal Genome Service. This left the agency with little alternative but to take action. “As part of our interactions with you, including more than 14 face-to-face and teleconference meetings, hundreds of email exchanges, and dozens of written communications,” the agency complained, “we provided you with… statistical advice, and discussed potential risk mitigation strategies.” It is the tone of a spurned spouse, exasperated and angry that 23andMe is putting no effort into salvaging their relationship.

But as the FDA frets about the accuracy of 23andMe’s tests, it is missing their true function, and consequently the agency has no clue about the real dangers they pose. The Personal Genome Service isn’t primarily intended to be a medical device. It is a mechanism meant to be a front end for a massive information-gathering operation against an unwitting public. They are looking for something. In fact, they are learning to profile humans so they can determine which genes are good for their bottom line, and which ones aren’t. If you never get sick, or age, or have high blood pressure, or diabetes, or heart disease, there is no profit. But, why stop there? If you are one of the world’s elite, what is the one thing you want more than more money? That’s right. More time to spend it. The top leadership of the world’s largest genetic search firm wants to find Captain America.

Sound paranoid? Consider the case of Google. (One of the founders of 23andMe, Anne Wojcicki, is presently married to Sergei Brin, the founder of Google.) When it first launched, Google billed itself as a faithful servant of the consumer, a company devoted only to building the best tool to help us satisfy our cravings for information on the web. And Google’s search engine did just that. But as we now know, the fundamental purpose of the company wasn’t to help us search, but to hoard information. Every search query entered into its computers is stored indefinitely. Joined with information gleaned from cookies that Google plants in our browsers, along with personally identifiable data that dribbles from our computer hardware and from our networks, and with the amazing volumes of information that we always seem willing to share with perfect strangers—even corporate ones—that data store has become Google’s real asset. By parceling out that information to help advertisers target you, with or without your consent, Google makes more than $10 billion every quarter.

What the search engine is to Google, the Personal Genome Service is to 23andMe. The company is not exactly hiding its ambitions. “The long game here is not to make money selling kits, although the kits are essential to get the base level data,” Patrick Chung, a 23andMe board member, told FastCompany last month. “Once you have the data, [the company] does actually become the Google of personalized health care.” The company has lowered the price of the kit again and again, most recently from $299 to a mere $99, practically making it a stocking-stuffer. All the better to induce you to voluntarily give 23andMe the data it so desperately wants. (Currently, the database contains the genetic information of some half a million people, a number Wojcicki reportedly wants to double by year end.)

What does 23andMe want to do with all that data? Right now the talk is all about medical research—and, in fact, the company is doing some interesting work. It has been sifting through its genomic database, which is combined with information that volunteers submit about themselves, to find possible genetic links to people’s traits. (The bright-light/sneeze genetic tag is a 23andMe discovery.) More promising are 23andMe’s attempts to recruit people who suffer from certain diseases, such as Parkinson’s and a few types of cancer. Simply through brute-force pattern matching, the company has a chance of finding genetic causes of these ailments, which could lead to a way to combat them. (And perhaps a blockbuster patent or three.)

That’s just the beginning, though. 23andMe reserves the right to use your personal information—including your genome—to inform you about events and to try to sell you products and services. There is a much more lucrative market waiting in the wings, too. One could easily imagine how insurance companies and pharmaceutical firms might be interested in getting their hands on your genetic information, the better to sell you products (or deny them to you). According to 23andMe’s privacy policy, that wouldn’t be an acceptable use of the database. Although 23andMe admits that it will share aggregate information about users genomes to third parties, it adamantly insists that it will not sell your personal genetic information without your explicit consent.

 

We’ve heard that one before. Back when Google was first launched, the founders insisted that the company would never sell you out to advertisers. The company admitted that it would share aggregate information about users’ behavior with anyone who ponied up enough money, but the company’s privacy policy promised that “[i]ndividually identifiable information about you is not willfully disclosed to any third party without first receiving your permission.” A decade and a half later, after countless minuscule frog-in-boiling-water changes, Google’s privacy policy is craftily worded, diluting the word “consent” so that it’s implicit in most cases. (There are a few exceptions; the company has graciously agreed not to reveal that you are a homosexual or that you have heart disease unless you explicitly opt in. But in matters not related to your medical conditions, race, ethnicity, sexuality, or your political or religious beliefs, there is no such guarantee.) Not that your consent really matters, implicit or explicit.

Google has repeatedly proven that it is more than willing to break its promises and ignore its own privacy rules when it suits.

Why should we believe that 23andMe’s promises are any more binding? Early signs certainly aren’t encouraging. Even though 23andMe currently asks permission to use your genetic information for scientific research, the company has explicitly stated that its database-sifting scientific work “does not constitute research on human subjects,” meaning that it is not subject to the rules and regulations that are supposed to protect experimental subjects’ privacy and welfare.

Those of us who have not volunteered to be a part of the grand experiment have even less protection. Even if 23andMe keeps your genome confidential against hackers, corporate takeovers, and the temptations of filthy lucre forever and ever, there is plenty of evidence that there is no such thing as an “anonymous” genome anymore. It is possible to use the internet to identify the owner of a snippet of genetic information and it is getting easier day by day.

This becomes a particularly acute problem once you realize that every one of your relatives who spits in a 23andMe vial is giving the company a not-inconsiderable bit of your own genetic information to the company along with their own. If you have several close relatives who are already in 23andMe’s database, the company already essentially has all that it needs to know about you. It is doubtful that 23andMe would be able to protect that information even if it were so inclined.

While the FDA concentrates on the question of whether 23andMe’s kit is a safe and effective medical device, it is failing to address the real issue: what 23andMe should be allowed to do with the data it collects. For 23andMe’s Personal Genome Service is much more than a medical device; it is a one-way portal into a world where corporations have access to the innermost contents of your cells and where insurers and pharmaceutical firms and marketers might know more about your body than you know yourself. And as 23andMe warns on its website, “Genetic Information that you share with others could be used against your interests. You should be careful about sharing your Genetic Information with others.”

Hillary Goes to Jail (Update)

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Republican California Rep. Darrell Issa said that there is enough evidence to indict Hillary Clinton for mishandling national security information on her private email server.“There is more than enough for an indictment,” Issa, the former House Oversight Committee chairman, told Breitbart News Saturday on Sirius/XM Patriot Channel 125. Issa explained:

The statute about classified material holds you responsible not to transmit in an unsecured environment or to a person not cleared. It holds you accountable not to do that. Not based on whether there’s the word ‘Secret’ all over it, but based on the presumption that you would recognize that classified material. She transmitted things like — I don’t want to disclose anything — like a mayor in Afghanistan who was working with us, and if that material becomes available to the wrong people, she gets killed. You don’t have to ask whether that’s classified. As an army lieutenant years ago, I knew that would be classified because it goes to sources and methods.

Breitbart News exclusively reported that Clinton posted and shared the names of CIA-protected American intelligence sources in foreign countries on her non-secure server, which was repeatedly breached by Russia-linked hack attempts and suffered a security vulnerability in East Asia. Sources report that the Russian government intercepted and plans to release some of Clinton’s private emails, which convicted hacker Guccifer also claims to have obtained. Issa said:

We know that Hillary Clinton broke the law with malice and forethought, for her own nefarious reasons including Clinton Cash, and the deals she and her husband were pocketing in hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign money. She wanted that to be kept behind closed doors. And she also wanted everything she did in an official capacity to be behind closed doors that were never available to this president even. She did that because she doesn’t know where the line is and she didn’t want to take the chance that her official side would expose her corrupt behavior in her personal life.

Issa said that while there is enough evidence to indict, the American people will have to play judge and jury in November’s election.

“It’s not even a high bar. To be considered to be president of the United States, you are supposed to be completely free of this kind of treachery against your country,” Issa said.

Before he stepped down from his chairmanship due to term limits, Issa waged the prosecution of the IRS targeting scandal, holding Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress in a full House vote.  Issa also monitored the Fast and Furious scandal and other Obama administration ethical quagmires. Since Issa was replaced by Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz — who defeated conservative Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan for the chairmanship with the help of Republican House leadership — the Oversight Committee has declined as an investigative tool and political weapon for the Republican Congress.

Comment: It can't, lest Obama be proven a co-conspirator, accomplice to the crime(s), aider and abetter and enabler...The list goes on and on.

He’s right. This comment exposes the soft underbelly of the DC Crime Syndicate. The FBI should go forward with its case, but the collateral damage will be seen by the world as the biggest dragnet in history. The Bureaus, Agencies, Departments and Administrations that launder trillions in taxpayer funds to associates, friends, family members and foreign

governments and individuals is almost dwarfed by the insider trading done by lawmakers and bureaucrats who manipulate global markets with their rules. No one wants to give up that gravy train. And, once the elected official “retires” they simply use the revolving door as a lobbyist to continue to get the inside information so they can make even more money.

The global corporations destroy competitors before they even get a chance to get funding or change the rules to raise the cost of a competitor’s process. A case in point is the arbitrary changing of biodiesel specs from allowing 2% methanol by weight, to only allowing 0.2%. The reduction doubles the amount of energy required to make the non-polluting fuel, preventing it from competing with petroleum diesel on price. The American petroleum industry controls the American Biodiesel Board and forced the EPA to make the final rule. This effectively ended the biodiesel industry overnight. Naked short traders also made tons of money financially tanking the stock ahead of the EPA ruling.

The list of industries destroyed or that benefitted from the practices of the shadow government are nearly endless.

Fascist DOJ Attacks Press

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said on NBC News the administration was going to remove all mention of Omar Mateen’s pledges of allegiance to ISIS on the now-infamous emergency 9-1-1 calls he made during his gunfire massacre at an Orlando “gay” club. The announced redaction was reversed through public outcry, but it’s the thought that counts.

Why?

She didn’t really explain, except to say it was an anti-propaganda issue.

“What we’re not going to do is further proclaim this man’s pledges of allegiance to terrorist groups and further his propaganda,” Lynch said, on NBC. “We are not going to hear him make his assertions of allegiance [to ISIS].”

An FBI agent, Ronald Hoppeer, meanwhile, told reporters at a Monday press conference releasing the full, unedited version of the tapes might “inflame” others to commit their own acts of terror, he said, the Hill reported.

“We’re not going to propagate violent rhetoric that comes from other people, whether it comes from here or overseas,” Hopper said. “We’re not going to continue to put their names out front.”

A partial transcript of the back-and-forth between Mateen and emergency officials is due for release Monday. And while media around the world widely reported Mateen’s statements on this call included pledges of allegiance to an ISIS chief, Lynch said what’s going to be released to the public won’t contain those remarks.

Critics of the scrubbing say the feds are bending over backwards to show radical Islamism – something President Obama is reluctant to use as a phrase to describe acts of terror committed by radical Islamists – is not as big a threat as some in the fields of politics, national security and military intelligence would suggest.

“This is not just a simple wording issue,” said Ric Grenell, a former aide to U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, on “Fox & Friends” on Monday. “The fact that Loretta Lynch is somehow redacting the specific enemy that is being called out here is a PR move.”

Rudy Giuliani, former New York City mayor, also said on the same show that it’s not helpful in the investigative process to hide or conceal root causes.

“Why didn’t they do this with the Mafia, to spare Italian-Americans? Why? Because if you did,” Giuliani said, “you would never make the connection [that ultimately] brought them down.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan called the redaction “preposterous” and unhelpful.

“We know the shooter was a radical Islamist extremist inspired by ISIS,” he said. “We also know he intentionally targeted the LGBT community. The administration should release the full, un-redacted transcript so the public is clear-eyed about who did this and why.”

And Florida Gov. Rick Scott slammed the administration, saying Team Obama was turning a blind eye to the realities of counter-terror warfare.

“This seems like it is another example of not focusing on the evil here,” Scott said. “This is evil. It’s ISIS. It’s radical Islam. … We all would like answers. [Lynch] should release everything that doesn’t impact the investigation.”

Mateen was shot and killed by police after he murdered 49 and injured 53 at Pulse, the “gay” hot spot in Orlando. But in the lead-up to his own death, Mateen made a 9-1-1 emergency call in which he declared his support for ISIS leader Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Lynch, during another interview on “Face the Nation” on CBS, said investigators are trying to determine why exactly Mateen targeted the “gay” community.

Released portions of the transcript of Mateen’s emergency telephone call during the shootings show the Justice Department went so far to scrub the Islamic references as to switch out the word “Allah,” the Muslim name for that faith’s god, for “God.”

As Town Hall reported, Mateen spoke Arabic during the call and offered a prayer of “praise be Allah,” calling for “prayers as well as peace be upon the prophet of Allah.” But in the edited version of the transcript released by the Justice Department, that prayer reads: “Praise be to God, and prayers as well as peace be upon the prophet of God [In Arabic].”

The FBI announced Monday it was not releasing any audio of the call, a decision Town Hall’s Katie Pavlich writes: “Could it be because Americans will hear Omar Mateen speaking Arabic and saying the words we hear so often, ‘Allahu akbar,’ debunking the narrative again that the attack on Pulse night club had little to do with jihad?

No one Died Until 5:13 in the Morning

In the ongoing TRUNEWS Investigation into the Orlando Massacre, a consistent question has arisen, when did the victims die?

According to the FBI the supposed Orlando shooter, Omar Mateen, entering the club around 02:00 AM and began his killing spree. However, as Judge Andrew Napolitano points out in this clip, that story — the story based off of the unredacted FBI transcript released Monday — doesn’t just directly contradict eye witness testimony, but the FBI’s official narrative itself!

On June 20th, speaking as a guest on Fox News’s talk show Outnumbered, Judge Napolitano says:

“These are in two parts, there’s an actual transcript, and then there’s a summary of the rest. Here’s what’s news in the summary, nobody died until 05:13 in the morning, when the SWAT team entered, prior to that no one had been killed. The 53 that were injured, and the 49 that were murdered all met their fates at the time of, and during, the police entry into the building.”

That means that the alleged gunman held the entire club hostage for 3 hours without anyone being shot. That leaves the question, “Who was coming down the hall shooting people? What did witnesses say about police behavior?” This could be the smoking gun which unravels this entire mystery. Why has the FBI issued gag orders to local police, fire, and emergency medical personnel? Why has the 911 audio and emergency scanner archives between the hours of 12:00 AM and 0300 AM EST been erased or physically requisitioned by the FBI?

There is one more question for which we do not have answer, and may never see the answer. How many of the dead and injured were shot by police? There are currently more than 50 thousand “no-knock” raids done by SWAT teams annually in the USA. Only 23% of the time do they find evidence of resisting arrest or evidence supporting any criminal activity. Thousands of innocent people have been killed and injured by SWAT teams. Is the Pulse Massacre any different?

The Trouble with Muslims

Brexit: Get off the IslandIf there’s one thing that’s going to be discussed about the recent Brexit referendum, it’s immigration. The UK voted to leave the European Union last Thursday—and many Britons have had it with their inability to govern themselves as a sovereign nation. One man explicitly said he voted to stop the flow of immigration; he didn’t’ care about Europe or trade deals. Some were concerned about jobs, while others noted the pernicious system in which un-elected bureaucrats stuck their beaks into how the UK governs its affairs. One woman said what’s the point passing any sort of laws in the UK, when Brussels will change them.Yet, immigration seems to be a huge issue, where many think that the massive influx of immigrants has placed an enormous strain on the country’s welfare state (via Daily Signal):

Stephen Booth, the co-director of Open Europe, a nonpartisan think tank based in London and Brussels, said that of the roughly 5 million net immigrants to the United Kingdom between 1990 and 2014, over three-quarters came from outside Europe. More than 72% of those were young, Islamic men. They are illiterate and unskilled. The labor laws in the EU forbid the replacement of skilled workers with unskilled workers. Less than 10% of immigrants were families. France sent more than 1 million people into the streets this week, being covered by no news agencies, to protest changes in the laws to allow immigrants to find work ahead of native French people. It is the largest demonstration in French history, dwarfing the French Revolution. All of it was directed at the devastating effects of forced immigration by the EU.

But immigration from the European Union now makes up nearly half of the United Kingdom’s net inflow, Booth said. The combination of European Union expansion in 2004 and 2007—which brought in poorer countries like Bulgaria, Romania, and Poland—and the Eurozone economic crisis has influenced substantial internal immigration to Britain and its relatively strong economy.Proponents of immigration say it has grown the British economy, increased tax revenue, and attracted skilled workers. But critics say immigration has overwhelmed Britain’s public resources, and changed Britain’s culture and values.

In a letter to the UK-based Guardian, Richard Mountford of Tonbridge, Kent said that this Brexit vote was a protest against mass immigration flow:

Britain voted to leave the EU in the month we learned that last year’s net migration to the UK was a record 335,000 people (UK population grew by half a million last year, 24 June). The vote was a protest against mass immigration of unskilled and illiterate young men. This greatly expanded issues of stagnant wages and rising rents. The EU flat out refused to let the UK opt-out from the free movement of people. This would address the main reason for the vote to leave, and make it perfectly legitimate for the UK government to offer a second referendum, rather than rush to start the exit process. An opt-out would also assuage anti-EU sentiments in several other EU countries.

Unfortunately, the Fascist leadership in Brussels shouted down the UK with slanderous accusations of racism and Islamophobia. The REMAIN crowd polled continuously and determined that they did not have to bargain on this issue, because the NAY’s had the votes. The entire European Union idea was sold to the world as a method to prevent some force like the NAZI’s from coming to power again. They erroneously named nationalism as the enemy of the State. In reality, it was the erasure of borders that was the goal of Hitler. He first absorbed the German speaking peoples. From these areas he assessed taxes, and gathered wealth and recruited troops. He created government jobs in those areas like Robin Hood and built schools and hospitals like Santa Clause. Sound familiar? What people need to take away from this, is what the British people actually taught us. They stated that they were sovereign and would no longer put up with an all-powerful central ruling body of elites telling them how to live, stuffing their towns and cities with Muslims and conscribing their youth to the Pan European army. By the way, this army was designed not to battle Russia, but to quell any civil uprising as the leaders of this elite ruling class washed away the heritage of every single nation in Europe.

The pollsters were wrong. What really happened is that people answering the phone did not want to be targeted individually for being racist, so they remained silent or gave false answers. That, however, was a completely different story when the people were alone and anonymous in the voting booth. The LEAVE referendum won by a good margin with over 51% of the enormous vote, in spite of news that the REMAIN campaign added 2,800 people from Antarctica and 15,000 people from non-citizens of the UK through a suspicious “mail-in” campaign launched by the REMAIN campaign.

A secondary reason, although related to the immigration issue, was that people in the UK were heavy net contributors to the EU’s budget while having zero representation in that organization. That is the pure definition of tyranny. It is, by the way, exactly the same sentiment held by US States in their opinion of Washington. Before the 17th, allowing Senators to run for election, the State legislature appointed them to office. If they did not represent the wishes of the State, then they were recalled and replaced. A nationwide propaganda campaign convinced the people that this was cronyism, and the Congress voted to allow them to run for election. This removed the State’s representation in Washington forever.

In November, the American polls will be likewise be humiliated for trying to defraud the American people into continue to support the oligarchy of lobbyists and bureaucrats that make up the DC Crime Syndicate. They want to erase your State’s border, federalize your police force, and stuff your communities with illegal immigrants and Muslims. You have a chance to stop this. That is, if you can stay awake long enough to remember to vote. It is a whole 5 months away.

By the way, in my opinion, Scotland is being used by the Oligarchs to upset the Brexit. How? I am glad you asked. Britain is a net loser when it comes to EU taxes and benefits. Germany and France are also net losers. They don’t like it. Not one bit. But, Scotland is a third world country when it comes to upward mobility of its communities. You cannot simply change jobs in Scotland. There is no new construction, or productive mines, or large commercial farms. There

is tourism, and that is about it. Scotland is a net winner when it comes to EU benefits. Because they are addicted to the benefits, they are willing to give away their sovereignty to foreign oligarchs so the nobles can have a few pennies extra. The nobles have always been that way. Increase their lands, and they will happily sell out their own people.

Hence, Scotland will be used as the Northern hammer to convince Britain them made an error in judgment. You wait and see.

The Air Force Space Command has devised a new framework for interstellar warfare called Space Enterprise Vision (SEV).Though some aspects of the plan are classified, Air Force Space Command spokesman Col. John Dorrian says that SEV is  "an all-encompassing look at all the things we need to do to create more resilience in our space forces, enhance them, and respond to threats." 

Dorrian says Vision is related to the Space Portfolio Review, a government-wide assessment of space-related national security issues that involve spy satellites.

"Most U.S. military space systems were not designed with threats in mind, and were built for long-term functionality and efficiency, with systems operating for decades in some cases," said Gen. John Hyten, head of Air Force Space Command. 

"Without the need to factor in threats, longevity and cost were the critical factors to design and these factors were applied in a mission stovepipe. This is no longer an adequate methodology to equip space forces."

Theresa Hitchens, a senior research scholar at the University of Maryland’s Center for International and Security Studies, is optimistic about SEV and feels a similar initiative should have been instituted long ago.  

"Space assets have for too long been allowed to be near 'single point' failures. This is not good, neither for the United States nor for international security, because it creates incentives for others to target those assets," she said.

"It is good that the US government is finally getting serious about national security space. For a long time, there has been a lot of talk and not a lot of walk."

Hitchens said the developments she’s most encouraged by include "cooperation with allies to help with redundancy, resiliency, [and] distribution of assets for mission assurance," as well as "efforts to bridge the divide between the IC (Intelligence Community) and the military regarding space assets, better Space Situational Awareness, and disaggregation (separating strategic assets from those used in tactical warfighting)."

She feels that "these are all things that should have been happening for the past 20 years but have not."

Hyten says that space dominance will take more than a capable craft. 

"The first thing you have to do to gain air superiority is make sure you can fly where you need to fly, that means we have to take down an enemy air defense system, and in order to take down an integrated air defense system you have to do a lot more than send an F-22 in," he said.  

"All the domains have to play at the same time, things have to happen simultaneously, that’s multi-domain operations."

Hitchens is worried, however, that the focus on combat capabilities could lead to unnecessary aggravation in future conflict. 

"There is still time to try to work out some understandings before people rush out and arm themselves to the teeth," she said. "Moving too aggressively to develop such US capabilities, when diplomatic efforts to set norms and TCBMs are already floundering, is not a good idea." 

"Especially because it is very clear that the big three space players do not understand each other’s ‘bright lines’, what might cause crisis escalation and worse yet conflict escalation. Posturing, poking and aggressive rhetoric only elevate the risks."

Of course, the ink for the boldest lines has been supplied by the military industrial complex. Private industry, which could obtain actual benefits like clean energy and engineering breakthroughs and high tech employment are being prevented from participating by these same three massive special interests, who believe he who controls space shall control the world.

The Hillary Affair: The List of Crimes Begins

A hacked 42-page Democrat National Committee memo released on Monday reveals the dizzying array of Clinton Foundation scandal facts the DNC considers “vulnerabilities” for presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

The secret document, titled “Clinton Foundation Vulnerabilities Master Doc FINAL,” is one of several newly released internal memos obtained by the hacker known as “Guccifer 2.0.” Totaling over 22,000 words in length, the DNC vulnerabilities dossier paints a portrait of a political party besieged by media coverage of foreign Clinton  Foundation donations spawned by the investigative New York Times bestselling book, Clinton Cash.

The document chronicles hundreds of news reports of Clinton Foundation malfeasance featured under devastating headings created by DNC staffers themselves. Track-change comments featured inside the document contain the names “Lauren Smith” and “Jeremy Brinster,” both of whom are listed as former or current DNC research staffers. The DNC’s own descriptive headings, which are backed up by mainstream media reports, demonstrate how politically toxic the DNC considers the Clinton Foundation’s acceptance of foreign donations during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Sec. of State.

In the section titled, “CLINTON FOUNDATION INDIVIDUAL FOREIGN DONORS,” the DNC vulnerabilities memo reports the following:

THE CLINTON FOUNDATION RECEIVED DONATIONS FROM INDIVIDUALS TIED TO SAUDI ARABIA WHILE CLINTON SERVED AS SECRETARY OF STATE

INDIAN POLITICIAN AMAR SINGH, WHO HAD DONATED AT LEAST $1 MILLION TO   THE CLINTON FOUNDATION, MET WITH HILLARY CLINTON IN SEPTEMBER 2008 TO DISCUSS AN INDIA-U.S. CIVIL NUCLEAR AGREEMENT

BILLIONAIRE STEEL EXECUTIVE AND MEMBER OF THE FOREIGN INVESTMENT COUNCIL IN KAZAKHSTAN LAKSHMI MITTAL GAVE $1 MILLION TO $5 MILLION TO THE CLINTON FOUNDATION BEFORE CLINTON BECAME SECRETARY OF STATE

SOON AFTER SECRETARY CLINTON LEFT THE STATE DEPARTMENT, THE CLINTON FOUNDATION “RECEIVED A LARGE DONATION FROM A

CONGLOMERATE RUN BY A MEMBER OF CHINA’S NATIONAL PEOPLE’S CONGRESS”

A GERMAN INVESTOR WHO HAS LOBBIED CHANCELLOR MERKEL’S ADMINISTRATION GAVE BETWEEN $1 MILLION AND $5 MILLION TO THE CLINTON FOUNDATION, SOME OF WHICH WAS DURING MRS. CLINTON’S TENURE AT THE STATE DEPARTMENT

A VENEZUELAN MEDIA MOGUL WHO WAS ACTIVE IN VENEZUELAN POLITICS DONATED TO THE CLINTON FOUNDATION DURING CLINTON’S TENURE AS SECRETARY OF STATE

AN EMBATTLED BUSINESSMAN WITH “TIES TO BAHRAIN’S STATE-OWNED ALUMINUM COMPANY” GAVE BETWEEN $1 MILLION AND $5 MILLION TO THE CLINTON FOUNDATION

DURING CLINTON’S TENURE AS SECRETARY OF STATE, A FORMER CLINTON POLLSTER REGISTERED AS A LOBBYIST FOR PINCHUK AND TOOK MEETINGS WITH CLINTON AIDE’S ABOUT ISSUES IN THE UKRAINE

The Clintons’ role in dispersing billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars in the Haitian disaster relief debacle is also noted as a core vulnerability:

THE CLINTONS BECAME EXTENSIVELY INVOLVED IN HAITI REBUILDING AFTER THE 2010 EARTHQUAKE THROUGH THE STATE DEPARTMENT, THE UNITED NATIONS, THE FOUNDATION, AND SEPARATE AID FUNDS

…AND SOME HAVE CRITICIZED THEM FOR PERCEIVED SLOW PROGRESS ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVES…INCLUDING THE MUCH-HYPED CARACOL INDUSTRIAL PARK THAT SECRETARY CLINTON PERSONALLY PUSHED

SOME OF CRITICIZED CLINTON HAITI INITIATIVES FOR A LACK OF FOCUS ON HAITI’S WORST-OFF CITIZENS…

Other hacked documents released on Monday included internal memos from embattled Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon seeking to calm Democrats’ fears over the book Clinton Cash. In an April 23, 2015 memo from Fallon to “Friends and Allies,” Hillary’s spokesman promises Clinton supporters that “bit by bit, the truth will come to light.” Unfortunately for the Clinton campaign, myriad mainstream and liberal news outlets confirmed and corroborated the book’s myriad investigative revelations.

A highly anticipated and critically acclaimed documentary film based on Clinton Cash is slated for global release the week of the Democratic National Convention.

Plato: Consciousness is Simply Power

In 2008, neuroscientist Giulio Tononi at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Sleep and Consciousness put forward his “integrated information theory,” which is currently accepted as one of the most compelling explanations about what consciousness is.

One of the central claims of the theory is that, for consciousness to exist, it must have “cause-effect” power on itself.

Neurologist Melanie Boly, a resident at UW’s School of Medicine and Public Health who has worked with Tononi, explains that for anything to exist, it must be able to have an effect; it must be able to make some small difference to something else.

“Consciousness exists for itself and by itself,” says Boly. “Thus it should have cause and effect on itself.”

Boly is currently working with other researchers to develop a mathematical framework to test the predictions of integrated information theory.

But she points out that, long before the explanation of consciousness was put forward in such a scientifically rigorous form, the philosopher Plato expressed the idea that for something to exist, it must capable of having an effect. And so consciousness (or “being,” as Plato described it) is “simply power.”

In the dialog Sophist, written in 360 BC, Plato wrote:

“My notion would be, that anything which possesses any sort of power to affect another, or to be affected by another, if only for a single moment, however trifling the cause and however slight the effect, has real existence; and I hold that the definition of being is simply power.”

Just as it’s impossible to definitively know what caused the world, we’ll never be able to completely prove a theory of consciousness. But Boly believes the current evidence suggests that the integrated information theory is correct—which would then scientifically validate Plato’s views from more than two millennia ago.

This article presents an updated account of integrated information theory of consciousness (IIT) and some of its implications. IIT stems from thought experiments that lead to phenomenological axioms and ontological postulates. The information axiom asserts that every experience is one out of many, i.e. specific – it is what it is by differing in its particular way from a large repertoire of alternatives. The integration axiom asserts that each experience is one, i.e. unified – it cannot be reduced to independent components. The exclusion axiom asserts that every experience is definite – it is limited to particular things and not others and flows at a particular speed and resolution. IIT formalizes these intuitions with three postulates.

The information postulate states that only “differences that make a difference” from the intrinsic perspective of a system matter: a mechanism generates cause-effect information if its present state has specific past causes and specific future effects within a system.

The integration postulate states that only information that is irreducible matters: mechanisms generate integrated information only to the extent that the information they generate cannot be partitioned into that generated within independent components.

The exclusion postulate states that only maxima of integrated information matter: a mechanism specifies only one maximally irreducible set of past causes and future effects – a concept.

A complex is a set of elements specifying a maximally irreducible constellation of concepts, where the maximum is evaluated at the optimal spatio-temporal scale. Its concepts specify a maximally integrated conceptual information structure or quale, which is identical with an experience. Finally, changes in information integration upon exposure to the environment reflect a system’s ability to match the causal structure of the world. After introducing an updated definition of information integration and related quantities, the article presents some theoretical considerations about the relationship between information and causation and about the relational structure of concepts within a quale. It also explores the relationship between the temporal grain size of information integration and the dynamic of metastable states in the corticothalamic complex. Finally, it summarizes how IIT accounts for empirical findings about the neural substrate of consciousness, and how various aspects of phenomenology may in principle be addressed in terms of the geometry of information integration.

Everybody knows what consciousness is: it is what vanishes every night when we fall into dreamless sleep and reappears when we wake up or when we dream. Thus, consciousness is synonymous with experience – any experience – of shapes or sounds, thoughts or emotions, about the world or about the self. It is also common knowledge that our consciousness depends on certain parts of the brain. For example, the widespread destruction of the cerebral cortex leaves people permanently unconscious (vegetative), whereas the complete removal of the cerebellum, which is even richer in neurons but does not handle thinking so much as bodily functions like speech and muscle movements.

This article presents an updated account of integrated information theory of consciousness (IIT) and some of its implications. IIT stems from thought experiments that lead to phenomenological axioms (existence, compositionality, information, integration, exclusion) and corresponding ontological postulates. The information axiom asserts that every experience is specific – it is what it is by differing in its particular way from a large repertoire of alternatives. The integration axiom asserts that each experience is unified – it cannot be reduced to independent components. The exclusion axiom asserts that every experience is definite – it is limited to particular things and not others and flows at a particular speed and resolution. IIT formalizes these intuitions with postulates. The information postulate states that only “differences that make a difference” from the intrinsic perspective of a system matter: a mechanism generates cause-effect information if its present state has selective past causes and selective future effects within a system. The integration postulate states that only information that is irreducible matters: mechanisms generate integrated information only to the extent that the information they generate cannot be partitioned into that generated within independent components. The exclusion postulate states that only maxima of integrated information matter: a mechanism specifies only one maximally irreducible set of past causes and future effects – a concept. A complex is a set of elements specifying a maximally irreducible constellation of concepts, where the maximum is evaluated over elements and at the optimal spatio-temporal scale. Its concepts specify a maximally

integrated conceptual information structure or quale, which is identical with an experience. Finally, changes in information integration upon exposure to the environment reflect a system’s ability to match the causal structure of the world. After introducing an updated definition of information integration and related quantities, the article presents some theoretical considerations about the relationship between information and causation and about the relational structure of concepts within a quale. It also explores the relationship between the temporal grain size of information integration and the dynamic of metastable states in the corticothalamic complex. Finally, it summarizes how IIT accounts for empirical findings about the neural substrate of consciousness, and how various aspects of phenomenology may in principle be addressed in terms of the geometry of information integration.

Furthermore, it matters how the cerebral cortex is functioning. For example, cortical neurons remain active throughout sleep, although their firing patterns may change. Correspondingly, at certain times during sleep consciousness fades, while at other times we dream. It is also well established that different parts of the cortex influence qualitative aspects of consciousness: damage to certain parts of the cortex impairs the experience of color, whereas other lesions impair that of visual shapes. Neuroscientific findings are making progress in identifying the neural correlates of consciousness (Koch, 2004). However, to explain why experience is generated in the cortex and not in the cerebellum, why it fades in certain stages of sleep, why some cortical areas contribute color and others sound, and to address difficult issues such as the presence and quality of consciousness in newborn babies, in animals, or in pathological conditions, empirical studies are usefully complemented by a theoretical approach. Integrated information theory (IIT) constitutes such an approach. What follows is an outline of IIT, streamlined and updated with respect to previous expositions (Tononi, 2004, 2008).Three thought experiments Three thought experiments lie at the heart of IIT – the photodiode thought experiment, the camera thought experiment, and the internet thought experiment.

The photodiode thought experiment Consider a human and a simple photodiode facing a blank screen that is alternately on and off. The photodiode can tell ‘light’ from ‘dark’ just as well as a human. However, a human also has an experience of light or dark, whereas the photodiode presumably does not. What is the critical property that humans have and photodiodes lack? According to IIT, the critical property has to do with how much information is generated when the distinction between light and dark is made. From the intrinsic perspective of a system – photodiode or human – information can best be defined as a “difference that makes a difference”1: the more alternatives (differences) can be distinguished, to the extent they lead to distinguishable consequences (make a difference), the greater the information. When the blank screen turns on, the photodiode’s

mechanism, which can distinguish between a low and a high current, detects a high current and, say, triggers the output ‘light’ rather than the output ‘dark’. Since the

distinction is between two alternatives, the photodiode generates 1 bit of information. We take that bit of information to specify ‘light’ as opposed to ‘dark’, but it is important to realize that, from the photodiode’s perspective, the only specification it can make is whether its input were in one of two ways and whether therefore its outputs should be in one of two ways – this way or not this way. Any further specification is impossible because it does not have mechanisms for it. Therefore, when the photodiode detects and reports ‘light’, such light cannot possibly mean what it means for us – it does not even mean that it is a visual attribute. When a human reports pure light, by contrast, mechanisms in his brain distinguish, in a specific way, among a much larger number of alternatives, and are primed accordingly for a large number of different outcomes, thus generating many bits of information.

This is because ‘light’ is distinguished not only from ‘dark’, but from a multitude of other possibilities, for example a red screen, a green screen, this movie frame, that movie frame, a sound, a different sound, a thought, another thought, and so on. In other words, each alternative can be distinguished from the others in its own specific way, and can lead to different consequences, including different verbal reports, actions, thoughts, memories etc. Anything above zero Point can be termed light. It’s all about the wavelength.

To us, then, ‘light’ is much more meaningful precisely because we have mechanisms that can specifically distinguish this particular state of affairs we call ‘light’ against each and every one of a large number of alternatives, and lead to appropriately different consequences. Indeed, as a human, no matter how hard I try, I cannot empty an experience of meaning: I cannot reduce the experience of ‘light’ to ‘this and not this’. More generally, if I am not blind from birth, I cannot reduce myself to lacking visual experiences; if I am not color-blind, I cannot reduce myself to seeing the world in black-and-white; if I know English, I cannot see the word “English” and not understand it; if I am an experienced musician, I cannot reduce myself to listening to a sonata as if I were a novice, and so on. This central point may be appreciated either by addition or by subtraction. By addition, I realize that I can only see ‘light’ the way I see it, as progressively more and more meaning is added by mechanisms that specify how ‘light’ differs from each of countless alternatives: from various colors, shapes, and countless other visual and non-visual experiences. By subtraction, I can realize that, if I were to lose one neural mechanism after the other, my being conscious of ‘light’ would degrade – it would lose its non-coloredness, its non-shapedness, it would even lose its visualness – while its meaning is progressively stripped down to just ‘one of two ways’, as with the photodiode. Either way, the theory says that, the more my mechanisms specify how ‘light’ differs from its many alternatives, and thereby lead to different consequences – the more they specify what light means – the more I am conscious of it.

The camera thought experiment Information – the ability to discriminate among a large number of alternatives – is thus an essential ingredient for consciousness. However, another thought experiment, this time involving a digital camera, shows the need for a

second ingredient. Assume the sensor chip of the camera is a collection of a million binary photodiodes. Taken together, then, the camera’s photodiodes can distinguish among 21,000,000 alternative states, an immense number, corresponding to 1 million bits of information. Indeed, the camera would respond differently to every possible image. Yet few would argue that the camera is conscious. What is the critical difference between a human being and a camera? According to IIT, the difference has to do with information integration.

From the point of view of an external observer, the camera may be considered as a single system with a repertoire of 21,000,000 states. And remember, observation is everything, when it comes to quantum considerations. Waves collapse to particles whenever they are observed before they express themselves, for example with a double slit display.

However, the chip is not an integrated entity: since its 1 million photodiodes have no way to interact, each photodiode performs its own local discrimination between a low and a high current, completely independent of what every other photodiode might be doing. In reality, the chip is just a collection of 1 million independent photodiodes, each with a repertoire of 2 inputs and outputs – there is no intrinsic point of view associated with the camera chip as a whole. This is easy to see: if the sensor chip were cut into 1 million pieces each holding its individual photodiode, the performance of the camera would not change at all.

By contrast, a human distinguishes among a vast repertoire of alternatives as a single, integrated system, one that cannot be broken down into independent components each with their own separate repertoire. Phenomenologically, every experience is an integrated whole, one that means what it means by virtue of being one, and which is experienced from a single point of view.

For example, no matter how hard I try, experiencing the full visual field cannot be reduced into experiencing separately the left half and the right half. No matter how hard I try, I cannot reduce the experience of a red apple or a yellow flowers into the separate experience of its color and its shape. The two colors have a unique observance for each individual person. Indeed, the only way to split an experience into independent experiences seems to be splitting the brain in two, as in patients who underwent the section of the corpus callosum to treat severe epilepsy (Gazzaniga, 2005). This is assuming that the observation is actually being made by a single consciousness looking at the world through two different lenses, as it were; two different brains in the same person’s body. Such patients do indeed experience the left half of the visual field independently of the right side, but then the surgery has created two separate consciousness lenses instead of one. It is inconclusive if both observations can be made exactly simultaneously, or whether the person has to “think” about the artistic side versus the analytical side. Therefore, underlying the unity of experience must be causal interactions among certain elements within the brain. This means that these elements work together as an integrated

system, which is why, unlike the camera, their performance breaks down if they are disconnected.

Axiom Yet another postulate concerns exclusion: a mechanism in a state generates integrated information about only one set of causes and effects – the one that is maximally irreducible. That is, the mechanism can specify only one pair of causes and effects. By a principle of causal parsimony, this is the pair of causes and effects whose partition would produce the greatest loss of information. This maximally irreducible set of causes and effects is called a concept. Exclusion can be captured by measuring the maximum of integrated information maxϕMIP over all possible cause-effect repertoires of the mechanism over the system. Ontologically, the exclusion postulate claims that only maximally irreducible entities exist intrinsically.

Climate Change Update

No one believes there is a very ancient and very powerful intelligence on the Earth trying to capture the entire human race in a web of global taxation and constrictive rules without representation. On what science could this be based, so that there could be no argument? How about fake data? That works.

Nearly two decades and $108 million worth of “disturbing” data manipulation with “serious and far ranging” effects forced a federal lab to close, a congressman revealed Thursday.

The inorganic section of the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) Energy Geochemistry Laboratory in Lakewood, Colo. manipulated data on a variety of topics – including many related to the environment – from 1996 to 2014. The manipulation was caught in 2008, but continued another six years.

image: http://www.trunews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/sally-300x129.jpg

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell speaks during a news conference in Gatineau, Quebec, Canada, April 28, 2016. REUTERS/Chris Wattie

“It’s astounding that we spend $108 million on manipulated research and then the far-reaching effects that that would have,” Rep. Bruce Westerman said at a Oversight Hearing on the Administration’s Response to Findings of Unethical and Criminal Conduct at the Department of

the Interior. Yeah, that’s right. The department of interior, the same ones who have seized nearly a billion acres of American lands away from States and private land owners through the use of mercenaries, terrorism, economic and malicious prosecutions and cold blooded murder.

“We know how research multiples and affects different parts of our society and our economy and … if you’re working off of flawed data it definitely could be in a bad way.”

“The problems were so severe, in fact, that the USGS has already closed the inorganic lab in question permanently,” the Arkansas Republican said. The lab was terminated in January.

Westerman cited a recent Department of the Interior Inspector General (IG) report that said impacts from the data manipulation “are not yet known but, nevertheless, they will be serious and far ranging. The affected projects represented about $108 million in taxpayer funding from fiscal year 2008 through 2014.”

Westerman also highlighted an interview the IG withheld from its report.

“Tell me what you want and I will get it for you. What we do is like magic,” a former USGS official told auditors a former employee linked to the manipulation would say, according to Westerman.

Westerman added that the IG’s interview notes make the context of those quotes unclear.

“Given the lab’s history and that problems had already been identified when this interview was being conducted, such a statement seems potentially significant,” Westerman told Deputy IG Mary Kendall, a witness for the hearing.

“Your office explained that you do not know the context or veracity of this statement and that this issue was not part of the audit,” Westerman told Kendall.

Regardless, other scientists became aware and requested that lab work be taken elsewhere.

“USGS has advised committee staff that because scientists had already begun to distrust this lab so significantly that they began relying upon analysis from other labs,” Westerman said.

It’s unclear what effects the manipulated data will have, though Westerman – who touted his engineering background – noted the importance of research integrity.

“I’m not even sure what the scientific result were used in,” he said. “A lot of the work that people do that’s based on scientific research is so important and if the base research is flawed, then that affects the work that goes out from there.”

The research topics that faced data manipulation – including uranium in the environment, health effects of energy resources, and U.S. coal resources and reserves – was “disturbing,” Westerman said.

Some research papers that used the data had to be recalled, Kendall told the panel, but she was unsure of the extent other studies, such as college dissertations, were affected. She also noted that USG was taking steps to determine such effects.

This is what we affectionately call IMPACT. Normally, we would be tracing a drug, or a pound of hamburger, or a car, or something that had been let out the door for the unsuspecting customer. But, in this case, there are thousands of undergraduates who are searching for data to support one level of cognitive dissonance or another.

They are not looking for the fact that we still have 200,000 glaciers around the world, the same number that existed 180 years ago. They don’t want pictures of Arctic ice that has now returned to pre-1981 levels or a booming polar bear population. They don’t want to report that old growth forests actually consume oxygen rather than produce oxygen like new growth would.

They want data that supports their thesis, because their education grant depends upon it. In fact, they are almost guaranteed a long appointment with a government salary if they can report that the climate change we are experiencing is caused by every-day activities of Earthlings. Why? Because that ancient intelligence wants to penalize and tax those lifestyles to capture the highest pecking order of human economics, and they want to have the capability of crushing anyone who competes with them.

What’s it worth? Everything. Absolutely the Romanesque power to collect a tax from 7 billion people would create the most powerful bureaucracy the world has ever known. It would be so strong, it could erase borders and demand the allegiance of every corporation in the world, or else. Already, if a scientist publicly criticizes Anthropocentric Climate Change Theory, he can be ostracized or shunned into bankruptcy. That is what it is worth.

So, how does the Dept of Justice react, when an entire department is found to be a criminal enterprise?

OIG refers cases involving criminal violations to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for prosecution. In some cases DOJ even participates in OIG’s investigative efforts, and its involvement can impact the pace of the investigation and limit the information that OIG can provide in its reports. Between October 2015 and March 2016, DOJ declined to prosecute 17 of 29 criminal cases that had been referred by OIG, even though the OIG determined criminal conduct was present in the cases.

This hearing will examine how DOI holds its employees accountable, why so many serious ethics violations have recently come to light, the relationship between DOJ and OIG, and how DOJ handles OIG referrals.

OIG found that the operator of a mass spectrometer device at the US. Geological Survey (USGS) Energy Resources Programs Energy Geochemistry Laboratory in Lakewood, Colorado manipulated scientific results and data between 2008 and 2014. Committee staff later learned from the OIG that the individual was the second employee to do so, and that data manipulation in the lab began in the late 1990’s. Test results from the labare used in the Energy Resource Program’s coal and water quality assessments. The OIG noted in its report transmittal letter that the full extent of the impacts of this manipulated data are not yet known, but that they will be serious and far ranging. According to the OIG audit, projects potentially affected by the falsified data between FY08 and FY16 had received $108 million in funding. USGS permanently closed the lab in February 2016 and the scientist in question resigned in the course of the investigation.