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Tue, 26 Oct 2021
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Anonymous steals 390MB from U.S. cybersecurity contractor ManTech

lulanon
© DigitalTrends
Anonymous strikes again, hitting cybersecurity contractor ManTech in order to embarrass the FBI

Anonymous' campaign against the FBI has shown no sign of relenting, despite the climbing number of global hacker arrests. A group claiming they're Anonymous is saying they've stolen documents from a big U.S. cybersecurity contractor connected to the FBI, as well as many other government agencies.

As promised via tweet early Friday morning, Anonymous released seized documents from defense contractor ManTech international. The batch, released on the Pirate Bay, contained 390 megabytes of data; supposedly internal data from ManTech. The FBI apparently outsourced their cybersecurity to the contractor last year in a deal costing $100 million.

Beaker

Isolated human genes can be patented, US court rules

Good for DNA research, but could lead to overpriced diagnostics

Isolating genes from human DNA structures is patentable, the US Court of Appeals has ruled.

The Court ruled that the process of isolating genes from human DNA strands left the resultant individual genes with "markedly different chemical structure" from DNA in the human body.

US patent law says that material related to laws of nature cannot be patented. Inventions must also be new, take an inventive step that is not obvious and be useful to industry to qualify for patent protection.

"The ability to visualise a DNA molecule through a microscope, or by any other means, when it is bonded to other genetic material, is worlds apart from possessing an isolated DNA molecule that is in hand and usable," the US Court of Appeals ruling (105-page/684KB PDF) said.

Document

Lawyer for confessed Norwegian killer says his client has 'unrealistic' demands

Anders Behring Breivik
© Reuters / on-Are Berg-Jacobsen/Aftenposten via Scanpix
Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik, the man accused of a killing spree and bomb attack in Norway, sits in the rear of a vehicle as he is transported in a police convoy as he is leaving the courthouse in Oslo July 25, 2011.
The confessed killer in Norway's twin terror attacks that claimed 77 lives has presented a long list of "unrealistic" demands, including the resignation of the government and that his mental condition be investigated by Japanese specialists, his defence lawyer said Tuesday.

Geir Lippestad told the Associated Press his client has two lists of demands. One consists of requests common among inmates such as for cigarettes and civilian clothing. The other is "unrealistic, far, far from the real world and shows he doesn't know how society works," Lippestad said by telephone.

Lippestad said 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik links this second list to his willingness to share information about two other alleged terrorist cells that Breivik has mentioned during questioning.

"They are completely impossible to fulfil," Lippestad said, adding that although Breivik has agreed to be examined by local psychiatrists, he also wants to be investigated by Japanese specialists.

"He claims the Japanese understand the idea and values of honour and that a Japanese (specialist) would understand him a lot better than any European would."

Eye 2

Israeli Pathocrats Demand Villagers to Pay for Their Own Eviction

Call it dictatorial or simply ironic, the residents of a Bedouin village in Israel's Negev desert are facing peculiar circumstances, where they are being forced to pay for the government expenses involved in demolishing their own homes!

Israeli authorities filed a claim for 1.8 million NIS (more than $500,000) with a court on July 26 for the expense of destroying the structures and evicting the residents of al-'Araqib village as many as 28 times over the past year, reports Amnesty International. The most recent eviction took place on July 25.

The villagers claim that the settlement is within the limits of their ancestral land, but the authorities accuse residents of illegally encroaching "unrecognized" property.

Star of David

Max Blumenthal: Network of Zionist Interests is Behind Hatred of Muslims

Max Blumenthal is a senior writer for The Daily Beast and contributor to outlets including The Nation, Al Jazeera English, Salon.com, Alternet, the Huffington Post, and the Washington Monthly. The winner of the USC Annenberg Online Journalism Award for his investigative print journalism, he has produced numerous widely-recognized video reports that have garnered hundreds of thousands of hits on Youtube. His book, "Republican Gomorrah: Inside The Movement That Shattered The Party," was published by Basic Books in 2009.


Briefcase

Israel's Supreme Court orders state to dismantle largest West Bank outpost

Image
© Olivier Fitoussi
West Bank settlement outpost of Megron.
Unprecedented ruling states that Migron must be razed by April 2012; Israeli government had admitted outpost was built on lands belonging to Palestinians, but has thus far failed to dismantle it.

Israel's Supreme Court on Tuesday issued an unprecedented ruling ordering the state to dismantle the largest illegal settlement outpost in the West Bank by April 2012.

The decision follows a petition filed by Peace Now movement.

Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch harshly criticized the Israeli government for failing to dismantle the outpost of Migron, which is home to some 50 families, despite earlier promises it would do so and after it had admitted that it was in fact built on lands belonging to Palestinians.

Beinisch said the Supreme Court has tried to show restraint despite the blatant illegality of the outpost.

Arrow Down

US is 'parasite' on global economy, Russian PM Vladimir Putin says

Image
© Alexei Nikolsky / AFP - Getty Images
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin tries to bend a pan as he visits a summer camp on Monday.
'They are living beyond their means ... Thank God that they had enough common sense and responsibility to make a balanced decision'

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused Americans Monday of "living like parasites" on the global economy, noting that Russia owns a large amount of the U.S. debt.

"They are living beyond their means and shifting a part of the weight of their problems to the world economy," Putin told the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi while touring its lakeside summer camp some five hours drive north of Moscow.

"They are living like parasites off the global economy and their monopoly of the dollar," Putin said at the open-air meeting with admiring young Russians in what looked like early campaigning before parliamentary and presidential polls.

Alarm Clock

The Four Great Hypocrisies of the Debt Deal

Keith's Special Comment covers the "four great hypocrisies" of the debt deal and the necessity of taking the governance of this nation back from politicians.

Cult

America's own Taliban

A fast growing right-wing politico-religious presence plans to implement an end-times, Christian theocracy in the US.

Rick Perry
© GALLO/GETTY
2012 presidential hopeful, Texas Governor Rick Perry (left), will be hosting a prayer meeting called 'The Response' on August 6 with many sponsors from the New Apostolic Reformation
Prior to 9/11, the Taliban government in Afghanistan did not register very much on American radar screens, with one notable exception: when it blew up two colossal images of the Buddha in Bamiyan province in early 2001. But destruction of treasured artifacts isn't just limited to the Taliban.

There's a right-wing politico-religious presence centred in the US, but with a global reach, engaging in similar practises, destroying religious and cultural artifacts as a key aspect of its ideology of "strategic level spiritual warfare" (SLSW).

Until recently a fringe evangelical movement, warned against as deviant, "spiritual warfare" is rapidly positioning itself within America's mainstream political right. It's well past time for political journalists to start covering what this movement is up to.

Comment: And as far as our journalists here at SOTT, we've been hot on the trail of dominionism for some time now:

Mad as a Hatter: The Hidden Roots of the Tea Party Movement - Part 1

Hijacking The Holy - C Street, Dominionism and Sarah Palin


People

Organic Versus Monsanto

Image
© Creative Commons/ NatalieMaynor
More than 270,000 organic farmers are taking on corporate agriculture giant Monsanto in a lawsuit filed March 30. Led by the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association, the family farmers are fighting for the right to keep a portion of the world food supply organic - and preemptively protecting themselves from accusations of stealing genetically modified seeds that drift on to their pristine crop fields.

Consumers are powerful. For more than a decade, a cultural shift has seen shoppers renounce the faster-fatter-bigger-cheaper mindset of factory farms, exposéd in the 2008 documentary Food, Inc. From heirloom tomatoes to heritage chickens, we want our food slow, sustainable, and local - healthy for the earth, healthy for animals, and healthy for our bodies.

But with patented seeds infiltrating the environment so fully, organic itself is at risk. Monsanto's widely used Genuity® Roundup Ready® canola seed has already turned heirloom canola oil into an extinct species. The suing farmers are seeking to prevent similar contamination of organic corn, soybeans, and a host of other crops. What's more, they're seeking to prevent Monsanto from accusing them of unlawfully using the very seeds they're trying to avoid.