Society's ChildS


Radar

Hackers target RT.com with massive DDoS attack


RT
Thu, 18 Sep 2014 02:46 UTC
Image
© Reuters / David McNew
RT.com has been hit with the most powerful DDoS attack in the website's history, which reached 10 Gbps in strength. No group has claimed responsibility. RT has experienced cyber assaults in the past, prompted by its reporting on Manning and WikiLeaks.

The Wednesday attack was successfully deflected, but resulted in a temporary slowdown of the site.

"Thanks to the website's reliable technical protection, RT.com was unavailable just for a few minutes, even though the DDoS attack has continued," RT's press service said in a statement.

The attack was identified as a UDP-flood type, and reached 10 gigabits per second.

Hackers have previously targeted RT with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, to prevent it from reporting on various controversial issues, such as the Chelsea Manning trial and WikiLeaks.

DDoS attacks bring websites down by fabricating internet traffic and overwhelming a site's hosting service.

One of the most powerful attacks on RT was recorded on February 18, 2013, when the website was unavailable for about 6 hours.

RT was also temporarily disabled for just under five hours in June 2013. Hacker group AntiLeaks, which opposes Julian Assange's WikiLeaks project, claimed responsibility for the attack.

The cyber assault coincided with RT's reporting on the trial of Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning and massive anti-government protests in Turkey. Uninterrupted coverage continued on RT's Twitter page.

In August 2012, the same group claimed responsibility for a massive DDoS attack which knocked out RT's English and Spanish websites for hours worldwide.
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Pistol

Grandfather shoots and kills daughter, 6 grandchildren in Florida murder-suicide


RT
Thu, 18 Sep 2014 02:41 UTC
Image
© WFTV
A grandfather shot his daughter and her six children in Bell, Florida on Thursday. The local Sheriff's Office said the incident was an apparent murder-suicide. The children ranged from three months to 10 years in age.

The shooter was identified as Don Charles Spirit, grandfather, who shot his daughter and six of his grandchildren before taking his won life, Gilchrist County Sheriff's Office confirmed during a press-conference.

The incident took place at the Spirit's home in a small town of Bell.

The children's age varied from 3 months to 10 years of age. The mother of the kids was identified as Sarah Spirit, according to Action News.
Children ages 3mo to about 10 years old. Grandfather shot his daughter and her 6 children. #BellShooting pic.twitter.com/zvgb0YHD5g

- Hailey Holloway (@HHollowayNews) September 19, 2014
Police received a call about the shooting around 4 p.m. local time, Gilchrist County Sheriff's Office said on its Facebook page.
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Eye 2

Psychopath: Doctor sentenced to life in prison after admitting to intentionally misdiagnosing cancer and ordering unneeded chemotherapy

Travis Gettys
Raw Story
Thu, 18 Sep 2014 00:30 UTC
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© WXYZDr. Farid Fata
A Michigan doctor faces life in prison after he admitted to intentionally misdiagnosing patients with cancer and recommending unnecessary chemotherapy to dying patients.

Dr. Farid Fata pleaded guilty Tuesday to 13 counts of health care fraud, two counts of money laundering and one count of conspiracy to pay and receive kickbacks, reported the Detroit Free Press.

The crimes were part of a moneymaking scheme, he said.

"It is my choice," Fata told the court. "I knew that it was medically unnecessary."

Prosecutors plan to seek life in prison for the 49-year-old married father of three, saying the case was "the most egregious" health care fraud their office had ever seen.

"In this case, we had Dr. Fata administering chemotherapy to people who didn't need it, essentially putting poison into their bodies and telling them that they had cancer when they didn't have cancer," said U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade. "The idea that a doctor would lie to a patient just to make money is shocking."

Fata made about $35 million as part of a Medicare fraud scheme through his practices in suburban Detroit.
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Megaphone

America's natural politics: Populism - what it is & what it isn't

Jim Hightower
nationofchange.org
Wed, 17 Sep 2014 01:51 UTC
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My father, W.F. "High" Hightower, was a populist. Only, he didn't know it. Didn't know the word, much less the history or anything about populism's democratic ethos. My father was not philosophical, but he had a phrase that he used to express the gist of his political beliefs: "Everybody does better when everybody does better."

Before the populists of the late 1800s gave its instinctive rebelliousness a name, it had long been established as a defining trait of our national character: The 1776 rebellion was not only against King George III's government but against the corporate tyranny of such British monopolists as the East India Trading Company.

The establishment certainly doesn't celebrate the populist spirit, and our educational system avoids bothering students with our vibrant, human story of constant battles, big and small, mounted by "little people" against ... well, against the establishment. The Keepers of the Corporate Order take care to avoid even a suggestion that there is an important political pattern - a historic continuum - that connects Thomas Paine's radical democracy writings in the late 1700s to Shays' Rebellion in 1786, to strikes by mill women and carpenters in the early 1800s, to Jefferson's 1825 warning about the rising aristocracy of banks and corporations "riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman," to the launching of the women's suffrage movement at Seneca Falls in 1848, to the maverick Texans who outlawed banks in their 1845 state constitution, to the bloody and ultimately successful grassroots struggle for the abolition of slavery, and to the populist movement itself, plus the myriad rebellions that followed right into our present day.

Comment: Principles of the New Populism (the Oligarchy's Nightmare):

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Bandaid

VA band-aids: Congress approves legislation to increase disability payments, give extra sick leave for veterans

Kellie Lunney
Government Executive
Thu, 18 Sep 2014 23:59 UTC
disabled veteran
© Maria Sestito / The Daily News Disabled American Veterans Onslow County Chapter veteran service officer Mac Moody helps veteran Rich Zahn file a claim at the DAV office in Jacksonville.
Congress has been working on some important legislation recently that will benefit the country's service-disabled veterans.

The 2014 Veterans' Compensation Cost-of-Living Adjustment Act (S. 2258) now heads to President Obama for his signature, after the House passed the bill on Tuesday. The legislation increases the COLA for vets' disability benefits starting Dec. 1, 2014. The rate of the increase will be the same as the cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security recipients. The annual COLA legislation, which the Senate approved last week, also affects the disability payments and compensation for vets' surviving spouses and children.

And on Wednesday afternoon, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee approved bipartisan legislation that would give disabled vets hired as federal employees access to their full year's sick leave immediately upon starting their jobs.

Comment: Anything that improves living conditions for US veterans is helpful, but it's obviously a huge band-aid covering a problem of epic proportions. The VA is busy recruiting new doctors while trying to overhaul the corrupt VA system. Considering the complete lack of empathy the psychopaths in charge have for those humans they consider 'cannon-fodder' these feeble attempts will come to naught.

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Stock Down

David Stockman on the evidence of a looming market crash

Deirdre Hughes
Yahoo Finance
Wed, 17 Sep 2014 23:45 UTC
david stockman financial crash
David Stockman
The Federal Reserve Wednesday reassured investors that it will hold interest rates near zero for a "considerable time" after it ends the bond-buying program known as quantitative easing in October. In response, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) closed at a new record high.

Former Director of the Office of Management and Budget and author of the book, The Great Deformation, David Stockman, has significant concerns about that very policy.

"I'm worried... that we've got the greatest bubble created by a central bank in human history," he told Yahoo Finance.

In a recent blog post, Stockman offered a handful of high-flying stocks as evidence of what he sees as "madness."
"...Twitter, is all that is required to remind us that once again markets are trading in the nosebleed section of history, rivaling even the madness of March 2000."
Behind the madness

In an interview with Yahoo Finance, Stockman blamed Fed policy for creating that madness.
"We have been shoving zero-cost money into the financial markets for 6-years running," he said. "That's the kerosene that drives speculative trading - the carry trades. That's what the gamblers use to fund their position as they move from one momentum play and trade to another."
And that, he says, is not sustainable. While Stockman believes tech stocks are especially overvalued, he warns that it's not just tech valuations that are inflated. "Everything's massively overvalued, and it's predicated on zero-cost overnight money that continues these carry trades; It can't continue."

And he still believes, as he has for some time - so far, incorrectly - that there will be a day of reckoning.
"When the trades begin to unwind because the carry cost has to normalize, you're going to have a dramatic re-pricing dislocation in these financial markets."
As Yahoo Finance's Lauren Lyster points out in the associated video, investors who heeded Stockman's advice last year would have missed out on a 28% run-up in stocks. But Stockman remains steadfast in his belief that the current Fed policy and the resultant market behavior can not continue. "I think what the Fed is doing is so unprecedented, what is happening in the markets is so unnatural," he said. "This is dangerous, combustible stuff, and I don't know when the explosion occurs - when the collapse suddenly is upon us - but when it happens, people will be happy that they got out of the way if they did."
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Bandaid

Veteran's Admin recruiting new doctors by increasing pay scales

Kellie Lunney
Government Executive
Wed, 17 Sep 2014 00:00 UTC
VA hospital
© Samantha SaisThe Veterans Affairs medical center in Phoenix. An acute shortage of doctors is at the heart of the falsified data here and possibly many other veterans hospitals.
The Veterans Affairs Department wants to increase the annual salaries of new physicians and dentists by up to $35,000 as part of a nationwide recruitment effort to hire more doctors and improve veterans' access to care.

The change, which the department announced Wednesday, would update existing pay tables for several categories of physicians in the Veterans Health Administration, enabling newly hired doctors to potentially earn between $20,000 and $35,000 more than the current salary ranges. The pay ranges for physicians who serve in leadership roles, including department undersecretaries and VA medical center directors, would not change. The notice outlining the new policy will be published Thursday in the Federal Register and will take effect on Nov. 30.

"We are committed to hiring more medical professionals across the country to better serve veterans and expand their access to timely, high-quality care," said VA Secretary Bob McDonald, in a statement.

Comment: If this recruitment effort does anything to improve the abysmal level of 'care' that our veterans have been receiving, then it will be worthwhile. However, that is questionable. The government seems to be good at throwing money around, while generally achieving little to improve the lives of those who have given all in support of the US psychopathic wars of terror.

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X

Another bison slaughter: Yellowstone park officials to reduce herd by one-fifth, largest cull in seven years


RT
Thu, 18 Sep 2014 09:50 UTC
wild bison
The bison population in Yellowstone National Park will be significantly reduced this winter, as park officials have announced a plan to cull up to 900 animals that attempt to leave or drift away from the park.

The park's famous bison population currently stands at roughly 4,900, meaning it could be reduced by about one-fifth.

According to Reuters, the cull announced Tuesday by Yellowstone's science and research branch would be the largest in seven years.

However, it would still leave the herd's numbers significantly higher than what both state and federal wildlife officials have established as the target goal - a population of somewhere between 3,000 and 3,500.

"It will not get us close to the goal of 3,000, but it will stabilize the population and bring it down somewhat," David Hallac, chief of the park's science and research branch, told Reuters.

Although Yellowstone's bison compose the only remaining herd of free-ranging buffalo in the United States, officials want to keep the population from growing too large, out of fear that drifting animals will spread a bacterial disease known as brucellosis to cattle that also graze in Montana's fields.
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Donut

Do as we say, not as we do: White House vending machines full of sugary snacks, while school students face empty machines


Progressive Today
Wed, 17 Sep 2014 22:42 UTC
empty vending machine
© Twitter: Taylor Lutz @TtimeLutzF$%king Michelle Obama
It has been widely reported that Michelle Obama's fight against childhood obesity in America's schools has reached past the lunchroom into bake sales and even the vending machines.

The First Lady's new standards remove any sugary snacks over 200 calories from the machines. Sometimes machines are emptied all together leaving students upset and hungry.

Comment: Perhaps White House staffers would revolt if forced to give up their treats; no doubt many of them have to put up with enough grief as it is. Many school districts are revolting as well:

Michelle Obama's disgusting, cheap school lunch rations leave student's fed up
While some are gluttons for poor health and misery, more schools dump Michelle Obama's lunch rules

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People 2

US marriage rate is lowest since 1920, including same sex couples

Paul Bedard
Washington Examiner
Thu, 18 Sep 2014 16:12 UTC
marriage
US marriage rate has dropped to 93 year low
The Census Bureau reported Thursday that the nation's marriage rate is the lowest since 1920, and the first-time inclusion of same sex married couples did little to reverse the decline.

According to Pew Research Center analysis, the marriage rate of Americans 18 and older hit a bottom of 50.3 percent in 2013, down from 50.5 percent in 2012. In 1920, the first year mentioned, 65 percent were married, and the marriage rate hit a high of 72.2 percent in 1960.

Comment: This is a continuing trend in the developed world, as marriage rates have been on the decline for decades. Since the world is controlled by psychopaths who have inculcated their values on society, it is not particularly surprising. Psychopaths are not able to make any long-term commitments and are incapable of forming relationships based on love and trust, because they have no capacity for either. Many people who care deeply about being in a loving relationship, have often found themselves caught in a relationship with someone psychopathic, as they are quite adept at charming their prey. After escaping from such ordeals, many people understandably shy away from commitment.

All you need is Love!

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