The hackers who reportedly planted malware on key parts of the U.S. electrical grid, perhaps with the intent to cripple the country’s power infrastructure, most likely gained access like any other cybercriminal — by exploiting a bug in software such as Windows or Office, a security researcher said today.

“Any computer connected to the Internet is potentially vulnerable,” said Roger Thompson, chief research officer at AVG Technologies USA Inc. “Getting to the actual infrastructure devices directly — that’s always possible, but a whole lot less likely. In any industry, critical or not, there are always plenty of PCs that have been compromised.”

According to a report earlier today in The Wall Street Journal, unnamed national security sources said that hackers from China, Russia and elsewhere have penetrated the U.S. power grid, extensively mapped it, and installed malicious tools that could be used to further attack not only the electrical infrastructure, but others as well, including water and sewage systems.

The discoveries were made by U.S. intelligence agencies, not the utilities’ security teams, the Journal said.

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The Obama liberals hate this kind of stuff. Rep. Michele Bachmann, interviewed by Sue Jeffers on KTLK FM in Minnesota recently, warned about the “Kennedy Serve America Act” and Obama’s plan to indoctrinate America’s children.

“Rep. Michele Bachmann, who has levied the most bizarre and outlandish critiques against President Obama since before he came into office, did not disappoint this weekend,” writes Sam Stein for the Huffington Post.

Appearing on Minnesota radio station KTLK-AM, (h/t Minnesota Independent) the Republican congresswoman expressed her concern that White House was trying to put in place “re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward.” Furthering the Obama-as-autocrat theme, Bachmann said the youngsters would “then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums.”

Bachmann’s crazy, Sam seems to think, because the “bipartisan Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act” is “widely popular and bipartisan,” that is to say a preponderant number of Congress critters agreed to press gang the youth of America into government mandated indentured servitude.

“The Obama White House did not immediately return request for reaction. The Kennedy Serve America Act passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 275 to 149 and the Senate, by a vote of 79 to 19.”

Bachmann is right about Obama, but beware: she is a Republican neocon who received support from the likes of Bush, Karl Rove, and the man who does work in the shadows, Dick Cheney.

Last night Lou Dobbs agreed with the President of Mexico that drugs are flowing into the United States because our government permits it. President Calderon said U.S. corruption permitted drug imports. “If there is traffic in the United States, it is because there is some corruption in the United States,” Calderon said. Dobbs agreed.

“…there is no other explanation,” Dobbs said, “It goes well beyond indifference and apathy, but the fact that this country has tolerated that border being violated by drug traffickers who bring in from Mexico methamphetamines, heroin, cocaine and marijuana – in fact, Mexico is the largest source. And for us as a nation to have tolerated the immense loss of life, the devastation of lives to addiction and drugs, most of which, again, originate in Mexico, can only be explained by corruption.”

Lou Dobbs is right, there is corruption, but it is mainly political. Drugs are allowed into the country because the ruling class is willing to sacrifice its citizens on the alter of globalism.

American Border Patrol has shown that the new border fence began cutting off smuggling routes and that led to the Mexican drug war. But the establishment doesn’t want the fence, so they blacked out ABP and its reports, and that includes those who run Lou Dobbs Tonight.

There is something even worse, but more on that later.

By Marie Cocco, Washington Post Writers Group.

Afghanistan’s women are no longer in vogue.

It was only a few years ago that Laura Bush, who normally shied from causes that could be considered controversial, took up their banner. “The brutal oppression of women is a central goal of the terrorists,” the first lady said in a radio address shortly after President Bush launched the U.S-led invasion to overthrow the Taliban following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “The plight of women and children in Afghanistan is a matter of deliberate human cruelty, carried out by those who seek to intimidate and control.”

That was then. This is now: Afghan President Hamid Karzai has just signed a law that forces women to obey their husbands’ sexual demands, keeps women from leaving the house — even for work or school — without a husband’s permission, automatically grants child custody rights to fathers and grandfathers before mothers, and favors men in inheritance disputes and other legal matters. In short, the law again consigns Afghan women to lives of brutal repression.

“This is really, really dangerous for everybody in Afghanistan,” Soraya Sobhrang of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission said in a telephone interview from Kabul. Noting that violence against women already is rampant, Sobhrang said the new law effectively “legalizes all violence against women in Afghanistan.”

The legislation zoomed through Afghanistan’s parliament. Karzai, who faces elections in August, signed it in an apparent effort to placate conservative religious forces that are said to hold the balance of power in his re-election bid. The United Nations Development Fund for Women is still analyzing a final version of the legislation but says it is “seriously concerned.” The law appears to contradict both the Afghan constitution, which guarantees equal rights for men and women, and international conventions on human rights.

The U.S. State Department has had no comment.

Afghanistan’s women are, apparently, the latest casualty of the Obama administration’s tilt toward realpolitik: ignore human rights violations — whether they’re in China or Russia or in the quiet misery of an Afghan villager’s home — in pursuit of larger foreign policy goals.

This contradiction between political rhetoric and policy reality has often been the American way. But now we have Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state. When she was first lady, she championed the rights of women oppressed by the Taliban long before most Americans had ever heard of that radical regime. Clinton took the helm of the State Department vowing to elevate the cause of human and economic rights for women and girls — a pledge she made again in The Hague this week at the end of a major conference on Afghanistan that was aimed at securing greater international cooperation on the desperate and disparate crises there.

“My message is very clear. Women’s rights are a central part of American foreign policy in the Obama administration; they are not marginal, they are not an add-on or an afterthought,” Clinton said in response to a general question about the situation confronting women in Afghan society. “You cannot expect a country to develop if half its population [is] underfed, undereducated, under-cared-for, oppressed, and left on the sidelines.”

The secretary was not asked specifically about the new law. Among its other provisions, it guarantees that married men can have sex once every four nights and wives must submit. In effect, it legalizes marital rape. Sobhrang worries there may be worse to come. “They are talking about child marriage,” she says.

Without pressure from the foreign powers that hold so much sway in Afghanistan, there was little that even the women in the country’s parliament could do. Sobhrang faults those who were quiet in the face of the clear effort by a religious faction to reimpose medieval mores on a country that is in many ways a ward of the contemporary international community.

The ugly truth is that Afghanistan has long been sliding back into the violent chaos that is friendly political ground for the Taliban and other extremist groups. Women have, as usual, been among the chief victims.

There is indeed a lengthy and urgent to-do list for the Obama administration, which says it is determined to abandon a failing course. But that does not mean the United States should again fail Afghanistan’s women.

To consign them to what Laura Bush correctly called “deliberate human cruelty” is cruelty itself.

In a move completely ignored by the corporate media, the state of Hawaii has introduced resolutions in the Senate and House to initiate a study by the Insurance Commissioner to determine how best to deny gasoline purchases to uninsured motorists.

In order to do this, the Hawaii Senate and House concur that “motor vehicle insurance companies issue motor vehicle insurance cards to insured drivers and to require that the card be either scanned electronically or examined by the sellers of gasoline in order to purchase gasoline.”

If these bills pass in the regular 2010 session, residents will not only need the state’s permission to buy gasoline but will in essence need permission to work and buy food, that is unless they walk or ride bicycles to work or the grocery store.

Since the September 11, 2001, false flag attacks, the federal government has worked overtime to impose national ID schemes on the American people. The September 11 whitewash commission recommended “national standards” for “identification documents,” including driver’s licenses in 2004.

“There needs to be consistent standards to ensure the integrity of both the document and the issuance process,” said commission member Jamie S. Gorelick, a former Clinton administration Justice Department official who is a member of the CFR and linked to numerous globalist foundations and the CIA (see this Muckety relationship map).

Christopher B. Cannon, Utah Republican, told the commission the government needs to “take something that everyone accepts now and have it standardized in a way that it really identifies the people who are holding onto it.” Skeptical lawmakers characterized this as a stealth national ID plan brought in “through the back door.”

“I’ve always been concerned about a universal ID card or system, somewhat like in Nazi Germany,” Rep. Barry Goldwater Jr. said at the time. “That’s scary. We value our privacy and freedom and are very concerned about the power of the U.S. government.

Hawaii’s proposal is obviously not a national or state ID scheme. It is, however, yet another way to get the proles to accept the idea that they need to be carded for essentials in order to fight against deadbeats who do not buy state mandated insurance.

In response to a number of calls to the Tennessee Governor’s office, the Whiteville, Tennessee police have canceled a planned seat belt checkpoint operation that was to be conducted in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security and the 251st Military Police in Bolivar, Tennessee.

WNWS 101.5 FM aired a story on the cancellation today.

Keith Sherley of 101.5 FM in Jackson, Tennessee, interviewed Representative Johhny Shaw earlier today. Shaw indicated Governor Phil Bredesen “didn’t need another headache” and canceled the checkpoint. Shaw, who represents the area in Tennessee where the exercise was to be held, admitted the checkpoint was a “bad idea in the first place.” Shaw voiced his opposition to military involvement with local law enforcement. “It would have frightened more people than it helped,” Shaw added. He said he did not think the operation would be rescheduled.

Infowars, Prison Planet, and a handful of blogs covered the story on Thursday. The story was not deemed important by the corporate media. A Google News search of corporate news media websites returns zero results on the story, even though the checkpoint was a direct violation of the Fourth Amendment and the Posse Comitatus Act prohibiting military involvement in domestic police operations.

Calls to Governor Phil Bredesen and his decision to halt the checkpoint operation may be attributed to the diligence of an Infowars reader who provided a tip that resulted in a story appearing on the Infowars and Prison Planet news websites yesterday and earlier today. If not for that coverage, the checkpoint operation with DHS and military collaboration would have probably occurred on April 4, as originally noted in the Hardeman County, Tennessee, Bulletin Times.

NewsTalk 101.5 FM apparently picked up the story from either Infowars or Prison Planet. The WNWS website ran an article on the cancellation with the headline “DHS, Military Police, Law Enforcement Planned Checkpoint in Whiteville, Tennessee,” almost exactly the same headline that appeared on Alex Jones’ websites.

Congress Check
CongressCheck.com
April 03 2009

As reported today by the Associated Press on 04/03/09 1:00PM:

Binghamton, NY Mass Shooting

NEW YORK (AFP) —

A gunman shot up to four people and took some 40 others hostage Friday in Binghamton, New York state, local media reported. Armed police had surrounded a civic association where the gunman was believed to be holding the hostages, WBNG television and the local Press and Sun-Bulletin newspaper reported. Police shut down a nearby school and several streets. The newspaper reported that there were 41 hostages in the building — 15 in a closet and 26 in the boiler room. Binghamton is a small city in central New York state near the Pennsylvania border, northwest of New York City.

Another mass shooting has been reported this morning. It really sickens me, for multiple reasons, some more obvious than others. I thought it would be pertinent to write a post going over the history of recent mass shootings pointing out similarities within these separate incidents.

It’s usually not found out until well after an incident, I wouldn’t expect it to come out today or tomorrow. But in a week or 2 when this incident has gone down the public memory hole; It will come out is that this man has a prescription for some form of psychoactive substance.

A large portion of the American population take such as, Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Serzone, Luvox, Effexor, Wellbutrin, and many others. These drugs fall under the class of drugs known as “MAOI”, “SSRI”, “SNRI”, and “Tricylics”. If you look on the side effects labels of these drugs, many of them list DEPRESSION as a side effect of taking them. What this means is that, a small portion of people have a negative or adverse reaction to the drug. A negative reaction to a anti-depression medication could make you more depressed, more anxious, or cause a complete psychotic break.

Having been prescribed one of these drugs previously by a doctor, and knowing its effects, I found it likely this would be the commonality between the mass shootings. When I was on prozac, after the first 30 days when it finally starts to take affect, you can literally feel the relationships between you and fellow man wither away. You go into this mind-numbed state losing all apathy, and sensitivity for anything that should give you feeling. The best 4 word description of these drugs I could give is “Lack of real emotion”. I could see how these drugs could if not, cause the shooters to perform these action, then allow it to happen through dissolution of reality.

As it turns out, I wasn’t the first person to research this subject. Many others have done the same research, and have come to the conclusion that I presented as my hypothisis. Every one of these shooters I investigated were on some form of anti-depressent psychoactive substance.

In the next days, this shooting will be used as an excuse to call for the ban in guns, from various anti-gun movements. Reject this, guns don’t kill people; people kill people. People who are on psychotropic drugs kill people. Call for a ban on prescribing brain altering drugs to children, and adults like candy.

PARENTS STOP DOPING YOUR KIDS UP ON HARMFUL CHEMICAL SUBSTANCES

Omaha, Nebraska - December 5, 2007: 19-year-old Robert Hawkins killed eight people and wounded five before committing suicide in an Omaha mall. Hawkins’ friend told CNN that the gunman was on antidepressants, and autopsy results confirmed he was under the influence of the “anti-anxiety” drug Valium.

Jokela, Finland - November 7, 2007: 18-year-old Finnish gunman Pekka-Eric Auvinen had been taking antidepressants before he killed eight people and wounded a dozen more at Jokela High School in southern Finland, then committed suicide.

Cleveland, Ohio - October 10, 2007: 14-year-old Asa Coon stormed through his school with a gun in each hand, shooting and wounding four before taking his own life. Court records show Coon had been placed on the antidepressant Trazadone.

Blacksburg, Virginia - April 16, 2007:  An investigation of the incident by Virginia Tech found Seung-Hui Cho had a prescription of Prozac.

Red Lake Indian Reservation, Minnesota - March 21, 2005: 16-year-old Native American Jeff Weise, reportedly under the influence of the antidepressant Prozac, went on a shooting rampage at home and at his school, killing nine people and wounding five before committing suicide.

Greenbush, New York - February 2004: 16-year-old Jon Romano strolled into his high school in east Greenbush and opened fire with a shotgun. Special education teacher Michael Bennett was hit in the leg. Romano had been taking “medication for depression.”

El Cajon, California - March 22, 2001: 18-year-old Jason Hoffman was on two antidepressants, Effexor and Celexa, when he opened fire at his California high school wounding five. Hoffman had also undergone an “anger management” program.

Williamsport, Pennsylvania - March 7, 2000: 14-year-old Elizabeth Bush was on the antidepressant Prozac when she blasted away at fellow students in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, wounding one. Conyers, Georgia - May 20, 1999: 15-year-old T.J. Solomon was being treated with a mix of antidepressants when he opened fire on and wounded 6 of his classmates.

Columbine, Colorado - April 20, 1999: 18-year-old Eric Harris was on the antidepressant Luvox when he and his partner Dylan Klebold killed 12 classmates and a teacher and wounded 23 others before taking their own lives in the bloodiest school massacre in history. The coroner confirmed that the antidepressant was in his system through toxicology reports while Dylan Klebold’s autopsy was never made public. Harris and Klebold underwent “anger management” and “death education” classes.

Notus, Idaho - April 16, 1999: 15-year-old Shawn Cooper fired two shotgun rounds in his school narrowly missing students; he was taking a mix of antidepressants.

Springfield, Oregon - May 21, 1998: 15-year-old Kip Kinkel murdered his own parents and then proceeded to school where he opened fire on students in the cafeteria, killing two and wounding 22. Kinkel had been on Prozac. Kinkel also underwent “anger management” classes.

Did you know according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, an estimated 70% of antibiotics in the U.S. are used on animals?

To promote growth?

A former research fellow, Jay Graham, MBA Ph.D., recently sat down to talk about the reality of antibiotic misuse on factory farms. This discussion is in part a follow-up to our March 5th release that found more evidence of another potential link between industrial food animal production and exposures to antibiotic resistant pathogens.

For additional resources and to read the studies he references, please visit our new Antibiotics Resource page.

ERICA WERNER
Associated Press
April 2, 2009

Anti-smoking forces won a long-awaited victory Thursday as the House passed legislation that would give the federal government key controls over the tobacco industry for the first time.

The measure, passed 298-112, gives the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate — but not ban — cigarettes and other tobacco products.

The Senate could take up its version of the bill later this month, and supporters are confident they can overcome opposition from tobacco-state senators. The White House supports the legislation, a shift from the Bush administration which threatened to veto a House-passed measure last year.

President Barack Obama has spoken publicly about his own struggles to kick a smoking habit.

“This is truly a historic day in the fight against tobacco, and I am proud that we have taken such decisive action,” said Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the bill’s sponsor. “Today we have moved to place the regulation of tobacco under FDA in order to protect the public health, and now we all can breathe a little easier.”

Read entire article

An Infowars reader has sent a page taken from the Hardeman County, Tennessee, Bulletin Times announcing a seat belt checkpoint to be conducted on April 4 “in conjunction with a Homeland Security training exercise by the 251st Military Police in Bolivar who recently returned from Iraq” (see a PDF version of the announcement here, on page two).

Although uniformed military personnel will be visible at the checkpoint, the military participation will be strictly observation. The military police uses checkpoints to disseminate information and ensure safe movement in the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other large-scale emergency.

A clipping taken from the Hardeman County, Tennessee, Bulletin Times announcing seat belt checkpoint to be conducted on April 4.

The operation in Tennessee is similar to one held last December in San Bernardino County, California, and reported by Branson Hunter of the Big Bear Observation Post blog and Infowars on December 14, 2008. The California operation was a collaboration between the California Highway Patrol and the Marine Corps Air and Ground Combat Center. It did not include Homeland Security.

“Dispatching Marines on California highways is an obvious violation of the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C. § 1385) passed on June 16, 1878. The Act prohibits members of the federal uniformed services, including military police, from working with state and local police and law enforcement,” we reported in December. The seat belt checkpoint in Tennessee with the participation of military police is also a direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.

In response to an editorial critical of the operation in San Bernardino County broadcast by KCDZ-FM in Joshua Tree, California, the California Highway Patrol sent the radio station a fax indicating the action would not include military police. It was later reported that uniformed military police in marked military police vehicles teamed up with the California Highway Patrol in the town of Yucca Valley, California.

Gary Daigneault, News Director at KCDZ-FM, went on the Alex Jones Show on December 15 and said the CHP was less than forthcoming about their plans to set-up checkpoints. The California Highway Patrol is required to provide the location of its checkpoints to the media at least two hours prior. Although the CHP did provide the radio station with a telephone number to get this information, when the number was called there was no answer, Daigneault said in his radio editorial (listen to the editorial and view the faxes).

“It should be obvious the Marines and the California Highway Patrol are engaged in a disinformation campaign against the media in order to cover up their illegal and unconstitutional behavior,” we wrote on December 15. “Not only do they want to entrap the residents of San Bernardino County in their ’sobriety/driver license checkpoint’ in violation of the Fourth Amendment protecting the people against unreasonable searches and seizures, they also want to send a message that the military will henceforth be involved in domestic law enforcement in direct violation of Posse Comitatus.”

The collaboration between Homeland Security, the military, and local law enforcement in Tennessee sets a dangerous new precedent. In the case U.S. v. Martinez-Fuerte, the Supreme Court ruled that DHS checkpoints could be set up to search for illegal immigrants and smugglers and so long as the checkpoints and searches were brief and for that purpose only they could be done anywhere within 100 miles of a US border. It appears DHS is now moving beyond U.S. v. Martinez-Fuerte and expanding operations beyond the 100 mile limit.

DHS will likely argue they are not conducting the checkpoints in Tennessee and are there only as monitors. However, this point will be lost on the victims of the checkpoints when they see uniformed military police and DHS personnel.

In California, the attention of the media put the CHP and the Marines on the defensive. Last month, the coverage of the MIAC documents in Missouri by Alex Jones resulted in wide coverage of the issue in the corporate media. In response to the attention, the Missouri State Police and the governor of the state were obliged to repudiate the document and order an investigation into the Missouri Information Analysis Center’s practice of designating followers of political candidates Ron Paul, Bob Barr, and Chuck Baldwin as “militia” terrorists.

Attention placed on the operation in Tennessee will produce similar results.