NO ONE GETS OUT OF HERE ALIVE

“The seasons of time offer no guarantees. For modern societies, no less than for all forms of life, transformative change is discontinuous. For what seems an eternity, history goes nowhere – and then it suddenly flings us forward across some vast chaos that defies any mortal effort to plan our way there. The Fourth Turning will try our souls – and the saecular rhythm tells us that much will depend on how we face up to that trial. The saeculum does not reveal whether the story will have a happy ending, but it does tell us how and when our choices will make a difference.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

As we wander through the fog of history in the making, unsure who is lying and who is telling the truth, seemingly blind to what comes next, I look to previous Fourth Turnings for a map of what might materialize during the 2nd half of this current Fourth Turning. After a tumultuous, harrowing inception to this Crisis in 2008/2009, we have been told all is well and are in the midst of an eleven-year economic expansion, with the stock market hitting all-time highs.

History seemed to stop and we’ve been treading water for over a decade. Outwardly, the establishment has convinced the masses, through propaganda and money printing, the world has returned to normal and the future is bright. I haven’t bought into this provable falsehood. Looking back to the Great Depression, we can get some perspective on our current position historically.

The Dow is up 450% since its 2009 low, which is the metric used by the establishment to prove their money printing solutions have succeeded in lifting the country from the depths of despair and depression. The narrative peddled to the plebs by the lords of the manor through their fake news media mouthpieces for the past decade is one of solid recovery, as the cancer of debt proliferates through the global intestines, thrusting the patient towards a terminal fate.

Looking back to the previous Fourth Turning it seems the Dow went up 450% from its 1932 low in just five years, making this bull market look like a calf. It seems the ruling class did quite well in the midst of the Great Depression, while the masses lined up in soup lines. History may not repeat, but it certainly seems to be rhyming during this Fourth Turning, as the Wall Street cabal have been enriched while senior citizens have been impoverished by the Federal Reserve ZIRP and QE to infinity. This is proof depressionary conditions can prevail for the majority even as the stock market skyrockets to new heights.

15 min read

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2020/02/16/no-one-gets-out-of-here-alive/#more-211913

How Amazon Convinced Millions of People to Welcome “Listening Devices” Into Their Homes

Whether it’s being told to turn on the lights or asked a health question, the voice known as Alexa has embedded Amazon’s technology deep in the lives of hundreds of millions of people since the company first launched its interactive Echo smart speaker in 2014.

From the start, Amazon has marketed Alexa as a virtual assistant who helps make navigating daily life easier, more efficient and entertaining for people and families.

But as the new FRONTLINE documentary Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos reports, the multi-billion-dollar company’s increasingly ubiquitous Alexa technology — which is now compatible with more than 100,000 products — doesn’t just serve the customer. It also serves a key strategic objective for Amazon itself.

“Alexa is one more way for Amazon to gather extremely valuable data,” Meredith Whittaker, co-director of the A.I. Now Institute at NYU, tells FRONTLINE in the above excerpt. “And this data collection is extremely important to this business model. It’s extremely hard to do … convincing people to just deploy something like this in their home is— it’s a brilliant trick.”

It’s one that’s helping Amazon in a quest to dominate the future — not just of commerce, but also artificial intelligence.

“They’re trying to move as intimately as possible and as quietly as possible into everyday life,” Shoshana Zuboff, author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, says in the film. “Amazon wants to have the entire environment, essentially miked… All these intimacies, all this insight is being integrated, analyzed and integrated. That is an extraordinary kind of power that has never before existed.”

In the film, airing Feb. 18, producer and director James Jacoby presses Amazon’s head of devices, Dave Limp, on whether the company did a good enough job telling customers about Alexa’s privacy implications – including the revelation last year that Amazon employs thousands of people around the world to listen to and transcribe some voice recordings in an attempt to improve the Alexa algorithm.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-amazon-convinced-millions-of-people-to-welcome-listening-devices-into-their-homes/

Google pulls 500 malicious Chrome extensions after researcher tip-off

Google has abruptly pulled over 500 Chrome extensions from its Web Store that researchers discovered were stealing browsing data and executing click fraud and malvertising after installing themselves on the computers of millions of users.

Depending on which way you look at it, that’s either a good result because they’re no longer free to infect users, or an example of how easy it is for malicious extensions to sneak on the Web Store and stay there for years without Google noticing.

That they were noticed at all is thanks to researcher Jamila Kaya who used Duo Security’s CRXcavator tool (also available at CRXcavator.io) to spot a handful of extensions that seemed suspicious, mostly themed around marketing and advertising.

Spotting dodgy extensions was only the start – she still had to connect them to one another to uncover recurring patterns that might highlight other offenders.

The first giveaway was that the extension code often looked like copycats of one another despite small changes to the names of internal functions designed to obscure this.

Another troubling similarity was the number of permissions requested. Enough to allow them to access browsing data and run when visiting websites using HTTPS.

Working with Duo Security, they eventually identified 70 extensions that seemed to be related to one another. All also contacted similar command and control networks and seemed to have been designed to detect and counteract sandbox analysis.

Ad fraud was the biggest activity – contacting domains without the user being aware – as well as redirecting users to malware and phishing domains.

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/02/17/google-pulls-500-malicious-chrome-extensions-after-researcher-tip-off/

YouTube: coronavirus videos will be automatically demonetized until further notice

Coronavirus has claimed its latest, albeit unexpected victim: the revenues of those YouTube creators who publish content about the disease.

Even by YouTube's many and “creative” demonetization standards, this latest one stands out.

The announcement was made almost in passing on Creator Insider, a channel run by YouTube employees.

The giant is updating its guidelines, the host said, “to reflect” – i.e., reclassify – the coronavirus outbreak as a sensitive event.

And that means all videos focusing on the subject have been demonetized.

The decision will remain in force until further notice, the host remarked – and moved on to other topics.

But given that coronavirus has dominated the news cycle around the world and across various media formats, including social media like YouTube for weeks now – many publishers must be left scratching their heads as to why the platform made this decision, and why now.

Some commenters wondered if the demonetization would hit only smaller creators, while big media outlets and “late night hosts” would still be able to discuss coronavirus, and continue to make money on YouTube.

YouTube, and its owner, Google, are unlikely to offer any further explanation of their “thought process” here, as that would likely shed uncomfortable amounts of light on the way their business operates.

Meanwhile, YouTube officially describes its definition of “sensitive events” in its “Advertiser-friendly content guidelines” meant to help creators push out videos they can monetize with ads.

According to these rules, sensitive events are “atrocious acts that result in the loss of human lives” – mass shootings, armed conflict, death, tragic events, and terrorist acts.

Here we see an example of Google's habitually “atrocious” habit of using deliberately broad and vague language that is open to subsequent interpretation.

On one hand, if strictly enforced, these guidelines would demonetize every channel dealing with current news in pretty much any format. On the other, the outbreak of any virus – including a potentially deadly virus whose spread has by all accounts already peaked – hardly qualifies as “an atrocious act.”

But YouTube is now so big as a platform that it can apparently afford the luxury of either being, or coming across as always looking for new ways to demonetize content at the expense of creators – and not caring about how that affects the community.

https://reclaimthenet.org/youtube-coronavirus-demonetized/amp/

China: CIA “hacker empire” reportedly used company’s encryption devices to spy on over 120 countries

China’s Foreign Ministry has accused the United States of being a “hacker empire”. The statement comes in the wake of the Crypto AG scandal. The BBC reported that the CIA has been using the Swiss company’s encoding devices to spy on over 120 countries for decades. Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said facts have repeatedly shown that the United States is the world’s largest monitor in cyberspace. He said its surveillance operations have no respect for international rules. The spokesman called on the United States to give the international community an explanation for this scandal, together with CIA and NSA spying exposed by WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden.

https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/china-cia-hacker-empire-reportedly-used-companys-encryption-devices-to-spy-on-over-120-countries/

WHO Holds Secret Talks With Tech Giants To Stop Spread of Coronavirus “Misinformation”

The World Health Organization has held talks with tech giants to stop the spread of coronavirus “misinformation,” despite the fact that some things once labeled “misinformation” have since turned out to be true.

The meeting was organized by the WHO but hosted by Facebook at its Menlo Park campus in California. Attendees included representatives from Amazon, Twilio, Dropbox, Google, Verizon, Salesforce, Twitter, YouTube, Airbnb, Kinsa and Mapbox.

According to the WHO’s Andy Pattison, an “infodemic” of misinformation has accompanied the coronavirus outbreak and big tech giants need to respond by censoring “fake news” content.

Both Facebook and Twitter already announced that they would remove content deemed to be misinformation regarding the virus, a dangerous new lurch to mass censorship given that what is considered “misinformation” is totally subjective and beholden to partisan bias.

Two clear examples of “misinformation” surrounding the coronavirus subsequently turned out to be true.

The first example was claims that China was hiding the true number of coronavirus victims, once labeled a “conspiracy theory” by the media but subsequently proven accurate on Friday when 14,800 new coronavirus cases were reported in a single day.

The second example was suspicions that the virus could have emerged from a bio-safety level 4 research lab in Wuhan.

This contention has been aggressively attacked by the media and big tech giants – Zero Hedge was even banned by Twitter for reporting it – but a new study by scientists at the prestigious South China University of Technology in Guangzhou has confirmed that “the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.”

Chinese dissidents and others have been defamed and in some cases imprisoned by authorities, but the media continues to treat any questioning of the official Chinese Communist Party narrative with disdain.

https://governmentslaves.news/2020/02/17/who-holds-secret-talks-with-tech-giants-to-stop-spread-of-coronavirus-misinformation/

All UK Labour Party leadership candidates declare they are Zionist

When did Labour MPs suddenly become Zionist and want to be voted in as the new party leader and are the members really are happy for this to happen?

Anti-Semitism smear campaign

Over the past four to five years the Labour Party and its members have been assaulted over and over again with allegations of anti-Semitism by the right-wing pro-Israel groups within and affiliated to the party. I am, of course, talking about the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM); the Labour Friends of Israel (LFI); the Board of Deputies of British Jews (BoD) and various other smear campaigners like GnasherJew, Sussex Friends of Israel and individuals like Z-list celebrity Rachel Riley. I wrote about this in previous articles titled “A legacy squandered” and ‘Anti-Semitism from one of Labour’s loudest anti-Semitism accusers“.

Events over the past few days have left me angry and so very disappointed in what the Labour Party and the candidates in the leadership campaign have become. I am not alone in this and I think that the time has come for socialists to stand together and express our disquiet over the direction in which the Labour Party is headed. There currently seems to be a purge of left-wing members from the party, especially of those who actively support the Palestinian cause. In a single day 25 members were expelled, mainly by the NEC [National Executive Committee] which is fast-tracking the so called “disciplinary process” against those accused of anti-Semitism.

RIP Pauline Hammerton

A long-term Labour Party member, activist and Palestine supporter was expelled for allegations of anti-Semitism. Pauline Hammerton was not given the opportunity to defend herself or to face her accusers, she was expelled without warning. Looking at her Facebook posts and Twitter timeline you could see how against all former of racism she was, and that she was a kind and compassionate lady. She was a victim of the smear campaign and left-wing purge, and tragically her story ended suddenly when she died a week after her expulsion. There is a strong feeling among her friends and social media followers that her expulsion was responsible for her death. Although I am neither a medical doctor or psychiatrist, in my opinion it certainly contributed to her sudden death.

https://www.redressonline.com/2020/02/all-but-two-of-uk-labour-partys-leadership-deputy-leadership-candidates-declare-they-are-zionist/

New Way to Generate Electricity From Rain Can Power 100 LED Bulbs Per Drop

Tapping into the water cycle and generating electricity from rainy days could be one way to grow our renewable energy use.

Until now, scientists have been unable to get water droplets to produce a significant amount of power – but we may finally have a breakthrough.

While we’re still a long way from umbrellas that double up as generators, the latest approach shows there might be a way to get power from rain showers at a level of efficiency that makes these systems practical.

New research has found a method that could generate enough power from a single droplet of rain to light up 100 LED bulbs. That’s a big jump forward in efficiency, in the region of several thousand times.

“Our research shows that a drop of 100 microlitres of water released from a height of 15 centimetres [5.9 inches] can generate a voltage of over 140V, and the power generated can light up 100 small LED lights,” says biomedical engineer Wang Zuankai from the City University of Hong Kong (CityU).

That sounds like a surprising amount of voltage, but the engineers used some ingenious tricks to make it happen.

Scientists have been looking into this type of power production for years, but the physics of converting the energy of raindrops into electricity are much harder to do than harvesting the energy from a rising tide or a flowing stream.

One of the improvements the team built into their droplet-based electricity generator (DEG) was the use of a polytetrafluoroethylene or PTFE film, which is able to accumulate a surface charge as it’s continuously hit by water droplets, until it gradually reaches saturation.

The team found that as water droplets hit the surface and spread out, the drops act as a ‘bridge’ that connects two electrodes: an aluminium electrode and an indium tin oxide (ITO) electrode (with the PTFE on top).

https://www.sciencealert.com/we-re-getting-closer-to-generating-electricity-from-raindrops

Assad Congratulates Syrian Army With Victory In Western Aleppo, Vows To Continue Fighting Terrorism

President Bashar al-Assad said on Monday that Aleppo gained the victory and Syria as well, adding that the Syrian army will never hesitate to carry out its national duties.

President al-Assad added in a televised speech on the occasion of the latest liberation wars that the Battle of liberating Aleppo and Idleb countryside is continuous regardless of some sound empty bubbles coming from the north.

President al-Assad began the speech by saluting the people of Aleppo for their steadfastness, faith, bravery, and sacrifices.

His Excellency said “When Aleppo city was liberated at the end of 2016, I said that what was before the liberation of Aleppo city will not be the same as what will be after that, and I based that on my knowledge of where the members of our Armed Forces are aiming with their hearts and minds. I based that on my conviction that the patriotism of the people of Aleppo and their fealty to their homeland and the homeland’s army will overturn the calculations of the enemies.

“This is what happened, but Aleppo had to pay a great price equal to the greatness of its people and the patriotism of its position; years of violent and barbaric shelling that affected most neighborhoods, tens of thousands of martyrs, injured people, orphans, people who lost children, and widows. Years of siege without water or electricity or other life necessities, all for Aleppo to kneel and for her people to surrender.

“With every treacherous shell that had fallen, the enemies’ hopes would grow that Aleppo would become another Aleppo, one that never existed throughout history, an Aleppo that does not constitute with its twin Damascus the wings by which the homeland soars; rather an Aleppo whose people would stand with traitors in front of masters, kneeling and prostrating themselves before them, beginning for a few dollars and much disgrace.

“That was in their dreams; but in our real world, with every shell that fell, fear fell and the will to challenge grew. With every martyr, nationalist spirit grew and faith in the homeland became stronger. In our real world, it remained the real Aleppo, the Aleppo of history, nobility, and authenticity. And because it is so, its people did not settle for steadfastness just in the sense of bearing of pain and suffering and acceptance of the status quo; but rather in the sense of work and production that persisted throughout the years of the siege despite the conditions that contradict any economic sense.

“Despite that, this city kept contributing – even if at a bare minimum – to national economy, and I am confident that this type of steadfastness which reflects a concrete will and a deep-rooted sense of belonging is what will raise Aleppo from the ashes of war and restore its natural and leading position in Syria’s economy,” President al-Assad said.

https://sana.sy/en/?p=185803

8th wonder of the world? ‘Leaning tower of Dallas’ STILL standing tall day after botched demolition job

A demolition company failed to completely implode a high-rise office block in Dallas, Texas, leaving the city with a new landmark to rival the famous tower in Pisa.

The 11-story tower block was set for demolition on Sunday morning. Charges were placed and the explosion carried out as planned. However, while two of the building’s wings folded in on themselves and fell to the ground, its center column - home to its stairwells and elevator shafts - pitched over at an angle and stayed upright.

An excavator brought in to finish the job failed to dislodge the tower, and as of Monday afternoon, it remained standing. Demolition firm Lloyd D. Nabors Demolition told local media that the building poses no threat to pedestrians in the area, and that the operation will be finished with an old-fashioned wrecking ball during the week.

Locals quickly dubbed the new landmark “The Leaning Tower of Dallas.” One bystander told a local news channel WFAA that “while I am not a demolitions expert, it does not seem to be the most successful demolition.”

One local artist even came out to sketch the building’s skeletal remains, as thousands do in the Italian city of Pisa every year. “It’s just a peculiar, out of this world composition,” he told the news crew. “Very deconstructed, almost brutalist.”

Once the tower finally goes down, the site will be transformed into a 27-acre development, featuring glittering glass offices, hotels, and residential units as part of a construction plan expected to take four or five years. That is, unless the city chooses to keep the lopsided building as its new landmark.

https://www.rt.com/usa/481057-leaning-tower-dallas-demolition/

They should of got the cabal to bring it down! They have good form!

>>8168395