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The 45 Most Powerful Images Of 2011

2011-12-06T12:43:00.001-08:00

CULTURE BUZZ What a year! Here's to 2012 being a more quiet and less destructive year.

Matt Stoperaposted about 3 days ago

Robert Peraza, who lost his son Robert David Peraza in 9/11, pauses at his son’s name at the North Pool of the 9/11 Memorial.

(Getty Images / Justin Lane)

A whirpool forms off the Japanese coast after the tsunami on March 11.

(Reuters / Kyodo )

This sightseeing boat, Hama Yuri, was pulled 1300 feet from the coast and somehow balanced itself on a two story house during the tsunami in Japan.

Members of the national security team receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House on May 1.

(Reuters / HANDOUT)

Two lights from the former site of the World Trade Centers shine for the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

(Reuters / GARY HERSHORN)

Phyllis Siegel, 76, left, and Connie Kopelov, 84, both of New York, embrace after becoming the first same-sex couple to get married at the Manhattan City Clerk's office.

(Getty Images / STAN HONDA)

A protester gets sprayed in the face with pepper spray at an Occupy Portland protest. (Randy L. Rasmussen/The Oregonian)

A before and after shot of Joplin, Missouri after a massive tornado on May 22.

Source: zeitlosimagery

Friends and loved ones gather at the Oslo cathedral to mourn 93 victims killed in twin terror attacks from a bombing in downtown Oslo and a mass shooting on Utoya island on July 22.

(Getty Images / Paula Bronstein)

10.

A monstrous dust storm (Haboob) roared through Phoenix, Arizona in July.

Source: danbryant.com

11.

A policeman detains an opposition activist in Baku on March 12. Azerbaijan police detained more than 30 activists of the opposition Musavat Party when its members took to the street of Baku to protest against the ruling elite following a similar rally a day before. (Reuters)

12.

Christians protect Muslims during prayer in Cairo, Egypt.

Source: @NevineZaki

13.

An aerial shot of the damage immediately following the Japanese tsunami.

(Reuters / KYODO)

14.

A girl in isolation for radiation screening looks at her dog through a window in Nihonmatsu, Japan on March 14.

(Reuters / Yuriko Nakao)

15.

A man sits in front of a destroyed apartment building following the Joplin, Missouri tornado. (Reuters)

16.

A University of California Davis police officer pepper-sprays students during their sit-in at an "Occupy UCD" demonstration in Davis, California. (Jasna Hodzic)

17.

A mother comforts her son in Concord, Alabama, near his house which was completely destroyed by a tornado in April.

(AP / Jeff Roberts)

18.

Chile's Puyehue volcano erupts, causing air traffic cancellations across South America, New Zealand, Australia and forcing over 3,000 people to evacuate. (Reuters)

19.

Firefighters of Ladder Company 4 — which lost seven men on 9/11 — perched together on their aerial ladder, watching a news bulletin in Times Square declaring that Osama bin Laden was dead on May 2.

Source: lens.blogs.nytimes.com

20.

Slain Navy SEAL Jon Tumilson's dog "Hawkeye" lies next to his casket during funeral services in Rockford, Iowa. Tumilson was one of 30 American soldiers killed in Afghanistan on August 6 when their helicopter was shot down during a mission to help fellow troops who had come under fire.

21.

A boy looks at a figure of Steve Jobs next to flowers laid in his tribute at an Apple store in Hong Kong, China.

(AP / Kin Cheung)

22.

Cars are abandoned on Chicago's Lake Shore Drive during the "Snowpocalypse" in February.

Source: chicagotribune.com

23.

Facebook played an extremely important role in the uprisings throughout the Middle East.

Source: theatlanticwire.com

24.

84-year-old Dorli Rainey was pepper sprayed during a peaceful march in Seattle, Washington. She would have been thrown to the ground and trampled, but luckily a fellow protester and Iraq vet was there to save her. (Joshua Trujillo / seattlepi.com)

25.

Australian Scott Jones kisses his Canadian girlfriend Alex Thomas after she was knocked to the ground by a police officer's riot shield in Vancouver, British Columbia. Canadians rioted after the Vancouver Canucks lost the Stanley Cup to the Boston Bruins.

(Getty Images / Rich Lam)

26.

Hurricane Irene approaches the east coast.

27.

Billy Stinson comforts his daughter Erin Stinson as they sit on the steps where their cottage once stood on August 28 in Nags Head, N.C. The cottage, built in 1903 and destroyed by Hurricane Irene, was one of the first vacation cottages built on Albemarle Sound in Nags Head.

(Getty Images / Scott Olson)

28.

Flowers and tributes are seen outside the home of Amy Winehouse in London on July 24.

(Reuters / STEFAN WERMUTH)

29.

Office workers gather on the sidewalk in downtown Washington, D.C., moments after a 5.9-magnitude earthquake shook the nation's capital. The earthquake was centered northwest of Richmond, Va., but could be felt from North Carolina to Massachusetts.

(AP / J. Scott Applewhite)

30.

Mihag Gedi Farah, a seven-month-old child, is held by his mother in a field hospital of the International Rescue Committee in the town of Dadaab, Kenya. The baby has since made a full recovery.

(AP / Schalk Van Zuydam)

31.

A woman jumps from a burning building during the London riots in August. (Amy Weston / WENN.com)

32.

Office workers look for a way out of a high rise building in central Christchurch, New Zealand on February 22. A strong earthquake killed at least 180 people.

(Reuters / Simon Baker)

33.

A woman cries while sitting on a road amid the destroyed city of Natori, Miyagi Prefecture in northern Japan after the massive earthquake and tsunami.

(Reuters / ASAHI SHIMBUN)

34.

A demonstrator shows his bottom to riot police during a protest by European workers and trade union representatives to demand better job protection in the European Union countries in Brussels on March 24.

(Reuters / Thierry Roge)

35.

A woman rebel fighter supporter fires an AK-47 rifle as she reacts to the news of the withdrawal of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's forces from Benghazi on March 19.

(Reuters / GORAN TOMASEVIC)

36.

Police spray Ugandan opposition party leaders with colored water during demonstrations in the capital Kampala on May 10.

(Reuters / James Akena)

37.

A student is punched in the face by a police officer in Chile. Students in Chile are demanding a new framework for education.

(Reuters / VICTOR RUIZ CABALLERO)

38.

An aid worker using an iPad captures an image of a dead cow's decomposing carcass in Wajir near the Kenya-Somalia border on July 23.

(Reuters / STRINGER)

39.

A Libyan rebel is pictured with Gadhafi's golden gun.

(Getty Images / Philippe Desmazes)

40.

Harold Camping speaks about the end of the world. The world was supposed to end on May 22 of this year.

(AP / Marcio Jose Sanchez)

41.

A phone hangs off the hook on Wall Street.

(Reuters / LUCAS JACKSON)

42.

US gay service members march in a gay pride parade for the first time ever.

(Getty Images / Sandy Huffaker)

43.

A woman hangs onto a street sign in chest deep water along the flooded streets in Rangsit on the outskirts of Bangkok on October 24.

(Getty Images / Paula Bronstein)

44.

A distressed bride attempts suicide in China after her fiance abruptly called off their marriage. Still in her wedding gown, she tried to kill herself by jumping out of a window of a seventh floor building. Right as she jumped, a man managed to catch and save her.

(Reuters / CHINA DAILY)

45.

A U.S. Army soldier takes five with an Afghan boy during a patrol in Pul-e Alam, a town in Logar province, eastern Afghanistan.

(Reuters / Umit Bektas)

"unLawful Access" - Battle For The Net

2011-08-31T16:46:00.001-07:00

The internet is under attack here in Canada and if Stephen Harper gets his way with the "lawful access" bill, he will pave the way for big brother to have total control over everything we do online. Harper vowed to make this a reality within the first 100 days of his current reign and if he is successful this would be detrimental to the fundamental privacy rights that we currently have. Voice your concerns with your local representatives (especially if they are conservative MP's) and we can put a stop to this very unlawful "lawful access" bill.

chaoticfate.com

Need a warrant to unmask Internet users? Not if Canada gets its way

2011-08-18T13:36:00.001-07:00

By Nate Anderson | Published about 23 hours ago

When Canada's Conservatives took the most votes in the May 2011 federal election, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said that an "omnibus" security/crime bill would be introduced within 100 days. The bill would wrap up a whole host of ideas that were previously introduced as separate bills—and make individual ideas much more difficult to debate. A key part of the omnibus bill will apparently be "lawful access" rules giving police greater access to ISP and geolocation data—often without a warrant—and privacy advocates and liberals are up in arms.

Writing yesterday in The Globe & Mail, columnist Lawrence Martin said that the bill "will compel Internet service providers to disclose customer information to authorities without a court order. In other words—blunter words—law enforcement agencies will have a freer hand in spying on the private lives of Canadians."

He quotes former Conservative public safety minister Stockwell Day, now retired, as swearing off warrantless access. "We are not in any way, shape or form wanting extra powers for police to pursue [information online] without warrants," Day said—but there's a new Conservative sheriff in town, and he wants his "lawful access."

Bill C-52

The move to get it came during the last session of Parliament, when bill C-52 (the "Investigating and Preventing Criminal Electronic Communications Act") was introduced but not passed.

C-52 requires all telecommunications company to provide to law enforcement "any information in the service provider’s possession or control respecting the name, address, telephone number, and electronic mail address of any subscriber to any of the service provider’s telecommunications services and the Internet protocol address, mobile identification number, electronic serial number, local service provider identifier, international mobile equipment identity number, international mobile subscriber identity number and subscriber identity module card [SIM card] number that are associated with the subscriber’s service and equipment."

"It is not difficult to put in place workable oversight regimes"

To get that information, law enforcement won't necessarily need a warrant. Each agency can designate up to 5 percent of its total employees as authorized to request the information, and it can ban telcos from admitting that they have provided any such information. Bill C-52 looks to be a key part of the upcoming "omnibus" bill that will include a host of other security-related material.

Even the government's own Privacy Commissioner is upset about the lawful access idea. On March 9, Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart sent a letter to Public Safety Canada in which she and other provincial privacy officials said the bill would "give authorities access to a wide scope of personal information without a warrant; for example, unlisted numbers, e-mail account data and IP addresses. The Government itself took the view that this information was sensitive enough to make trafficking in such 'identity information' a Criminal Code offence. Many Canadians consider this information sensitive and worthy of protection, which does not fit with the proposed self-authorized access model."

"In our view, law enforcement and security agency access to information linking subscribers to devices and devices to subscribers should generally be subject to prior judicial scrutiny accompanied by the appropriate checks and balances."

In their view, the new powers have "insufficient justification" and "less intrusive alternatives can be explored."

Canadian academics and digital rights advocates echoed the complaint. On August 9, they sent a letter (PDF) to Prime Minister Harper saying that C-52 would allow "law enforcement to force identification of anonymous online Internet users, even where there is no reason to suspect the information will be useful to any investigation and without adequate court oversight."

They demanded an "appropriate hearing" for lawful access, given the importance of the issue, and argued that this simply couldn't happen if it is rolled into the expected omnibus bill. Such investigative powers aren't necessarily improper, but they need to be kept within strict limits. "International examples also demonstrate that it is not difficult to put in place workable oversight regimes that do nothing to impede the ability of law enforcement to conduct their legitimate duties," said the letter. "Yet the latest iteration of the lawful access legislation makes no attempt to enact such a regime."

The omnibus legislation is expected soon.

chaoticfate.com

World Revolution Not Seen on TV- Rallies Around the World- Please Repost

2011-08-01T02:50:00.001-07:00

World Revolution Not Seen on TV- Rallies Around the World- Please Repost

chaoticfate.com

Murder on the QEW - Toronto Sun

2011-08-01T02:27:00.000-07:00

This is what happens when they name a road after you.. :P

Murder on the QEW - Toronto Sun:

CTV.ca

Murder on the QEW
Toronto Sun
The case of a woman who was fatally injured on QEW just west of the Burlington Skyway is now classified a homicide. (JIM GARNETT PHOTO) The death of a woman fatally struck early Saturday while crossing the QEW at the ...
Homicide detectives investigating after woman dies on QEWCityNews
Niagara-bound QEW reopens after homicide investigationCTV.ca
QEW reopened but investigation continuesHamilton Spectator

all 22 news articles »

chaoticfate.com

This is called humanity

2011-07-22T13:02:00.001-07:00

chaoticfate.com

CRMT- Kelowna BC receives High Fukushima Fallout Radioactive Rain on 07/16/11

2011-07-22T11:22:00.001-07:00

Seven dead as bomb rocks Norway; several shot dead at youth camp - The Globe and Mail

2011-07-22T11:07:00.000-07:00

Seven dead as bomb rocks Norway; several shot dead at youth camp

Terrorism ravaged long-peaceful Norway on Friday when a powerful bomb ripped through several buildings, including the prime minister's office, and a man dressed as a police officer opened fire at a nearby island youth camp.

Seven people were killed in the bomb blast in central Oslo, the nation's worst attack since World War II. Local media reported fatalities at the camp, but police would not confirm any deaths.

A man wearing a police uniform opened fire at youths during the annual gathering of the government’s Labour Party youth section at Utøya, an island outside Oslo, spokesman Per Gunnar Dahl said.

Panicked teenagers tried to escape the gunfire by swimming to the mainland, he said. Some 700 people, mostly between the ages of 14 and 18, were attending the camp.

“There is a critical situation at Utøya,” Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told independent TV2. His calendar showed that he had been due to make a speech at the meeting on Saturday.

Former Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland had been due to attend the gathering on Friday.

One person was arrested following the shootings at the youth camp, Norway's state broadcaster said.

Police said they suspect the shootings are linked to the bombing in Oslo.

A Norwegian government official, Hans Kristian Amundsen, earlier told the BBC that "there are still people in the buildings" at the blast site.

The explosion blew out most windows on the 17-storey building housing Mr. Stoltenberg’s office, as well as nearby ministries, including the oil ministry, which was on fire. Heavy debris littered the streets and smoke rose over the city centre.

Mr. Stoltenberg, who was said to have been working at home when the blast occurred, said all cabinet ministers in the centre-left coalition government seemed to be safe.

“This is very serious,” he told Norwegian TV2 television by phone. He said that police had advised him not to say where he was speaking from.

Asked if the blast was caused by a car bomb, Oslo police chief Anstein Gjengdal said: "It is possible that a vehicle has been used in this incident, but we can't confirm this." Local television showed images of the blackened, tangled wreckage of a car lying on its side amid the debris.

He said police sealed off the office of Norwegian broadcaster TV2 to investigate a suspicious package there.

In addition to the seven fatalities, Oslo police said two people had been seriously wounded.

Below: YouTube playlist of videos from Oslo, mobile users can alsoclick here

The square where the bomb exploded was covered in twisted metal and shattered glass, and carpeted in documents expelled from the surrounding buildings, which also house the headquarters of some of Norway's leading newspapers.

Witness Ole Tommy Pedersen was standing at a nearby bus stop around 3:30 p.m. local time when he saw the blast shatter almost all the windows of a 20-floor highrise. He said a cloud of smoke was billowing from the bottom floors.

“I saw three or four injured people being carried out of the building a few minutes later,” Mr. Pedersen told The Associated Press.

Nearby offices were evacuated, including those housing some of Norway's leading newspapers and news agency NTB.

"It exploded – it must have been a bomb. People ran in panic and ran. I counted at least 10 injured people," said Kjersti Vedun, who was leaving the area.

An AP reporter who was in the NTB office said the building shook from the blast and all employees evacuated the building as the alarm went off. He saw one person with a bleeding leg being led away from the area.

The government building houses the prime minister's office and his administration. Several ministries are in surrounding buildings.

NATO member Norway has sometimes in the past been threatened by leaders of al-Qaeda for its involvement in Afghanistan. It has also taken part the NATO bombing of Libya, where Muammar Gaddafi has threatened to strike back in Europe.

However, political violence is virtually unknown in the country.

David Lea, Western Europe analyst, at Control Risks said: “It’s very difficult to tell what has happened. There certainly aren’t any domestic Norwegian terrorist groups although there have been some al-Qaeda-linked arrests from time to time.

“They are in Afghanistan and were involved in Libya, but it’s far too soon to draw any conclusions.”

The blast comes as the Scandinavian country has grappled with a series of homegrown terror plots linked to al-Qaeda, and six years after an uproar over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in neighboring Denmark.

Last week, a Norwegian prosecutor filed terror charges against an Iraqi-born cleric for threatening Norwegian politicians with death if he's deported from the Nordic country.

The indictment centered on statements that Mullah Krekar — the founder of the Kurdish Islamist group Ansar al-Islam — made to various media, including American network NBC.

Danish authorities say they have foiled several terror plots linked to the 2005 newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that triggered protests in Muslim countries.

Last month, a Danish appeals court on Wednesday sentenced a Somali man to 10 years in prison for breaking into the home of a cartoonist who caricatured the Prophet Muhammad.

With a report from Jill Mahoney

chaoticfate.com

The Quiet Coup: The Implementation of Agenda 21

2011-07-19T20:16:00.000-07:00

Dees Illustration

Debbie Coffey

The PPJ Gazette

People have noticed the 25 government agencies on Obama’s new White House Rural Council. And, they’re questioning what might be the need for all of them.

What people may not have noticed yet, is that the government agencies in this council are also on other councils. These councils, as well as the individual government agencies, are implementing international laws that have taken effect through Executive Orders, Memorandums of Understanding, agreements and regulations that most Americans don’t even know about. These have bypassed Congress. And, it also seems they have completely bypassed the Constitution.

The devil is in the details

These agencies and councils are forming “partnerships” with members and groups other than the American people. However, our tax dollars pay for their salaries and for the programs.

Some “partnerships” sound innocuous, but as you might guess, the devil is in the details.

I’ll give you an example. There is a BioEco Working Group ( www.bioeco.gov), which at first glance seems to be part of the Department of Interior’s U.S.Geological Survey, since it is listed as creating the website. But the actual Charter has National Science and Technology Council in the heading. (The National Science and Technology Council includes 20 of the same agencies that are on the new Rural Council, but with some additional agencies, including the CIA. It also includes the Vice-President, Cabinet Secretaries, heads of Agencies and some White House officials.)

Participating agencies in the BioEco Working Group are the Depts. of Agriculture, Defense, Energy, State, EPA, NASA, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Dept. of the Interior), U.S. Geological Survey (Dept. of the Interior), Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, National Science Foundation, and the Smithsonian Institution. It seems BioEco also wanted to solicit the membership of the National Archives and Records Administration and U.S. AID.

In the Appendix of the Charter, signed in 2008 by Ann Bartuska of the U.S. Forest Service (under the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture) and Susan Haseltine of the U.S. Geological Survey (under the U.S. Dept. of the Interior), it states activities of this work group are to:

Provide a focal point for coordinating U.S. biodiversity and ecosystem informatics activities with international efforts and organizations in this and related areas (such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), the Consortium for the Barcode of Life (CBOL), and the Encyclopedia of Life (EoL), to ensure compatability of standards and approaches, facilitate sharing of technologies, and provide for equity/reciprocity in data access and exchange.

You might think, “this is nice, we’re sharing information with everybody.” Then you might notice that these organizations seem to map land and catalog biological resources.

On the website of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), which is an international organization with “many partners,” the GBIF’s Memorandum of Understanding (with its participants), Paragraph 3, states Objectives:

Purpose

The purpose of GBIF is to promote, co-ordinate, design and implement the compilation, linking, standardisation, digitisation and global dissemination of the world’s biodiversity data, within an appropriate framework for property rights and due attribution.

Co-operation and Co-ordination

The Participants intend to encourage co-operation amongst themselves in the implementation of GBIF and in the development of joint work programmes in areas of mutual interest with the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity and other appropriate bodies and initiatives…

Wait a sec, our U.S. Senate didn’t ratify the treaty for the Convention of Biological Diversity (which means the U.S. Senate didn’t formally approve of or vote for the U.S. to be part of the Convention on Biological Diversity). So now all of these U.S. agencies are encouraging each other to develop “programmes” that the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity is interested in? Wouldn’t that be…the Convention on Biological Diversity?

If the same U.S. agencies that have agreed to encourage each other are on the new White House Rural Council, are these agencies going to encourage each other to develop and implement the Convention on Biological Diversity in the Rural Council meetings, too?

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)

This is an internationally binding treaty and was presented for signature at the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Sounds like the treaty should be about biological diversity, doesn’t it?

If you read the text of the treaty, you’ll find out that if there’s a “dispute” that isn’t resolved between two parties, the State or organization has to settle it in the International Court of Justice, or in a three person arbitral tribunal, where each party gets one arbitrator and the third arbitrator, the President of the Tribunal, is to be from an entirely different nation.

The CBD website states that this treaty was “Conceived as a practical tool for translating the principles of Agenda 21 into reality.”

The United Nations’ Agenda 21

If you look at the United Nation’s Agenda 21 (Section 1, 7.28 and 7.29), you see why the BioEco Working Group might be mapping land and creating an inventory of biological resources:

All countries should consider, as appropriate, undertaking a comprehensive national inventory of their land resources in order to establish a land information system in which land resources will be classified according to their most appropriate uses and environmentally fragile or disaster-prone areas will be identified for special protection measures.

(Who will decide the most “appropriate” use of our land? The United Nations?)

More importantly, above this description is the OBJECTIVE, which is “the encouragement of communally and collectively owned and managed land.”

Cassandra Anderson of www.morphcity.com pointed out that collectivism is a “Political philosophy where a small group determines the “greater good” for the masses. While it could take the form of communism, fascism, socialism, etc, the common denominator is control over the population.”

Although the White House Rural Council might seem to be about helping our rural communities, it’s more likely going to be about letting international interests help themselves to our rural communities.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The Bureau of Land Management is removing our wild horses from their federally protected Herd Management Areas, then leasing the same land for $2 an acre for oil and gas lease sales, or permitting new mining and mining expansions to foreign owned companies. I think the wild horses are like the canary in the coal mine. As go these American icons that stand as symbols of our freedom, so goes our freedom.

TO LEARN MORE:

www.morphcity.com for excellent articles by Cassandra Anderson

and excellent articles by Marti Oakley:

http://ppjg.wordpress.com/2011/07/14/executive-order-13575-the-theft-of-rural-and-agricultural-lands-for-un-agenda-21/#more-17083

http://ppjg.wordpress.com/2011/06/19/just-another-brick-in-the-wall-un-agenda-21-in-us-law/#more-16780

SOURCES:

http://www.bioeco.gov/binary_docs/Charter-BioEco%20Approved%20May%202008.pdf

http://www.gbif.org/governance/governing-board/

http://www.gbif.org/governance/partnerships/

http://www.gbif.org/governance/governing-board/voting-participants/

http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ostp/nstc/about/members

http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ostp/nstc/about

http://www.cbd.int/secretariat/role.shtml

http://www.cbd.int/secretariat/structure/

http://www.cbd.int/convention/text/

http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/res_agenda21_07.shtml

http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/res_agenda21_00.shtml

http://www.cbd.int/convention/

The new White House Rural Council includes: the Departments of Agriculture, Treasury, Defense, Justice, Interior, Commerce, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Energy, Education, Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Communications Commission, the Offices of Management and Budget, Science and Technology Policy, National Drug Control Policy, White House Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs, Office of Public Affairs, and other Councils, including Council of Economic Advisors, the Domestic Policy Council, National Economic Council, Small Business Administration, Council on Environmental Quality.

chaoticfate.com

Terrorism speach by reverend Wright

2011-07-18T17:23:00.000-07:00

Amazing speech about Terrorism made by Reverend Wright.
What would you do if your country was being invaded?

Manufactured Fear - Video

2011-07-18T17:19:00.000-07:00

15 minutes video on false-flag attacks.

US Federal Government Rules Marijuana Has No Accepted Medical Purpose

2011-07-12T20:50:00.000-07:00

US Federal Government Rules Marijuana Has No Accepted Medical Purpose

First Posted: 7/9/11 03:03 PM ET Updated: 7/11/11 01:40 PM ET

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The federal government ruled on Friday that marijuana has no accepted medical use and should remain in the same class of drugs as heroin.

The decision comes nearly nine years after marijuana supporters asked the government to reclassify the drug to take into account the growing body of research conducted across the globe that proves it's effective in treating certain diseases,reports The Los Angeles Times.

The paper spoke to advocates who criticized the ruling but are pleased that the government has finally responded, which allows them to appeal to the federal courts.

In May several medical marijuana advocacy groups under the name Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis filed a lawsuit insisting that the DEA finally attend to the 9-year-old request, reports LAist.

Joe Elford, chief counsel for Americans for Safe Access told the Times, he was not surprised by the decision, which came shortly after the Obama administration announced it would not tolerate large-scale commercial marijuana growing operations.

It is clearly motivated by a political decision that is anti-marijuana," he said. He noted that studies demonstrate pot has beneficial effects, including appetite stimulation for people undergoing chemotherapy. "One of the things people say about marijuana is that it gives you the munchies and the truth is that it does, and for some people that's a very positive thing.

The Times also noted, this is the third time that petitions to reclassify marijuana have been denied. The first was filed in 1972 and denied 17 years later. The second was filed in 1995 and denied in 2001. Both decisions were appealed, but the courts sided with the federal government.

California and many other states have legalized marijuana for medicinal reasons and a push to legalize it in general is expected to appear on the 2012 ballot in California as Proposition 19, writesLAist.

chaoticfate.com

Police Brutality Against Anti War demonstrator

2011-07-02T14:03:00.000-07:00

chaoticfate.com

Where Will You Go When the Sovereign Debt Volcano Blows?

2011-07-01T11:03:00.001-07:00

http://www.thedailybell.com/2579/Ron-Holland-Where-Will-You-Go-When-the-Sovereign-Debt-Volcano-Blows

Will a corrupt political establishment in Washington follow Athens to economic collapse? Ron Holland warns world investors that America has now reached the final stage in the dollar and US sovereign debt crisis where a run on the dollar and debt could now happen at any time. All we need is an event or crisis either real or contrived by our economic competitors.

chaoticfate.com

Liquid Sunshine

2011-06-28T17:05:00.000-07:00

http://no2foreclosures.info/liquid_sunshine.pdf

Small Scale Alcohol Production in Local Communities ~

Growing Clean Energy and Organic Food

Can Save the World During GD2 & WW3

By David Chu, PE

“My friend Sarah says that I get to be the voice of God. I usually roll my eyes when she

says it, because if I were God, I would never have chosen me of all people to speak for

him.”

chaoticfate.com

» Documents Reveal Canadian Cops Used Agents Provocateurs to Disrupt 2010 G20 Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!

2011-06-24T13:22:00.000-07:00

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
June 24, 2011

Following the police state spectacular at the G20 last June, the cops were accused of infiltrating so-called black-bloc anarchists, who engaged in all sorts of pointless mayhem, including trashing a Starbucks and burning police cars (see video below). The corporate media had a field day covering these circus sideshow distractions while ignoring the larger issue of the globalists meeting behind closed doors and plotting to sell the national sovereignty of millions down the river.

It was necessary for the state to arrange this sort of meaningless property destruction in order to offer a public rationalization for spending nearly a billion dollars on police state “crowd control” equipment (including L-RAD sound cannons) for the globalist summit. The Canadian state also granted the cops special police state powers by expanding the jurisdiction of the existing Public Works Act to apply to high-security areas of the summit site.

It is now an indisputable fact the cops engaged in massive infiltration. According to newly released G8/G20 summit documents, the RCMP dispatched poseurs and agents provocateurs to infiltrate the ranks of anti-war, anti-globalization and anarchist groups.

In 2007, Canadian cops were caught red-handed posing as anarchists during a North American Union summit in Montebello, Quebec. “Protesters are accusing police of using undercover agents to provoke violent confrontations at the North American leaders’ summit,” the Toronto Starreported. “Such accusations have been made before after similar demonstrations but this time the alleged ‘agents provocateurs’ have been caught on camera.”

Photographs released showed the supposed “anarchists” wearing the same boots as the police arresting them. “Protest organizers on Wednesday played the video for the media at a news conference in Ottawa. One of the organizers, union leader Dave Coles, explained that one reason protesters knew the men’s true identities was because they were wearing the same boots as other police officers,” CBC News reported on August 23, 2007.

Reports filed by the Joint Intelligence Group formed by the RCMP-led ISU (Integrated Security Unit) reveal that various police services contributed at least 12 undercover officers to take part in covert surveillance of potential “criminal extremists” in a bid to “detect… and disrupt” any threats, according to CBC News.

In other words, the RCMP was assigned the task of discrediting the larger anti-war and anti-globalization movement and making the public believe they are bomb-wielding anarchist criminals.

The same mindset and illegal police state activity operates in the United States. Since the FBI’s use of CLOINTELPRO tactics to neutralize political opposition to the state in the 1960s and early 70s, such practices have been uniformly codified and are now widespread and routine in the so-called war on terrorism.

“There’s a lot of stuff that isn’t in there, that’s been redacted, or isn’t spelled out. But it says these undercover operations were going on, that there were 12 officers,” investigative journalist Tim Groves, who requested and obtained the reports through an access to information request, told the CBC. “The problem is that, looking at these documents, police expected criminal extremism everywhere.”

According to the CBC, RCMP records indicate:

- The RCMP set up a Joint Intelligence Group in January 2009, which in turn assigned a dozen officers to a covert PIIT (Primary Intelligence Investigative Team) expressly for monitoring and infiltrating suspected extremist networks.
- The joint-forces PITT had a mandate to use undercover officers and informants from within the ranks of protest networks, not just to monitor potential criminal activity by organizers, but also to “deter, prevent, investigate and/or disrupt” threats to the summit.
- The investigative team created and shared files on a long list of individuals, color coding them according to perceived risk level as red (suspect), orange (person of interest) and yellow (associate).

Following the June summit in Toronto, a number of so-called black-bloc anarchists were outed as police agents provocateurs. Such reports were covered by the alternative media and generally ignored by the corporate media that had characterized the demonstrations as lawless behavior by a handful of crazed extremists.

“It is hopeful that in the days, weeks and months to come government and police will be forced to admit (under similar circumstances as in Montebello, Quebec in 2007) that much of the vandalism and fire-setting was undertaken by those encouraged, directly or indirectly, by agents provocateurs,” Canadian activist Ghada Chehade wrote following the summit.

Unfortunately, it took more than a few weeks for the truth to come out. It took exactly a year.

chaoticfate.com

Is my password compromised?

2011-06-23T10:01:00.001-07:00

ShouldIChangeMyPassword.com has been created to help the average person check if their password(s) may have been compromised and need to be changed.
This site uses a number of databases that have been released by hackers to the public. No passwords are stored in the ShouldIChangeMyPassword.com database.

chaoticfate.com

Malware Theft of Bitcoins a False Flag to Discredit Revolutionary Currency?

2011-06-22T15:18:00.000-07:00

"Breaking News! A man leaves wallet unattended, it gets stolen. Senate to ban wallets to protect citizens from theft.

Image BitcoinMe.com

Eric Blair

Activist Post

This is the boring story of some dude who got jacked because he forgot to lock his door. The interesting part has to do with what got stolen and who, besides the thief, may benefit from such an event. I'm referring to the recently hyped Bitcoin heist of $500K-worth of BTC by malware that reportedly harvests private passwords in personal computers.

I don't mean to be callous to the victim. I have little doubt that this was a genuine robbery to a well-meaning guy. The victim is a long-time contributor and passionate early promoter of Bitcoins on its official forum where he announced the 'hack' with devastation and regret:

I am totally devastated today. I just woke up to see a very large chunk of my bitcoin balance gone to the following address...

If only the wallet file was encrypted on the HD. I do feel like this is my fault for not moving that money to a separate non windows computer. I backed up my wallet.dat file religiously and encrypted it but that does not do me much good when someone or some trojan or something had direct access to my computer somehow.

The threat was confirmed by Symantec, operator of Norton AntiVirus, who tracked down the malware code that was used and claimed we can expect more hackers will get in on the action because of Bitcoin's growing popularity and value:

'We expect that code similar to the techniques described above will find a way into other malware considering the amount of attention this sort of attack is currently receiving and with the amount of Bitcoins currently available for purchase.'

It's not the validity of the event that I question, it's the curious timing in an ominous news cycle for Bitcoin. What was once a fringe "underground" currency only known to open-source geeks has now stormed the mainstream media in dramatic fashion, not least because of extensive coverage by the alternative media. What's interesting about the coverage of the Bitcoin is its rapid decent from clear and sunny to treacherously cloudy in the blink of an eye. Well, more like three weeks, but breathtakingly fast nonetheless.

Bitcoin was introduced somewhat slowly with a sudden surge in interest coming in late May. It's construct of peer-to-peer anonymous trade quickly became glorified as 'revolutionary.' So much so that it prompted an immediate response from some U.S. Senators seeking to 'crack down' on it. Next came reports of wild fluctuations in value to expose Bitcoin's vulnerabilities. And, finally, the mother of all bombs, there's a confirmed hack attack on the supposedly impenetrable Bitcoin technology causing a 'collapse' of one Bitcoin exchange. Below is a selection from the numerous recent articles to illustrate how quickly the storm clouds gathered around Bitcoin:

Date -- Title -- Source

May 19th -- What is Bitcoin? -- Gizmodo

May 25th -- What Bitcoin Is, and Why It Matters -- MIT's Technology Review

May 26th -- BitCoin Digital Currency: Financial Revolution or Doomed to Fail? -- 40Tech

June 1st -- The Underground Website Where You Can Buy Any Drug Imaginable -- Gawker

June 1st -- Bitcoin and The End of State-Controlled Money (Video) -- ReasonTV

June 3rd -- Decentralized Currency Stimulating Underground Barter Economy -- Activist Post

June 8th -- Max Keiser: Is Bitcoin the Resistance Currency? -- Max Keiser

June 9th -- Senators seek crackdown on 'Bitcoin' currency -- Reuters

June 10th -- Bitcoin Triples Again -- Smart Money

June 10th -- Digital Black Friday: First Bitcoin 'Depression' Hits -- Daily Tech

June 16th -- New Malware Steals Your Bitcoin -- Wired

June 20th -- Bitcoin Exchange Collapses Due to Compromised Account -- TechCrunch

In short, Bitcoin went from being introduced to the public, to hailed as a savior of failed centralized banking and debt-based money, to being thoroughly discredited in less than a month. Does that seem strange to anyone but me? It seems that just the idea of peer-to-peer anonymous digital currency -- if as advertised by MIT and others -- is potentially a major threat to the banskter's monopoly on money and the state's ability to vampire the taxes from online transactions.

To qualify my paranoia, I have no doubt that your everyday thief has plenty of motivation for scoring a big payday, yet there is also enough evidence to speculate that very powerful interests have a vested interest in discrediting the Bitcoin. And this high-profile theft has certainly crippled Bitcoin's credibility; and the person least likely to benefit is the guy who just stole a half-a-million dollar's worth of it. Therefore, the thief had to know his booty would lose tremendous value in light of the security compromise. Hence, the stronger motivation has prevailed; the message being that Bitcoin -- or anything like it -- is not to be trusted.

Yet, as mentioned above, the victim admitted in his own words that he regretfully forgot to lock his door. Not that the house is not secure. In fact, Symantec labeled the malware a "Risk Level 1: Very Low," and suggested the following simple recommendation to protect Bitcoin wallets against such attacks:

If you use Bitcoins, you have the option to encrypt your wallet and we recommend that you choose a strong password for this in the event that an attacker is attempting to brute-force your wallet open.

So, ultimately, this story is much ado about nothing, but it appears to have carried the desired impact of collapsing the public's interest in Bitcoin. The opponents of Bitcoin will now argue that "anonymity" is a problem, because it can't track the perpetrator, while they also may have solved their "decentralized" problem. Die-hard Bitcoin supporters will now likely be more inclined to store their wallet in a "secure" central location online like InstaWallet or MyBitcoin, which will probably be bought up by Goldman Sachs when all the sheep have been corralled.

However, I'm still hopeful that as the world awakens to their servitude to the criminal central bankers and seeks to innovate alternatives, coupled with the appeal of a decentralized anonymous currency armed with an open-source code, more impregnable advancements in such mediums of exchange will become available. But in the meantime, it appears there will be manufactured roadblocks on the path to freedom.

chaoticfate.com

Stopping the Corporate Coup d'Etat

2011-06-21T16:37:00.000-07:00

For 1/1000th Our Federal Revenue, We Can Remove Corporate Money From Politics
by JP Sayles, Political Finance Reform http://politicalfinancereform.org/

Preface
Gaming American Politics - The Most Profitable "Industry" on Earth

David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's Budget Director and architect of the largest tax cuts in history complained in an interview for 60 Minutes (Oct. 31, 2010):

"In 1985, the top five percent of the households, wealthiest five percent, had net worth of $8 trillion. Today, the top five percent have net worth of $40 trillion. The top five percent have gained more wealth (in 25 years) than the whole human race had created prior to 1980."

Who would argue that half (if not more) of that $32 trillion increase in wealth was acquired at the expense of increased government deficits, reduced government services, damaged economy and middle class losses? It certainly appears that the corresponding 30-year increase in political expenditures made by the corporate elite succeeded in purchasing near absolute control of our politicians, government, tax code and revenue.

As always found in free market business conditions, corporate leaders most likely anticipated that their competition (in this case citizens reeling from devastating loss) would eventually:

A) Reverse engineer what corporations provide politicians for control (about $3.5 billion/yr)

B) Discover this is costing citizens at least $640 billion per year ($32 trillion/25 yrs x 1/2)

C) Decide to apply 'standard business practices' of 'spend-a-little-to-save-allot', by making a 'competitive bid' to pay politicians the $3.5 billion directly (through pay incentives and campaign funds), cutting-out-the-corporate-middle-man, saving hundreds of billions of dollars per year

A profit of $640 billion/year on a $3.5 billion investment provides a breathtaking 15,000% "Return On Investment". The annual profits from this "industry" far surpass American oil industry profits combined, making "Gaming American Politics" the most profitable industry - and best investment on earth - for 25 consecutive years!

Changing the Way Money Flows In Washington

There are two ways to effect change: mandate it or incentivize it. The voting masses have tried for decades to mandate loyalty from our politicians via the threat of voting them out. For many, losing political office only means making millions working for corporations - so in the 21st century that's an empty threat - and throwing Congress in prison is entirely impractical and will never happen because they make the laws.

Given this reality, clearly it’s time for something entirely new - like cutting our losses and pursuing the opposite strategy of incentivizing loyalty. This proven strategy works exceptionally well for the Koch brothers - so why not copy them?

The Logistics:

Somehow find a way to: "convince those who benefit from it, to make law illegalizing it" - ie. receiving billions of dollars in lifeblood revenue streams from private industry - a nice trick and our proverbial catch 22 - but precisely what must happen.

And America can no longer trust SCOTUS, (polls show a vast majority disapprove of Supreme Court's job performance), so new, untouchable law produced by a constitutional amendment appears to be absolutely necessary.

How might all of that be accomplished and what would it cost?

Fighting Fire With Fire - Emulating the Corporate Strategy

Professional Revenue:

The cost to finance political campaigns has averaged $4 billion per election year the past three election cycles (’04, ’06, ’08). Clearly we must finance elections ($2 billion per year) from public funds.

Despite many attempts we have failed to accomplish this, most likely because Congress has other, far more lucrative financial connections to private industry - and the corporate elite don't want to lose this financial control, so it doesn't get done.

Personal Revenue:

Perhaps the key to finally achieving "campaign finance reform" is to replace with tax dollars the personal wealth Congressional members acquire with corporate stock portfolios; highly coveted corporate perks and war chests; and their multi-million dollar job loss safety net of corporate lobbying, all of which far exceed Congressional salaries.

Political Finance Reform goes several steps beyond just campaign finance reform alone by addressing all revenue/benefit streams simultaneously - by proposing to budget an additional $1.5 billion per year to:

#1 add a zero to Congressional pay

#2 greatly improve Congressional pensions - with longevity/performance based incentives

That could incentivize change.

In exchange, Congress must illegalize all of their financial connections to private industry during service and after. With strict enforcement laws, 100% financial dependence could provide their undivided loyalty - saving middle class taxpayers trillions of dollars - and democracy itself.

The Strategic Reallocation of Tax Dollars

If agreed to, the amount necessary to reallocate should be about $3.5 billion per year, representing just 1/10 of 1% of our federal revenue, $3.55 trillion. If we can fix precisely that which destroys our political system, government and economy by reallocating just 1/1000th of our revenue - who would say no?

If you faced losing your $200,000 home but could save it for $200, would you make the expenditure? That's 1/1000th. Isn't America our home? If we can save our children's future by reallocating a microscopic 1/1000th of our revenue, then shouldn't we?

Further, if we’d go to war to preserve free market capitalism, shouldn't we be prepared to adapt to its unintended and most feared consequences?

Complete Loyalty Shift

Now with 100% loyalty due to 100% financial dependence (a free market corporate, Koch brothers principle), to further ensure regaining control we can demand and achieve these equally necessary and critical elements to government reform: (important links)

#1 Claw-backs (Election, Lobbyist, Corporate, Political Corruption Reforms)

#2 The mislabeled "Citizens" United counteraction strategy (Personhood Conditional)

Proposed Constitutional Amendment #28
"POLITICAL FINANCE REFORM"

With the money on the table perhaps we could eliminate legalized political bribery by "reforming the way we finance our politics" in a single, resounding, one-time, all encompassing win/win constitutional amendment - keeping SCOTUS out of it.

With this amendment, the voting masses would hold near absolute control over our politician's #1 career opportunity #2 job security #3 personal enrichment #4 social status #5 retirement security - not special interest groups, which as it is, appears to defy logic.

OR —

We can stand indignantly with our arms folded, refuse to take this action on the grounds of “principle” and continue our freefall into the corporate-slavery abyss.

Do I think they deserve millions? That’s irrelevant. The question is, do they think they’re worth millions. Apparently so, and they're in position to do something about it at our expense, which costs us thousands of times more.

The question remaining: Can we get past our rage towards congress to act logically?

Removal does not appear to be the answer. Replacing politicians - or even changing parties - is clearly not working and changes nothing literally rendering our voting power impotent!

While some might feel that many Congressional members deserve to be imprisoned for larceny, fraud and conducting war under false pretenses; that is impractical as Congress is unlikely to allow laws that imprison themselves. In fact, they could be considered "victims of the system" which they inherited, that in its current form requires their financial dependence on private industry.

Conclusion: Fix The Broken System - The Rest Should Take Care of Itself

Let's treat the cause - Political Bribery - rather than applying temporary band-aids to the symptoms - reform attempts.

Who thought that resolving "the issue of our generation" would be painless? Doesn't this solution appear to be far less painful than the looming alternatives - catastrophic economic failure and middle class collapse?

Had we implemented this upgrade to our system a decade ago, would we revile Congress today? If we don't do this, what will it be like ten years from now? With our politicians’ complete financial dependence - and therefore possibly their undivided loyalty - what would environmental, bank, energy, tax and healthcare reform look like?

Our petition goes straight to Congress. http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-congress-to-eliminate-private-money-in-politics

Let us all pray for the day when we can look back on "The Era of Legalized Political Bribery" as we do slavery - and wonder in amazement how we ever allowed it to exist in the first place.

http://politicalfinancereform.org/

chaoticfate.com

Major Attack on the World's Largest Bitcoin Exchange

2011-06-21T16:30:00.000-07:00

Today, the largest Bitcoin exchange, MtGox, with daily volume peaks of 1M+ USD, was victim of an attack that crashed the market down to 0.01 USD/BTC for a brief period of time; and the list of MtGox account password hashes was leaked. Bitcoin (BTC) is the first digital currency designed to be fully decentralized, meaning there is no trusted third-party, no company, no central bank authorizing, validating, and keeping track of transactions, yet Bitcoin is secure through clever use of well-known cryptographic primitives. It is important to understand that today's attack exposed flaws in a particular exchange, not in Bitcoin itself.

[Update: I will edit this post frequently in the next few hours to add information as I learn it.]

It all really started on Friday, June 17, 2011 when a dubious but plausible message was posted to pastebin, offering the MtGox "database" for sale, signed ~cRazIeStinGeR~ (auto36299386@hushmail.com).

On Saturday, June 18, the owner of MtGox, Mark "MagicalTux" Karpeles, reported an increase of theft cases. Some pointed out the pastebin message as a possible connection.

On Sunday, June 19, 17:15:36 UTC, suspicious trading activity suddenly started on MtGox. At this exact second, a person placed one or more orders to sell hundreds of thousands of Bitcoins, causing its exchange rate to crash from 17 USD down to 0.01 USD. It took half an hour for the trading platform to execute the order(s). The MtGox site was very unresponsive during this time. Whoever did that ended up trading the digital currency for a total of more than 1.5M USD (the volume for the day, after the sell-off, was 1.8M USD). Then, further trades occurred, either from confused MtGox users or from this same person. The largest trade seen, for 261383.7630 BTC, was executed at 0.01 USD at 17:51:16.

Around 18:00 UTC, the now thin MtGox market saw the exchange rate swiftly oscillate between $1 and $20. It is possible that this person re-bought large amounts of Bitcoins. During the same time, other Bitcoin exchanges experienced severe volatility.

A few minutes later, at 18:17 UTC, a very large transaction of 432109.87654321 BTCwas recorded in the public Bitcoin block chain (not an MtGox trade!). This represents 6.6% of the amount currently in circulation (about 6.5M), and 2% of the total theoretical amount of Bitcoins that will ever exist once they will have been mined (exactly 21M). At first, it was unclear who initiated this transaction. If it had been the person who sold and possibly re-bought Bitcoins, then transferring them out of MtGox to his private Bitcoin wallet, it would have made these coins unrecoverable and the largest Bitcoin heist ever. Fortunately, I received personal confirmation from Mark Karpeles himself that it was just MtGox transferring the coins to another wallet, as a security precaution. An MtGox employee known as "Adam" also confirmed the purpose of this transfer in a live video broadcasting at OnlyOneTV.

At 18:18 UTC, Mark Karpeles, living in Japan, was woken up and showed up on the IRC channel #bitcoin-otc, evidently surprised by the massive sell-off. After a quick investigation, he determined an attacker used a stolen MtGox account with a lot of Bitcoins in it, sold them, and caused the crash. Mark Karpeles announced the attacker was stopped and that he would roll back all these trades. He shut the MtGox site down, and posted a message explaining so.

Around 19:15 UTC, another event shed more light on the amplitude of the attack: someone, presumably the attacker, posted on the Bitcoin forums a complete list of MtGox user names, email addresses, and password hashes: MtGOX Account Database LEAKED (this thread has since been blocked, but the list has been re-leaked and posted in other threads, on Rapidshare, etc). The list contains 61016 accounts. Most of the passwords are hashed with Unix MD5-based crypt(), except 1765 of them which are plain MD5 hashes (unsalted, non-iterated).

Many of these hashes, even those that appear to be strong passwords, show up on various websites about password brute-forcing when googling for them. Notably, 2 days ago, a user named georgeclooney posted requests to crack some of these hashes on the InsidePro password recovery forums. He is almost certainly the same person who attacked MtGox (since he knew about the hashes beforey they were publicly released).

Unfortunately, many of the hashes are weak and were brute-forced easily according to these same websites. Some users discovering the leak have run password brute-forcers themselves against the hash list and easily broke hundreds of them. Contrary to previous claims from the MtGox owner, this indicates that many accounts had been compromised for at least days, if not weeks, before today's attack.

In the next hour or two, other Bitcoin exchanges chose to voluntarily temporarily shut down as a security precaution, as many users re-use the same passwords across different trading sites. Britcoin is one of them and happens to be hosted on the same server infrastructure as MtGox, and claimed that a SQL injection was used to attack MtGox. Currently their homepage shows:

"Due to the recent events at MTGox.com, we at Britcoin have decided to move our servers to a new location. MTGox suffered an SQL injection which means access to the site's funds were in the hands of the malicious hacker. As such, until we see evidence to the contrary, for security reasons we are assuming that MTGox has none of it's [sic] client's bitcoins. For this reason, we have withdrawn their access to our servers and the sensitive information on those servers.

While our servers were separate, we were purchasing server space from MagicalTux, the owner/operator of MTGox. We have already moved all our customer bitcoins to a wallet which has newly been created and has the highest measure of security possible. The GBP deposits of course are still safe in our business bank account as well."

(MtGox later denied that SQL injection was the specific attack vector. See below.)

Around 21:00 UTC, MtGox started emailing their users to disclose the attack, and to recommend users who used the same password for MtGox and their email service to change it. (Personally, even though I confirmed the validity of my password hash in the leaked list, I would normally see no need to change it since it is unique and very strong: 15 random printable ASCII characters would take 2**47 centuries to brute-force at 1 Mpassword/sec. Note to self: add support for Unix MD5-based crypt() hashes towhitepixel ). However, if one assumes the worst, that the attacker had infiltrated MtGox for some time and has been logging all password authentication attempts, then passwords should be changed anyway.

At 21:10 UTC, Jed McCaleb, the previous owner of the exchange, helping Mark Karpeles investigate the attack, announced that only a small fraction of Bitcoins were stolen.

Around 22:00 UTC: the only positive news amongst all this is that Mike Hearn, a prominent Bitcoin community member, and employee of Google, in the abuse/anti-hijack team, proactively forced a password change on all the Gmail accounts that were found in the leaked MtGox account list, again because some users use the same password for MtGox and Gmail.

June 20, 02:06 UTC: MtGox denies Britcoin's claim that the site was compromised by a SQL injection: "It appears that someone who performs audits on our system and had read-only access to our database had their computer compromised. This allowed for someone to pull our database. The site was not compromised with a SQL injection as many are reporting, so in effect the site was not hacked."

06:30 UTC: MtGox announces that they are quickly working on immediately replacing MD5-based crypt() hashes with SHA-512-based crypt() for extra precaution, and are going to implement password-protected withdrawals. The site is planning to re-open on June 21, 02:00 UTC.

June 21, 04:35 UTC: Evidence is building up that there were, in fact, SQL injection vulnerabilities on mtgox.com. MtGox has not commented on this.

05:00 UTC: Mark Karpeles posts yet another update saying "we are still working to get the claim site up". Before re-opening MtGox, he wants to ensure that the process to claim ownership of one's account is secure, despite the password hashes having been leaked.

15:55 UTC: MtGox announces that "you can now file requests to recover your Mt.Gox account" through the special claim.mtgox.com website. A claim request consists of submitting the account name, email address, the old password, a new password; then verifying the email address; and optionally submitting more evidence such as the last known MtGox balance of the account, the Liberty Reserve account typically used for withdrawals, copy of a government ID, etc. Claim requests appear are verified manually by MtGox staff.

What to think about this whole saga?

The Bitcoin community users were able to brute-force (as of June 20, 06:00 UTC) about 900 of the password hashes out of the 61016 leaked MtGox accounts. Assuming the attacker was also able to brute-force about the same amount, it is possible to imagine that this number of accounts happened to collectively hold the hundreds of thousands of Bitcoins that were used in this massive sell-off.

But it is unclear what exactly the attacker had in mind exactly when selling off. Did he think he would then be able to withdraw the USD? Did he not know that Mtgox implements daily USD withdrawal limits (by default $1000 per day per account)? Did he have sufficiently compromised MtGox that he would be able to bypass these limits? Perhaps he was trying to bypass the daily BTC withdrawal limit, which is also the equivalent of $1000 per day per account (computed using the current exchange rate; selling off is one way to bring it closer to zero and artificially inflate the withdrawal limit).

Or perhaps, as it is sometimes the case, the attacker's purpose was simply to cause mayhem for fun (think a script kiddie doing random things). Not all attackers are like the well-prepared robbers in Ocean's 11, with a precise plan of action. This is probably the simplest explanation.

Useful links:

chaoticfate.com