The opening of the Barbie’s European tour in Germany was marred after activists from several groups engaged into a furious protest. Femen activists have expressed uproar at the life-size pink mansion and the fashion doll the brand promotes. A female activist was seen in the crowd with the words “Life in plastic is not fantastic” inscribed on her naked torso, later climbing up a giant pink shoe-fountain, wielding a burning cross with a crucified Barbie doll. The woman shouted slogans against the “sexist icon” and had to be taken away the by security at the scene. A “Ritual Barbie’cue with fried meat of the plastic idol was made to demonstrate the true meaning of the history of commercial monster Mattel. They have turned a piece of plastic into a god for millions of girls from all over the world who now seek only to imitate plastic shapes and stupidity and absurdity of conduct,” a statement on the Ukraine-based feminist group website later said.According to the controversial protest group, the company “purposefully ” creates the image “dictating… the appearance of new generations ,” as well a “social role of reckless beauty finding a reason to exist in the continuous care of their appearance and the house.” Despite the seemingly provocative name, another activist campaign “Occupy Barbie Dreamhouse” noted that its attendees went to demonstrate peacefully.“We are here because sexism is being used for capitalist gains ,” one of the campaigners from a youth socialist group Linksjugend told The Local.“This protest is not against the parents who chose to take their children, nor the children themselves, but against the unhealthy beauty obsession it breeds ,” protest organizer and a ‘proud male feminist’ Michael Koshitzki added.Koshitzki was particularly critical of the installation’s ‘dressing room,’ where girls were seemingly encouraged to “make themselves look like Barbie.” Stevie Schmiedel from the “Pink Stinks” Initiative has summed concerns about children’s health many activists were expressing.“Fewer and fewer girls feel comfortable in their own skin, with eating disorders having increased drastically because of figures like Barbie,” he said as quoted by SAPA.The Greens were also present at the opening party, equally disgruntled with the Barbie ideals.“The Barbie Dreamhouse sends the wrong signal, ” Green Party women’s affairs expert Karoline Killat said. “What it suggests to little girls is that they should aim to be beautiful consumers.” But not everyone has agreed with the protesters stance.“Berlin is a free city and Barbie is welcome,” Philipp Lengsfeld of the conservative Christian Democratic Party told The Local.“It’s just one of several interesting attractions in the city and it is not anyone’s place to say what people should or should not buy,” Lengsfeld said, adding he was “disappointed” with the demonstrating crowd. … Read More
Sun unleashes four massive solar flares in two days (PHOTOS, VIDEO)
Four significant X-class solar flares left the Sun in just 48 hours, sending powerful bursts of radiation into space, according to Space Weather website.The first burst of solar energy was detected on Monday at 2:00 GMT. Fourteen hours later the Sun emitted a stronger X2.8-class flare, peaking at 16:05 GMT, according to NASA.The third flare occurred in under 24 hours, peaking at 2:11 GMT and was classified as an X3.2 flare, the strongest X-class flare of 2013 so far. The latest X1.2-flare occurred on Wednesday at 01:52 GMT.All of the flares were tens of times the size of Earth, originating from an AR1748 sunspot, an active region just out of sight over the left side of the Sun.The flares were associated with a solar phenomenon, called a coronal mass ejection (CME). Although the sunspot is not directly facing Earth, the last flare produced a CME with an Earth-directed component, the Space Weather website reports.If the flares associated with CME are directed at Earth they can cause long lasting radiation storms, according to NASA.When CME occurs it propels bursts of billions of tons of solar particles and electromagnetic fluctuations that can reach Earth’s atmosphere and harm satellites, communications systems, and even ground-based technologies and power grids.The March 1989 CME produced by a X15-class solar flare resulting in a geomagnetic storm that caused the collapse of Hydro-Québec’s electricity transmission system in Canada.The latest 2013 flares were of X-class that denotes the most intense flares. The smallest ones are A-class, followed by B, C, M and X. The number that follows the class provides information about its strength. An X2 is twice as intense as an X1, an X3 is three times as intense, and so on.According to NASA the most powerful flare measured by modern methods occurred on November 4, 2003 during the previous solar maximum. It was so strong that the sensors were cut off when estimating the burst of radiation at X28.Solar activity is currently ramping up toward what is known as solar maximum, which is expected in 2013. The solar maximum occurs approximately every 11 years.“However, this same solar cycle has occurred over millennia so anyone over the age of 11 has already lived through such a solar maximum with no harm” said NASA in a statement.The coming solar maximum explains the increased numbers of flares. The largest X-class flare in this cycle so far was an X6.9 on August 9, 2011.The solar cycle was discovered in 1843 and scientists have been tracking it ever since. … Read More
Congressman To Give Away AR-15 On July 4
Representative Steve Stockman (R-TX) has put up on his re-election website that he will be giving away a Bushmaster AR-15 semi-automatic homeland defense rifle on July 4, 2013. Whoa! Talk about a congressman with some guts! I like it! Stockman took to Twitter on Wednesday and stirred the pot. … Read More
YouTube starts paid subscription service
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Obama to support Internet wiretapping program
The FBI has been considering solutions to their so-called “Going Dark” problem as intricate methods of encryption and advances in technology have made it increasingly difficult for the federal government and law enforcement to gain access to online communications conducted in the shadows of the Web. Should the latest efforts of the FBI move forward, though, Internet companies that act as any conduit for correspondence of any kind would be heavily fined if they don’t include in their infrastructure a way for the government to eavesdrop on that dialogue in real time.At a press conference in Washington, DC in March, FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann said the Department of Justice was determined to have the means to wiretap any online communication by 2014 and called it “a huge priority for the FBI.” Further developments last month revealed that the FBI was considering a fine-based model under which Internet companies would be forced to comply or risk being penalized beyond repair.On Tuesday, New York Times reporter Charlie Savage cited Obama administration officials as saying the president “is on the verge of backing” that very plan.Savage explained that while companies would be allowed to operate without giving the government backdoor access, the fees would likely limit the number of entities willing to challenge the order. As RT reported last month, a company that doesn’t comply with the FBI’s orders would be fined $25,000 after 90 days. Additional penalties would then be tacked on every day an Internet service provider, website or other company fails to comply — with the price of the penalty doubling each day they don’t assist investigators.“While the FBI’s original proposal would have required Internet communications services to each build in a wiretapping capacity, the revised one, which must now be reviewed by the White House, focuses on fining companies that do not comply with wiretap orders,” wrote Savage. “The difference, officials say, means that start-ups with a small number of users would have fewer worries about wiretapping issues unless the companies became popular enough to come to the Justice Department’s attention.”Savage quoted a statement in his article from Weissmann in which the FBI attorney said, “This doesn’t create any new legal surveillance authority.” Instead, said Weissman, “None of the ‘going dark’ solutions would do anything except update the law given means of modern communications.”“This always requires a court order,” he said.Coincidently, that same issue has had major developments in its own right this week. On Wednesday morning, CNET reporter Declan McCullagh wrote that the Justice Department circulated memos in which they insisted that obtaining a search warrant isn’t necessary to eavesdrop on Internet communication of any sort.“The US Department of Justice and the FBI believe they don’t need a search warrant to review Americans’ e-mails, Facebook chats, Twitter direct messages and other private files, internal documents reveal,” wrote McCullagh, citing a government documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and provided to CNET.According to McCullagh, those documents include very specific instructions from high-importance officials that demonstrate the Justice Department’s disinterest in applying established law when it comes to eavesdropping on Americans. While Weissmann made the argument that the FBI plan reportedly backed by the president won’t change what rules the DoJ operates by, the memos obtained by McCullagh paints the Obama White House as an administration unwilling to work with the already broad surveillance powers provided to it.In one memo unearthed by the ACLU, McCullagh said the US attorney for Manhattan instructed his office that an easy-to-obtain legal paper that requires no judicial oversight is all that’s needed to obtain personal correspondence.“[A] subpoena — a piece of paper signed by a prosecutor, not a judge — is sufficient to obtain nearly ‘all records from an ISP,’” McCullagh wrote.In another instance, McCullagh said the US attorney in Houston, Texas obtained the “contents of stored communications” from another ISP without getting a judge to sign a warrant.One current law that limits how and when authorities can obtain a suspect’s email pursuant to a criminal investigation, the Electronic Communication Privacy Act, provides that while a warrant is needed for relatively recent correspondence, a comparably easier to get administrative subpoena is all that’s required to get communication older than 180 days. Provisions of the ECPA have been largely unchanged since it was passed in the mid-1980s, but last month a Senate Judiciary Committee approved an amendment that would require a warrant in all instances.In advocating for fewer restrictions when obtaining store communication, the FBI’s Wessmann said in April that another law, 1994’s Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, needs to be expanded so investigators can leap over current hurdles that keep them from conducting real time wiretaps of online discussions.“You do have laws that say you need to keep things for a certain amount of time, but in the cyber realm you can have companies that keep things for five minutes,” he said. “You can imagine totally legitimate reasons for that, but you can also imagine how enticing that ability is for people who are up to no good because the evidence comes and it goes.”In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15, renewed calls across the country have been made to make it easier for investigators to quickly conduct surveillance — in and off the Web. A recent poll found that roughly two-thirds of Americans favored more surveillance cameras in public places, and now the nation’s top law officials are asking for increased spy power not just on the streets but on the Web.Earlier this month, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said at a discussion in Washington, “When you come across an advocate for one thing — an advocate for security, and advocate for privacy — they’re often arguing from a position without understanding that it’s a two-edged sword.”“For example, very strong encryption would allow you and I to have a very, very secure communication: If we were criminals, if we were dissidents, if we were martyrs or if we were just doing a little business,” he said. “If you could figure out a way to ban very strong encryption from evil people and only allow good people…then this would be easy,” he said. … Read More
OpGTMO: Anonymous vows global hack attack to shut down Guantanamo
“We stand in solidarity with the Guantanamo hunger strikers. We will shut down Guantanamo,” Anonymous’ online statement reads. The group did not detail how it is would achieve this goal, but promised “twitterstorms, email bombs and fax bombs” would be part of its anti-Gitmo efforts. The group said mass protests would take place from May 17 to 19. The group’s online call for action condemned the US for failing deliver on President Obama’s promise to shut down the facility. The group described the prison as a concentration camp, and said that many of the inmates are being kept there despite having been cleared for release. Anonymous also lashed out at the Guantanamo administration for force-feeding some of the hunger-striking prisoners, which the UN recently condemned as torture and in breach of international law. Anonymous also expressed indignation over how the facility, which they called a “disgrace for any civilized country,” is one of the most expensive prisons in the world, costing $900,000 annually to house each prisoner. “Guantanamo Bay must be closed at once, and the prisoners should be either returned to their home countries or given a fair trial in a federal court. Guantanamo Bay is an ongoing war crime. Anonymous will no longer tolerate this atrocity,” their statement said The Anonymous website also posted phone numbers for the White House, US Southern Command and the Department of Defense, urging supporters to ‘phonebomb’ officials with calls about Guantanamo. Inmates at Guantanamo went on a hunger strike at the beginning of February over alleged mistreatments, including the mishandling of their Korans. Currently, more than 100 inmates are refusing food, two dozen of whom are being force-fed.Follow RT’s day-by-day timeline of the Gitmo hunger strike. ‘Anonymous’ is notorious for its politically motivated cyber-attacks. A recent hack attack took down the Spanish parliament’s website in late April, the same day mass anti-government protests were held in Madrid. … Read More
Kim Dotcom spying row prompts NZ to propose domestic snooping law
Under the proposed changes, the Government Communications and Security Bureau [GCSB] would be empowered to spy on New Zealanders only after receiving permission from the prime minister.”The GCSB will require an authorization from the responsible minister and the commissioner of security warrants when its cyber security and information assurance functions are being performed in relation to the communications of New Zealanders,” news website Stuff.co.nz cites Prime Minister John Key as saying. The amendments would also allow the GCSB to provide support to police, the Defense Force, and the Security Intelligence Service, which is currently tasked with spying on New Zealand citizens and permanent residents.”The GCSB will only be able to provide that support when those agencies are acting within their own lawful duties,” Key continued. Key said the Bureau – traditionally tasked with foreign signals intelligence – needed expanded powers due to the rapidly evolving technological landscape “in areas like cyber-security and the threat of cyber-attacks.”“It’s vital that legislation in this area is fit for purpose and keeps pace with changes in the operating environment, while also safeguarding the rights of law-abiding New Zealanders,” he insisted. Key said he was willing to compromise on the legislation to gain support from opposition lawmakers. However, the opposition Labor Party claimed the proposed measures, which will be debated in parliament this week, are nothing but a ‘band aid’ solution which did nothing to fix the deeper issue of government transparency. “The state should not extend its powers to spy on citizens lightly… [John Key] is asking New Zealanders to trust him to personally decide who can be spied on, despite his record of lax oversight of the GCSB,” AFP cites Labor leader David Shearer as saying. The proposed changes followed revelations that the GCSB illegally spied on Kim Dotcom – a German national with New Zealand residency – prior to an armed police raid on his Auckland mansion in January 2012. Dotcom was subsequently arrested by New Zealand authorities, who were aiding a US investigation into online piracy. In March, New Zealand’s Court of Appeal ruled that Dotcom has the right to sue the GCSB for illegally intercepting his communications. Key, who said he was unaware that they bureau had snooped on Dotcom illegally, was forced to issue a public apology to the internet tycoon last month. A subsequent inquiry released in April revealed that another 88 New Zealanders may have been illegally monitored, though details of the cases were not released. The US Department of Justice alleges Dotcom’s popular file hosting website Megaupload.com, cost copyright holders over $500 million in lost revenues. He is wanted on digital piracy and money laundering charges.Dotcom has denied the charges against him and is free on Bail in New Zealand in the run up to an extradition hearing scheduled in August. … Read More
