Monthly Archives: March 2016

Rationalism (architecture) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Posted: March 21, 2016 at 8:44 pm

In architecture, rationalism is an architectural current which mostly developed from Italy in the 1920s-1930s. Vitruvius had claimed in his work De Architectura that architecture is a science that can be comprehended rationally. This formulation was taken up and further developed in the architectural treatises of the Renaissance. Progressive art theory of the 18th-century opposed the Baroque use of illusionism with the classic beauty of truth and reason.

Twentieth-century rationalism derived less from a special, unified theoretical work than from a common belief that the most varied problems posed by the real world could be resolved by reason. In that respect it represented a reaction to historicism and a contrast to Art Nouveau and Expressionism.

The name rationalism is retroactively applied to a movement in architecture that came about during the Enlightenment (more specifically, neoclassicism), arguing that architecture's intellectual base is primarily in science as opposed to reverence for and emulation of archaic traditions and beliefs. Rational architects, following the philosophy of Ren Descartes emphasized geometric forms and ideal proportions.[1]:81-84

The French Louis XVI style (better known as Neoclassicism) emerged in the mid-18th century with its roots in the waning interest of the Baroque period. The architectural notions of the time gravitated more and more to the belief that reason and natural forms are tied closely together, and that the rationality of science should serve as the basis for where structural members should be placed. Towards the end of the 18th century, Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand, a teacher at the influential cole Polytechnique in Paris at the time, argued that architecture in its entirety was based in science.

Other architectural theorists of the period who advanced rationalist ideas include Abb Jean-Louis de Cordemoy (16311713),[2]:559[3]:265 the Venetian Carlo Lodoli (16901761),[2]:560 Abb Marc-Antoine Laugier (17131769) and Quatremre de Quincy (17551849).[1]:8792

The architecture of Claude Nicholas Ledoux (17361806) and tienne-Louis Boulle (172899) typify Enlightenment rationalism, with their use of pure geometric forms, including spheres, squares, and cylinders.[1]:92-96

The term structural rationalism most often refers to a 19th-century French movement, usually associated with the theorists Eugne Viollet-le-Duc and Auguste Choisy. Viollet-le-Duc rejected the concept of an ideal architecture and instead saw architecture as a rational construction approach defined by the materials and purpose of the structure. The architect Eugne Train was one of the most important practitioners of this school, particularly with his educational buildings such as the Collge Chaptal and Lyce Voltaire.[4]

Architects such as Henri Labrouste and Auguste Perret incorporated the virtues of structural rationalism throughout the 19th century in their buildings. By the early 20th century, architects such as Hendrik Petrus Berlage were exploring the idea that structure itself could create space without the need for decoration. This gave rise to modernism, which further explored this concept. More specifically, the Soviet Modernist group ASNOVA were known as 'the Rationalists'.

Rational Architecture (Italian: Architettura razionale) thrived in Italy from the 1920s to the 1940s. In 1926, a group of young architects Sebastiano Larco, Guido Frette, Carlo Enrico Rava, Adalberto Libera, Luigi Figini, Gino Pollini, and Giuseppe Terragni (190443) founded the so-called Gruppo 7, publishing their manifesto in the magazine Rassegna Italiana. Their declared intent was to strike a middle ground between the classicism of the Novecento Italiano movement and the industrially inspired architecture of Futurism.[5]:203 Their "note" declared:

The hallmark of the earlier avant garde was a contrived impetus and a vain, destructive fury, mingling good and bad elements: the hallmark of today's youth is a desire for lucidity and wisdom...This must be clear...we do not intend to break with tradition...The new architecture, the true architecture, should be the result of a close association between logic and rationality.[5]:203

One of the first rationalist buildings was the Palazzo Gualino in Turin, built for the financier Riccardo Gualino by the architects Gino Levi-Montalcini and Giuseppe Pagano.[6] Gruppo 7 mounted three exhibitions between 1926 and 1931, and the movement constituted itself as an official body, the Movimento Italiano per l'Architettura Razionale (MIAR), in 1930. Exemplary works include Giuseppe Terragni's Casa del Fascio in Como (193236), The Medaglia d'Oro room at the Italian Aeronautical Show in Milan (1934) by Pagano and Marcello Nizzoli, and the Fascist Trades Union Building in Como (193843), designed by Cesare Cattaneo, Pietro Lingeri, Augusto Magnani, L. Origoni, and Mario Terragni.[5]:205-9

Pagano became editor of Casabella in 1933 together with Edoardo Persico. Pagano and Persico featured the work of the rationalists in the magazine, and its editorials urged the Italian state to adopt rationalism as its official style. The Rationalists enjoyed some official commissions from the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini, but the state tended to favor the more classically inspired work of the National Union of Architects. Architects associated with the movement collaborated on large official projects of the Mussolini regime, including the University of Rome (begun in 1932) and the Esposizione Universale Roma (EUR) in the southern part of Rome (begun in 1936). The EUR features monumental buildings, many of which evocative of ancient Roman architecture, but absent ornament, revealing strong geometric forms.[5]:204-7

In the late 1960s, a new rationalist movement emerged in architecture, claiming inspiration from both the Enlightenment and early-20th-century rationalists. Like the earlier rationalists, the movement, known as the Tendenza, was centered in Italy. Practitioners include Carlo Aymonino (19262010), Aldo Rossi (193197), and Giorgio Grassi. The Italian design magazine Casabella featured the work of these architects and theorists. The work of architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri influenced the movement, and the University Iuav of Venice emerged as a center of the Tendenza after Tafuri became chair of Architecture History in 1968.[1]:157 et seq. A Tendenza exhibition was organized for the 1973 Milan Triennale.[1]:178-183

Rossi's book L'architettura della citt, published in 1966, and translated into English as The Architecture of the City in 1982, explored several of the ideas that inform Neo-rationalism. In seeking to develop an understanding of the city beyond simple functionalism, Rossi revives the idea of typology, following from Quatremre de Quincy, as a method for understanding buildings, as well as the larger city. He also writes of the importance of monuments as expressions of the collective memory of the city, and the idea of place as an expression of both physical reality and history.[7]:178-80[1]:166-72

Architects such as Leon Krier, Maurice Culot, and Demetri Porphyrios took Rossi's ideas to their logical conclusion with a revival of Classical Architecture and Traditional Urbanism. Krier's witty critique of Modernism, often in the form of cartoons, and Porphyrios's well crafted philosophical arguments, such as "Classicism is not a Style", won over a small but talented group of architects to the classical point of view. Organizations such as the Traditional Architecture Group at the RIBA, and the Institute of Classical Architecture attest to their growing number, but mask the Rationalist origins.

In Germany, Oswald Mathias Ungers became the leading practitioner of German rationalism from the mid-1960s.[7]:178-80 Ungers influenced a younger generation of German architects, including Hans Kollhoff, Max Dudler, and Christoph Mckler.[8]

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Mindjammer The Roleplaying Game Mindjammer Press

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Transhuman Science-Fiction Roleplaying in the Far Future

It is the Second Age of Space. The light of human civilisation, which had flickered and threatened to die, burns bright again with contact with the thousand worlds of space. Humankind laughs, filled with the joys and power of a new-found youth, and strides forth to bring its message of hope and regeneration to the stars The Songs of Old Earth, Book I

The ENnie Award-winning transhuman science-fiction RPG setting returns, in a new edition updated and completely rewritten for the Fate Core rules. Containing all the rules needed to play, including:

Mindjammer The Roleplaying Game can be used to play in the New Commonality of Humankind, or as a complete and detailed transhuman space opera rules set for any science-fiction setting.

Never has there been a greater time of opportunity. Old certainties are dying; the universe is in flux, and for the first time in ten thousand years no one knows what the future will bring. So charge your blaster, thoughtcast your orders to the starship sentience, and fire up the planing engines come and defend the light of humanitys greatest civilisation as it spreads to the stars!

A complete standalone roleplaying game. This book is all you need to play.

Mindjammer The Roleplaying Game is the core rulebook in the Mindjammer line of transhuman science-fiction roleplaying adventure and novels. Join us as we travel through the New Commonality of Humankind, Old Earths greatest civilisation, and rediscover the lost colonies of the distant past.

Transhumanism is a major theme in Mindjammer. Everywhere hyperadvanced technology and synthetic intelligence are transforming humankind, changing individuals into something more than human something other. Play characters caught up in the turmoil of a transformative civilisation: humans, divergent hominids, uplifted animals, synthetic beings. You can even play a sentient starship character!

Characters who survive and thrive grow to be more capable and powerful. More than that, however, your Mindjammer characters can begin to push the very boundaries of what it means to be human. Mindjammer provides detailed rules for how your character can transcend human limitations: acquire multiple bodies, become the sentience embodied in an entire city or even world; step beyond the boundaries of time, language, and individuality. Choose the direction the evolution of the human species will take!

Mindjammer takes place in the far future. Its default setting, the New Commonality of Humankind, is over ten thousand years old, until recently an ancient and stagnant slower-than-light civilisation centred in Manhome, the solar system of Old Earth, and a handful of surrounding star systems. 200 years ago, the Commonality discovered faster-than-light travel, and has been expanding out into the galaxy, discovering lost colonies it settled by slower-than-light generation and stasis ship many thousands of years before.

The Commonality is at once strange and familiar. A vast interstellar shared consciousness called the Mindscape links all Commonality citizens by neural implant, tying the overstretched civilisation together. The Core Worlds around Old Earth are complex and highly advanced, as far from our 21st century and as incomprehensible as we are from the Stone Age. On the ever-expanding Frontier there are civilisations more like our own and just as many far stranger. Everywhere there is turmoil and conflict.

Human Space the theoretical limit of human colonisation by the Diaspora slower-than-light generation and stasis ships extends to a possible 10,000 light years from Old Earth, a sizable proportion of the galactic disk. Commonality Space the limit of current Commonality contact and integration over the past two centuries is much smaller, perhaps 3000 light years in diameter. The schematic below shows the hearts of the 27 Commonality sectors, including the Core Worlds.

Mindjammer is a Fate Core game. Its also standalone, meaning it contains all the rules you need to play. That includes the essentials from the Fate Core SRD, customised and dials set for this action-packed science-fiction setting. It also provides new rules derived from the Fate Core, many of which are released as Open Content under the Open Gaming License.

Mindjammers new rules include rules for creating and playing constructs such as starships, space stations, cities, installations, and vehicles; rules for organisations such as corporacies, governments, and armies and space navies, and for running conflicts between them; and rules for describing and even playing whole cultures. Derived from the Mindjammer 1st edition culture conflict rules but fully consistent with the Fate Core system, the culture rules allow you to run teams of culture agents manipulating entire cultures in the turmoil of Rediscovery.

One of the major features of the Mindjammer game is its emphasis on generating and playing in a science-fiction setting which feels deep and realistic. The rules for planets, star systems, and alien life have been developed with that in mind drawing on the current state of play in cosmology, planetology, and xenoscience, they provide a programmatic way to generate and describe encounters and encounter locations in a way which supports rich science-fiction adventure.

And thats not all. Although these rules are couched in the Fate Core context, theyre also very modular, and can be used in any science-fiction game. Do you want your science-fiction environments to include black holes, molecular clouds, protoplanetary disks, exotic biospheres, and rich and consistent ecosystems? Look no further.

Mindjammer The Roleplaying Game is the first in an extensive line of Mindjammer RPG products. Although the core book contains all the rules you need to play, we have a product pipeline of adventures, campaign packs, atlases, and sourcebooks detailing the New Commonality of Humankind and the Mindjammer universe. Coming soon:

Future products include the Commonality Atlas 1: The Darradine Restoration, The Black Zone, Twilight, Commonality Atlas 2: The Successor States, Solenine, The Comsentience Sourcebook, and much more!

This website itself is a content resource for your Mindjammer games.

Mindjammer is also the name of the first novel in the Mindjammer series, available now from Mindjammer Press! By ENnie award-winning RPG author Sarah Newton, its an action-packed tale of mind-bending technologies in the unimaginably far future, as the human race struggles to fulfil its transhuman destiny.

In the seventeenth millennium, the New Commonality of Humankind is expanding, using newly-discovered faster-than-light travel to rediscover lost worlds colonised in the distant past. Its a time of turmoil, of clashing cultures, as civilizations shudder and collapse before the might of a benevolent empire ten millennia old.

In the Solenine Cluster, things are going from bad to worse, as hyper-advanced technologies destabilise a society in chaos. Thaddeus Clay and his special ops team from the Security and Cultural Integrity Instrumentality are on the trail of the Transmigration Heresy. But what they find is something beyond even their imagining and something which could tear the whole Commonality apart!

Available now from DriveThru, Amazon.com (trade paperback / ebook) and Amazon.co.uk (trade paperback / ebook), and hobby and game stores everywhere!

Complex, gripping, and the most original sci-fi youre likely to get G*M*S Magazine A very exciting and intelligently-written novel that should be on the reading list of every SF fan! Stargazers World William Gibson-like in the intensity of the ideas it introduce a heady mixture of action, crunchy science fiction elements and that perennial cyberpunk or transhuman question: what does human mean? Science-fiction may have a new star forming in its firmament. Shores of Night Thrilling adventure and mystery wrapped up with an inventive, mind-bending look at mankinds future. Howard Andrew Jones, author of The Desert of Souls

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BlackGenocide.org | The Truth About Margaret Sanger

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(This article first appeared in the January 20, 1992 edition of Citizen magazine)

How Planned Parenthood Duped America At a March 1925 international birth control gathering in New York City, a speaker warned of the menace posed by the "black" and "yellow" peril. The man was not a Nazi or Klansman; he was Dr. S. Adolphus Knopf, a member of Margaret Sanger's American Birth Control League (ABCL), which along with other groups eventually became known as Planned Parenthood.

Sanger's other colleagues included avowed and sophisticated racists. One, Lothrop Stoddard, was a Harvard graduate and the author of The Rising Tide of Color against White Supremacy. Stoddard was something of a Nazi enthusiast who described the eugenic practices of the Third Reich as "scientific" and "humanitarian." And Dr. Harry Laughlin, another Sanger associate and board member for her group, spoke of purifying America's human "breeding stock" and purging America's "bad strains." These "strains" included the "shiftless, ignorant, and worthless class of antisocial whites of the South."

Not to be outdone by her followers, Margaret Sanger spoke of sterilizing those she designated as "unfit," a plan she said would be the "salvation of American civilization.: And she also spike of those who were "irresponsible and reckless," among whom she included those " whose religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers." She further contended that "there is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped." That many Americans of African origin constituted a segment of Sanger considered "unfit" cannot be easily refuted.

While Planned Parenthood's current apologists try to place some distance between the eugenics and birth control movements, history definitively says otherwise. The eugenic theme figured prominently in the Birth Control Review, which Sanger founded in 1917. She published such articles as "Some Moral Aspects of Eugenics" (June 1920), "The Eugenic Conscience" (February 1921), "The purpose of Eugenics" (December 1924), "Birth Control and Positive Eugenics" (July 1925), "Birth Control: The True Eugenics" (August 1928), and many others.

These eugenic and racial origins are hardly what most people associate with the modern Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), which gave its Margaret Sanger award to the late Dr. Martin Luther King in 1966, and whose current president, Faye Wattleton, is black, a former nurse, and attractive.

Though once a social pariah group, routinely castigated by religious and government leaders, the PPFA is now an established, high-profile, well-funded organization with ample organizational and ideological support in high places of American society and government. Its statistics are accepted by major media and public health officials as "gospel"; its full-page ads appear in major newspapers; its spokespeople are called upon to give authoritative analyses of what America's family policies should be and to prescribe official answers that congressmen, state legislator and Supreme Court justiices all accept as "social orthodoxy."

Blaming Families Sanger's obsession with eugenics can be traced back to her own family. One of 11 children, she wrote in the autobiographical book, My Fight for Birth Control, that "I associated poverty, toil, unemployment, drunkenness, cruelty, quarreling, fighting, debts, jails with large families." Just as important was the impression in her childhood of an inferior family status, exacerbated by the iconoclastic, "free-thinking" views of her father, whose "anti-Catholic attitudes did not make for his popularity" in a predominantly Irish community.

The fact that the wealthy families in her hometown of Corning, N.Y., had relatively few children, Sanger took as prima facie evidence of the impoverishing effect of larger families. The personal impact of this belief was heightened 1899, at the age of 48. Sanger was convinced that the "ordeals of motherhood" had caused the death of her mother. The lingering consumption (tuberculosis) that took her mother's life visited Sanger at the birth of her own first child on Nov. 18, 1905. The diagnosis forced her to seek refuge in the Adirondacks to strengthen her for the impending birth. Despite the precautions, the birth of baby Grant was "agonizing," the mere memory of which Sanger described as "mental torture" more than 25 years later. She once described the experience as a factor "to be reckoned with" in her zealous campaign for birth control.

From the beginning, Sanger advocacy of sex education reflected her interest in population control and birth prevention among the "unfit." Her first handbook, published for adolescents in 1915 and entitled, What Every Boy and Girl Should Know, featured a jarring afterword:

It is a vicious cycle; ignorance breeds poverty and poverty breeds ignorance. There is only one cure for both, and that is to stoop breeding these things. Stop bringing to birth children whose inheritance cannot be one of health or intelligence. Stop bringing into the world children whose parents cannot provide for them. To Sanger, the ebbing away of moral and religious codes over sexual conduct was a natural consequence of the worthlessness of such codes in the individual's search for self-fulfillment. "Instead of laying down hard and fast rules of sexual conduct," Sanger wrote in her 1922 book Pivot of Civilization, "sex can be rendered effective and valuable only as it meets and satisfies the interests and demands of the pupil himself." Her attitude is appropriately described as libertinism, but sex knowledge was not the same as individual liberty, as her writings on procreation emphasized.

The second edition of Sanger's life story, An Autobiography, appeared in 1938. There Sanger described her first cross-country lecture tour in 1916. Her standard speech asserted seven conditions of life that "mandated" the use of birth control: the third was "when parents, though normal, had subnormal children"; the fourth, "when husband and wife were adolescent"; the fifth, "when the earning capacity of the father was inadequate." No right existed to exercise sex knowledge to advance procreation. Sanger described the fact that "anyone, no matter how ignorant, how diseased mentally or physically, how lacking in all knowledge of children, seemed to consider he or she had the right to become a parent."

Religious Bigotry In the 1910's and 1920's, the entire social orderreligion, law, politics, medicine, and the mediawas arrayed against the idea and practice of birth control. This opposition began in 1873 when an overwhelmingly Protestant Congress passed, and a Protestant president signed into law, a bill that becam
e known as the Comstock Law, named after its main proponent, Anthony Comstock. The U.S. Congress classified obscene writing, along with drugs, and devices and articles that prevented conception or caused abortion, under the same net of criminality and forbade their importation or mailing.

Sanger set out to have such legislation abolished or amended. Her initial efforts were directed at the Congress with the opening of a Washington, D.C., office of her American Birth Control League in 1926. Sanger wanted to amend section 211 of the U.S. criminal code to allow the interstate shipment and mailing of contraceptives among physicians, druggists and drug manufacturers.

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Freedom, PA – Freedom, Pennsylvania Map & Directions – MapQuest

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Freedom is a borough in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, United States, along the Ohio River 25 miles (40km) northwest of Pittsburgh. In the early years of the twentieth century, the chief industries were the production of oil, caskets, and monuments. In 1900, 1,783 people lived in Freedom; in 1910, 3,060 people lived there. The population was 1,763 at the 2000 census. In 1824, the Harmony Society returned to Pennsylvania, from Indiana. The society settled in what is now Ambridge, Pennsylvania, five miles (8km) up the Ohio River. One of the reasons the society left Indiana was because of harassment for their abolitionist activities. Their settlement was in Beaver County along the Ohio River. There they founded "konomie," now better known as Old Economy Village. Here the Society gained worldwide recognition for its religious devotion and economic prosperity. The Harmonites were abolitionists, and began placing signs along the Ohio River with one word, "FREEDOM". The Harmonites selected this location because the river curves at this point. The river is actually flowing North, so runaway slaves from the South would be traveling up the river. The FREEDOM sign on the river bank was to let runaway slaves know that they had reached freedom (and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania). If the runaway slaves were still in Illinois, Indiana, or Ohio, then slave hunters from Kentucky or Virginia could legally cross the river and capture them. Once in Pennsylvania, the slaves were free.

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Nihilism – Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Posted: March 20, 2016 at 12:47 pm

Nihilism comes from the Latin nihil, or nothing. It is the belief that values are falsely invented. The term 'nihilism' can also be used to describe the idea that life, or the world, has no distinct meaning or purpose. Nihilists believe that there are no true morals. Many people think of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche when they think about nihilism, because he said that morals were invented. But in his books, Nietzsche said that people needed to create their own morals to get over nihilism.

Mikhail Bakunins (18141876) Reaction in Germany (1842) included this passage: "Let us therefore trust the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternal source of all life. The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too!"[1] The term was made popular by Ivan Turgenev's novel Fathers and Sons (1862). Bazarov, the hero in it, was a nihilist.

Nihilism was the basis of much revolutionary terrorism. It was taken up by Sergei Nechaev, a Russian who wrote a pamphlet that influenced Lenin. Dostoyevsky was a member of a nihilist group in his 20s. He served ten years in exile as a consequence. His novel Devils (or The Possessed) deals with Nechaev. His famous novel Crime and Punishment is also on that theme.

The assassination of the Tsar Alexander II (13 March 1881) by a series of bombs, had long been planned by nihilists. It resulted in the crushing of the nihilist movement.[2]

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Hedonism | Define Hedonism at Dictionary.com

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Contemporary Examples

But not everyone enjoyed a post-traumatic moment of hedonism.

His life of hedonism suddenly seems empty when he begins to fall in love with Grace.

Women who have struggled with their own hedonism, not to mention ambition and vanity, will appreciate the distinction.

Those avatars of hedonism, The Europeans, are aghast at discovering that the average American vacation lasts for just 4.1 days.

After a night of hedonism, head out into Louisiana'sCajun Country.

Historical Examples

This being so, Egoistic hedonism becomes a possible ethical ideal to which psychological hedonism seems to point.

His own view is that the Austrians are not essentially bound up with hedonism.

Veblen has made it perfectly clear that particular matters of theory are affected by the presupposition of hedonism.

The sonnets on the Days breathe the same quaint medieval hedonism.

This seems to be in itself a sufficient objection to founding a deductive method of hedonism on Mr. Spencers general conclusion.

British Dictionary definitions for hedonism Expand

/hidnzm; hd-/

the pursuit of pleasure as a matter of principle

indulgence in sensual pleasures

Derived Forms

hedonic, hedonistic, adjectivehedonist, noun

Word Origin

C19: from Greek hdon pleasure

Word Origin and History for hedonism Expand

hedonism in Culture Expand

In ethics, the doctrine that pleasure or happiness is the highest good in life. Some hedonists, such as the Epicureans, have insisted that pleasure of the entire mind, not just pleasure of the senses, is this highest good.

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Hillary Clinton Has an NSA Problem | Observer

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Democratic presidential candidate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks during her primary night gathering on March 15, 2016 in West Palm Beach, Florida. Hillary Clinton defeated rival U.S. Sen Bernie Sanders in the Florida, Ohio and North Carolina primaries.

For a year now, Hillary Clintons misuse of email during her tenure as secretary of state has hung like a dark cloud over her presidential campaign. As I told you months ago, email-gate isnt going away, despite the best efforts of Team Clinton to make it disappear. Instead, the scandal has gotten worse, with never-ending revelations of apparent misconduct by Ms. Clinton and her staff. At this point, email-gate may be the only thing standing between Ms. Clintonand the White House this November.

Specifically, the Federal Bureau of Investigation examination of email-gate, pursuant to provisions of the Espionage Act, poses a major threat to Ms. Clintons presidential aspirations. However, even if the FBI recommends prosecution of her or members of her inner circle for mishandling of classified informationwhich is something the politically unconnected routinely do face prosecution forits by no means certain that the Department of Justice will follow the FBIs lead.

What the DoJ decides to do with email-gateis ultimately a question of politics as much as justice. Ms. Clintons recent statement on her potential prosecution, its not going to happen, then refusing to address the question at all in a recent debate, led to speculation about a backroom deal with the White House to shield Ms. Clintonfrom prosecution as long as Mr. Obama is in the Oval Office. After mid-January, however, all bets would be off. In that case, winning the White House herself could be an urgent matter of avoiding prosecution for Ms. Clinton.

That said, if the DoJ declines to prosecute after the Bureau recommends doing so, a leak-fest of a kind not seen in Washington, D.C., since Watergate should be anticipated. The FBI would be angry that its exhaustive investigation was thwarted by dirty deals between Democrats. In that case, a great deal of Clintonian dirty laundry could wind up in the hands of the press, habitual mainstream media covering for the Clintons notwithstanding, perhaps having a major impact on the presidential race this year.

TheFBI isnt the only powerful federal agency that Hillary Clinton needs to worry about as she plots her path to the White House between scandals and leaks. For years, she has been on the bad side of the National Security Agency, Americas most important intelligence agency, as revealed by just-released State Department documents obtained by Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act.

What did she not want put on a government system, where security people might see it? I sure wish Id asked about it back in 2009.

The documents, though redacted, detail a bureaucratic showdown between Ms. Clinton and NSA at the outset of her tenure at Foggy Bottom. The new secretary of state, who had gotten hooked on her Blackberry during her failed 2008 presidential bid, according to a top State Department security official, wanted to use that Blackberry anywhere she went.

That, however, was impossible, since Secretary Clintons main office space at Foggy Bottom was actually a Secure Compartment Information Facility, called a SCIF (pronounced skiff) by insiders. A SCIF is required for handling any Top Secret-plus information. In most Washington, D.C., offices with a SCIF, which has to be certified as fully secure from human or technical penetration, thats where you check Top-Secret email, read intelligence reports and conduct classified meetings that must be held inside such protected spaces.

But personal electronic devicesyour cellphone, your Blackberrycan never be brought into a SCIF. They represent a serious technical threat that is actually employed by many intelligence agencies worldwide. Though few Americans realize it, taking remote control over a handheld device, then using it to record conversations, is surprisingly easy for any competent spy service. Your smartphone is a sophisticated surveillance deviceon you, the userthat also happens to provide phone service and Internet access.

As a result, your phone and your Blackberry always need to be locked up before you enter any SCIF. Taking such items into one represents a serious security violation. And Ms. Clintonand her staff really hated that. Not even one month into the new administration in early 2009, Ms. Clinton and her inner circle were chafing under these rules. They were accustomed to having their personal Blackberrys with them at all times, checking and sending emails nonstop, and that was simply impossible in a SCIF like their new office.

This resulted in a February 2009 request by Secretary Clinton to the NSA, whose Information Assurance Directorate (IAD for short: see here for an explanation of Agency organization) secures the sensitive communications of many U.S. government entities, from Top-Secret computer networks, to White House communications, to the classified codes that control our nuclear weapons.

The contents of Sid Blumenthals June 8, 2011, email to Hillary Clintonto her personal, unclassified accountwere based on highly sensitive NSA information.

IAD had recently created a special, custom-made secure Blackberry for Barack Obama, another technology addict. Now Ms. Clinton wanted one for herself. However, making the new presidents personal Blackberry had been a time-consuming and expensive exercise. The NSA was not inclined to provide Secretary Clinton with one of her own simply for her convenience: there had to be clearly demonstrated need.

And that seemed dubious to IAD since there was no problem with Ms. Clinton checking her personal email inside her office SCIF. Hers, like most, had open (i.e. unclassified) computer terminals connected to the Internet, and the secretary of state could log into her own email anytime she wanted to right from her desk.

But she did not want to. Ms. Clinton only checked her personal email on her Blackberry: she did not want to sit down at a computer terminal. As a result, the NSA informed Secretary Clinton in early 2009 that they could not help her. When Team Clinton kept pressing the point, We were politely told to shut up and color by IAD, explained the state security official.

The State Department has not released the full document trail here, so the complete story remains unknown to the public. However, one senior NSA official, now retired, recalled the kerfuffle with Team Clinton in early 2009 about Blackberrys. It was the usual Clinton prima donna stuff, he explained, the whole rules are for other people act that I remembered from the 90s. Why Ms. Clinton would not simply check her personal email on an office computer, like every other government employee less senior than the president, seems a germane question, given what a major scandal email-gateturned out to be. What did she not want put on a government system, where security people might see it? the former NSA official asked, adding, I wonder now, and I sure wish Id asked about it back in 2009.

Hes not the only NSA affiliate with pointed questions about what Hillary Clinton and her staff at Foggy Bottom were really up toand why they went to such trouble to circumvent federal laws about the use of IT systems and the handling of classified information. This has come to a head thanks to Team Clintons gross mishandling of highly classified NSA intelligence.

As I explained in this column in January, one of
the most controversial of Ms. Clintons emails released by the State Department under judicial order was one sent on June 8, 2011, to the Secretary of State by Sidney Blumenthal, Ms. Clintons unsavory friend and confidant who was running a private intelligence service for Ms. Clinton. This email contains an amazingly detailed assessment of events in Sudan, specifically a coup being plotted by top generals in that war-torn country. Mr. Blumenthals information came from a top-ranking source with direct access to Sudans top military and intelligence officials, and recounted a high-level meeting that had taken place only 24hours before.

To anybody familiar with intelligence reporting, this unmistakably signals intelligence, termed SIGINT in the trade. In other words, Mr. Blumenthal, a private citizen who had enjoyed no access to U.S. intelligence for over a decade when he sent that email, somehow got hold of SIGINT about the Sudanese leadership and managed to send it, via open, unclassified email, to his friend Ms. Clintononly one day later.

NSA officials were appalled by the State Departments release of this email, since it bore all the hallmarks of Agency reporting. Back in early Januarywhen I reported this, I was confident that Mr. Blumenthals information came from highly classified NSA sources, based on my years of reading and writing such reports myself, and one veteran agency official told me it was NSA information with at least 90 percent confidence.

Now, over two months later, I can confirm that the contents of Sid Blumenthals June 8, 2011, email to Hillary Clinton, sent to her personal, unclassified account, were indeed based on highly sensitive NSA information. The agency investigated this compromise and determined that Mr. Blumenthals highly detailed account of Sudanese goings-on, including the retelling of high-level conversations in that country, was indeed derived from NSA intelligence.

Specifically, this information was illegally lifted from four different NSA reports, all of them classified Top Secret / Special Intelligence. Worse, at least one of those reports was issued under the GAMMA compartment, which is an NSA handling caveat that is applied to extraordinarily sensitive information (for instance, decrypted conversations between top foreign leadership, as this was). GAMMA is properly viewed as a SIGINT Special Access Program, or SAP, several of which from the CIA Ms. Clinton compromised in another series of her unclassified emails.

Currently serving NSA officials have told me they have no doubt that Mr. Blumenthals information came from their reports. Its word-for-word, verbatim copying, one of them explained. In one case, an entire paragraph was lifted from an NSA report that was classified Top Secret / Special Intelligence.

How Mr.Blumenthal got his hands on this information is the key question, and theres no firm answer yet. The fact that he was able to take four separate highly classified NSA reportsnone of which he was supposed to have any access toand pass the details of them to Hillary Clinton via email only hours after NSA released them in Top Secret / Special Intelligence channels indicates something highly unusual, as well as illegal,was going on.

Suspicion naturally falls on Tyler Drumheller, the former CIA senior official who was Mr. Blumenthals intelligence fixer, his supplier of juicy spy gossip, who conveniently died last August before email-gatebecame front-page news. However, he, too, had left federal service years before and should not have had any access to current NSA reports.

There are many questions here about what Hillary Clinton and her staff at Foggy Bottom were up to, including Sidney Blumenthal, an integral member of the Clinton organization, despite his lack of any government position. How Mr. Blumenthal got hold of this Top Secret-plus reporting is only the first question. Why he chose to email it to Ms. Clinton in open channels is another question. So is: How did nobody on Secretary Clintons staff notice that this highly detailed reporting looked exactly like SIGINT from the NSA? Last, why did the State Department see fit to release this email, unredacted, to the public?

These are the questions being asked by officials at the NSA and the FBI right now. All of them merit serious examination. Their answers may determine the political fate of Hillary Clintonand who gets elected our next president in November.

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Badbitcoin.org – Helping you stay Safe in the World of …

Posted: at 12:45 pm

Bitpyramid.ml "Don't trust us?" Er, no we don't actually. All ponzi's are scams. 3/19/16

Organica.fund They do like a different theme for these hyips, here's another one. 3/19/16

Bitcoinx10.yolasite.com Dirty deeds done cheap. Freehosted fraud. 3/19/16

Bitcloner.com A doubler fraud using this domain was inevitable. 3/19/16

Ultimabitcoin.com A very worn out style of hyip scam. 3/16/16

Instantgenuinepaying.com Instantgenuineloseyour.bitcoin 3/16/16

Double-btc.info What have we told you about btc multipliers? They are ALL scams and there are NO exceptions. 3/15/16

Envestrade.com Another hyip/fraud to add. 3/15/16

Bitmines.info Just another ponzi fraud. 3/15/16

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Topmine.io Yet another fake mining scheme. There are no special algorythms, just a ponzi. 3/15/16

Btcshares.org If you want btc shares, buy some btc, then you have a share. Simple. 3/15/16

Free-shares.com These may be the most expensive free shares you've ever (never) received. 3/15/16

Hyip.com But seriously, hyips are scams - pure and simple frauds, so this site takes the biscuit. 3/15/16

Mybtc.bid I'm starting to get double vision - probably the safest way to double my wealth. 3/12/16

Nelektronicy.pl Yet another attempt at a scam doubler. 3/12/16

Nexus-investments.com If these serial thieves had any sense, they'd stay away from bitcoin, then we wouldn't bother them. 3/10/16

Btcsinon.com Don't let this hyip/fraud fool you. Just lies and more lies. 3/10/16

Earntory.com What an odd site title, and that is the best part. 3/8/16

Investmega.com This scam looks like it was put together by an idiot, but we'd better list it in case a bigger idiot sees it. 3/7/16

X10multiplier.com Only in your dreams does bitcoin double. 3/7/16

Bitboom.info Boom, and your bits are gone. If Cillit did bitcoin scams.... 3/7/16

Btc-e.black The old worn out 'flaw in the blockchain' better known as the Bitatt scam. 3/7/16

Fxacc.com A hyip/scam from the usual offenders. 3/6/16

Rixosfinance.com Just another faker after your dosh. 3/6/16

Bitcoinside.com Don't risk it. You don't need to, there are plenty of legit exchanges 3/6/16

Bitcoin-ex.com Or Ex-bitcoin? 3/3/16

Mybitcoinmania.com Don't download that malware from these crooks. You will sorely regret it, Gen:Variant.Strictor.101663 3/3/16

Hourlytim.com He's a busy boy is young Tim, avoiding Jail. 3/3/16

Bitsdoubler.me.pn Seriously, does anybody still fall for these multiplier scams? 3/3/16

Fastcury.com If you want a fast curry, order one from your local takeaway. Dodgy doesn't even begin to describe this amateur fraudster. 3/3/16

Crypto-investment-experts.biz & Swiss-cryptocurrency-experts.com A free Cuckoo Clock for every sucker. 3/3/16 & 2/18/16

Slushcoin.com Your bitcoin may as well be slush if you send it to this faker. 3/1/16

Profitown.com Another hyip/fraud 3/1/16

These are just the most recent badsites. Click below for these and more Cryptocurrency badsites In alphabetical order.

** Important Announcement** The wife of our admin has just undergone a double organ transplant, and so updates and personal responses to emails will be a little erratic for a few weeks. Please bear with us during this unusual but amazing time. Thanks.

The Badbitcoin project was launched in Feb 2014. "The Badbitcoin Team" is made up of volunteers worldwide, and we welcome new contributors and sponsors.

You may read negative comments about this project, but this is the scammers only route to fight back, and a great many of these scammers are the same people who are Senior, and Gold members of forums. Forums relating to bitcoin are the best source of conflicting information ever invented, which is why we keep it plain and simple, we tell you it's a badsite, and thats all you need to know.

It's really easy to misunderstand the bitcoin environment when it's all new to you, and it will take you some time to grasp some of the rules and concepts. This leaves you vulnerable to the swathes of scams and ponzis that try to lure you into their promises of easy money, and doubling or even 100 times multiplying your new 'Magic Internet Money' It doesn't work like that. It isn't magic, it's just very efficient, very secure, and much sought after by thieves the world over. If you have bitcoin, you need to learn to look after it, or these crooks will soon take it from you.

Don't make it easy for them. Contribute by reporting suspect sites when you find them, and we'll do the rest. You can also help by donating bitcoin or litecoin to the project, and If you run a website or blog, you could add a link to this project and help spread the message. We have banners and logos to suit.

That's it - nothing to add, nada.

To report Internet Fraud to IC3 - Click Here To report Internet Fraud to the FBI anonymously - Click Here To report Internet Fraud to the UK Police - Click Here

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You can help us to help others by making a donation to this project. However modest, it will help us to continue. We spend nearly all of the donations on advertising in the same space as the scamsites, so we can reach and warn the most users. We also use some expensive investigation tools, but we all give our time for free.

A Ponzi is any scheme which pays interest to "Investors" from Bitcoin coming in from new Investors. A HYIP (high yield investment program) is just a Ponzi. All Ponzi/Hyips will fail The later Investors will lose everything when the scheme folds and leaves with the Bitcoin. Most HYIPS just steal it immediately - Due diligence is your own responsibility. There are plenty of good sites out there where your Bitcoin and your work are safe. You just need to do your homework, including checking here. If it isn't in our Badlist, email us, and we'll check it and get back to you.

Heres the psychology behind the typical ponzis & HYIP's run by the professional scammers. They know most people will do this.

You deposit a small amount, you want to be cautious, you cant quite figure out how they do this but they double it (or pay promised interest) and pay you. You think Ah thats great, so you either redeposit the entire amount, or just your profit. You get that back and think wow, it works, so you deposit a much larger amount and in the worst case, even get your friends involved in this wonderful money making scheme.

Then one day it doesnt get returned there is some issue with your account, or your withdrawal is stuck or something similar, so you keep emailing the site and gradually it dawns on you that youve been scammed.

Even if you just put your initial profit back in, the conman hasnt lost anything and the depositors who think they are playing the ponzi do try that, and most of them dont get it back either.

Some people empty their savings into these scams, and they are the ones the scammers are really after. Once they get that big depositor, they move on and create a new ponzi, just leaving the old one alive for a while to mop up any new mugs Some even return after a 3 or 6 month absence to catch a fresh load of hits, they will never run out of victims. Its what they do, and they are expert at it.

Declaration of Interests. We c
urrently have personal and project investments in VIP and Mining shares at Miningsweden.se, and mining shares at Hashnest We would not invest in anything we considered to be a Ponzi or Scam. As a project, we are not directly funded by any organisation and depend on ad revenue, our own, and other donations, and our external investments. We also provide links including referral links to trusted 3rd party sites, not including advertisements beyond our control. Updated August 2015 PS - As a friendly tip, we probably aren't the people to generally ask about good bitcoin investments. We are pretty good at what we do, but so far, like yourselves no doubt, we aren't really that succesful when it comes to our own investments. Mintsy being our latest fail.

The high costs of running this site are helped by adverts. We also have to advertise in the same places as the scamsites. We have little control over the content, and consequently we do not directly endorse any advert. Some adverts will even appear in our Badlist. But at least the Bitcoin they spend on ads is coming back into the Bitcoin Industry.

Footnote. The evolution of society beyond the demise of the failed capitalist neo-liberal experiment, first needs the evolution of it's means of trade and exchange. The current financial system, and system of fiat currency, is not fit for present or future purpose, and for all intents and purposes is already obsolete. Bitcoin is our first financial step towards a fairer, more benefecial society for all. Bitcoin is incorruptible, decentralised, concensus led, and above the influence of conventional politics and economics. A parallel currency with which you can begin to trade, and no middleman to take their slice or to gamble with your asset. When you deposit money to a Bank, it becomes the Banks property to do with what they choose, bitcoin is different, and you are your own Bank. It is up to you to take care of your bitcoin, and also to use it, not hoard it, and to be an important part of helping to build this fair and open global society. Bitcoin is worth what somebody is prepared to exchange it for, be that USD, Yuan, PC-hardware, Webhosting or anything that 'money' might buy. You can even get a bitcoin Debit Card. However, the bitcoin Blockchain, and it's potential is a much much bigger subject.

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Atheism | Define Atheism at Dictionary.com

Posted: at 7:44 am

Contemporary Examples

In 2009 he published a book defaming Hitchens and Richard Dawkins because he was irked by their bellicose brand of atheism.

atheism is highest in Europe, where there are established churches involved in the political process.

Maybe we need a new category other than theism, atheism or agnosticism that takes paradox and unknowing into account, he writes.

Another time, before he wrote his treatise on atheism, he scolded me for believing in God.

They all encourage her to spin her atheism into some form of belief.

Historical Examples

An attempt to exclude him on charges of atheism and blasphemy failed.

It is a shade better than the atheism of despair; yet only a shade better.

Mr. Saunders, so far as his atheism was concerned, was suggested by Professor Clifford.

Mallare closed his eyes, a God shuddering before His own atheism.

atheism and downright infidelity, as a general rule, are never very popular.

British Dictionary definitions for atheism Expand

rejection of belief in God or gods

Word Origin

C16: from French athisme, from Greek atheos godless, from a-1 + theos god

Word Origin and History for atheism Expand

1580s, from French athisme (16c.), from Greek atheos "without god" (see atheist). A slightly earlier form is represented by atheonism (1530s) which is perhaps from Italian atheo "atheist." Ancient Greek atheotes meant "ungodliness."

atheism in Culture Expand

Denial that there is a God. (Compare agnosticism.)

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About NSA – NSA/CSS

Posted: at 7:44 am

The National Security Agency/Central Security Service (NSA/CSS) is home to America's codemakers and codebreakers. The National Security Agency has provided timely information to U.S. decision makers and military leaders for more than half a century. The Central Security Service was established in 1972 to promote a full partnership between NSA and the cryptologic elements of the armed forces.

NSA/CSS is unique among the U.S. defense agencies because of our government-wide responsibilities. NSA/CSS provides products and services to the Department of Defense, the Intelligence Community, government agencies, industry partners, and select allies and coalition partners. In addition, we deliver critical strategic and tactical information to war planners and war fighters.

By its very nature, what NSA/CSS does as a key member of the Intelligence Community requires a high degree of confidentiality. Our Information Assurance mission confronts the formidable challenge of preventing foreign adversaries from gaining access to sensitive or classified national security information. Our Signals Intelligence mission collects, processes, and disseminates intelligence information from foreign signals for intelligence and counterintelligence purposes and to support military operations. This Agency also enables Network Warfare operations to defeat terrorists and their organizations at home and abroad, consistent with U.S. laws and the protection of privacy and civil liberties.

NSA/CSS exists to protect the Nation. Our customers know they can count on us to provide what they need, when they need it, wherever they need it.

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About NSA - NSA/CSS

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