Prison Planet.com » U.S. Government Planned Indefinite Detention of Citizens, Suspension of Constitution, Spying on Americans and Other “Post-9/11 Realities” LONG BEFORE 9/11

 

The government’s claim that it can indefinitely detain Americancitizens living on American soil based upon a vague “suspicion” that they might be supporting or affiliated with bad guys is disturbing.

 

RPREVOLU (Photo credit: GunnyG1345)

 

But this is nothing new …

 

GyGRet (Photo credit: GunnyG1345)

 

Prison Planet.com » Curling Up In a Ball to Avoid Police Violence May Be Considered “Active Resistance”

In a Police State Like Modern America, Even Peaceful Resistance Is Considered Violence and Cause for Even More Brutality

As I’ve repeatedly documented, passive resistance is considered “violence” and aggression in today’s militarized police state.

Prison Planet.com » Police State Watch: Curling Up In a Ball to Avoid Police Violence May Be Considered “Active Resistance” … Justifying the Use of MORE FORCE, Including Baton Strikes

In a Police State Like Modern America, Even Peaceful Resistance Is Considered Violence and Cause for Even More Brutality

As I’ve repeatedly documented, passive resistance is considered “violence” and aggression in today’s militarized police state.

Police Bludgeon Peaceful Occupy UC Berkeley Protesters with Batons

Washington’s Blog
November 10, 2011

This is just the latest in a series of criminal acts of unprovoked police violence against peaceful Occupy protesters. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.

As I noted earlier today, the problem is the militarization of U.S. police forces:

Journalists from across the spectrum have documented the militarization of police forces in the United States, including CNN, Huffington Post, Forbes, Esquire, The Atlantic, Salon, and the Cato Institute.

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But the militarization of police started long before 9/11 … in the 1980s.

CLICK LINK ABOVE FOR VIDEO, Etc…

Brain Imaging Reveals Moving Images

Scientists are a step closer to constructing a digital version of the human visual system. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed an algorithm that can be applied to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) imagery to show a moving image a person is seeing.

Neuroscientists have been using fMRI to study the human visual system for years, which involves measuring changes in blood oxygen levels in the brain. This works fine for studying how we see static images, but it falls short when it comes to moving imagery. Individual neuronal activity occurs over a much faster time scale, so a few years ago the researchers behind the current study set out to devise a computer model to measure this instead. The study shows that this new approach is not only successful but remarkably accurate.

The study, which appears in Current Biology this week, marks the first time that anyone has used brain imaging to determine what moving images a person is seeing. It could help researchers model the human visual system on a computer, and it raises the tantalizing prospect of one day being able to use the model to reconstruct other types of dynamic imagery, such as dreams and memories.

The researchers involved in the study watched hours of movie previews while lying in an fMRI machine. Next they painstakingly deconstructed the data so that they had a specific activation pattern for each second of footage. They ran that data through several different filters to infer what was happening at the neuronal level. “Once you do this, you have a complete model that links the plumbing of the blood flow that you do see with fMRI to the neuronal activity that you don’t see,” says Jack Gallant, who coauthored the study with colleague Shinji Nishimoto.

Next, the researchers compiled a library of 18 million YouTube video clips, chosen at random, to test their model objectively. Previous studies have shown that fMRI can be used to determine static images a subject is looking at, but the new computer model offered the possibility of reconstructing images that had direction of movement as well as shape. “No one has tried to model dynamic vision with this level of detail before,” says Jim Haxby, a neuroimaging expert at Dartmouth College who was not involved in the study.

The researchers used the YouTube library to simulate what would happen on the fMRI images when they watched a new set of movie trailers. The results of the simulations and fMRI scans were close to identical. “Usually you only get that kind of accuracy in physics, not neuroscience,” says Benjamin Singer, an fMRI researcher at Princeton University who was not involved with the study. “It’s a tour de force that brings together decades of work.”

There are two main caveats to the study. The researchers used fMRI data from only one area of the visual system—the V1 area, also known as the primary visual cortex. And the models were customized to each subject. Trying to design a model that would work for everyone would have been too difficult, says Gallant, although he suspects a more generalized model could be developed in the future.

The ultimate goal of this research is to create a computational version of the human brain that “sees” the world as we do. The study also demonstrates an unexpected use for an existing technology. “Everyone always thought it was impossible to recover dynamic brain activity with fMRI,” says Gallant.

via Brain Imaging Reveals Moving Images.

Berkeley offers college credit to ‘fight the new Jim Crow’

Berkeley offers college credit to ‘fight the new Jim Crow’

Berkeley offers college credit to ‘fight the new Jim Crow’:

Back in the day, if students wanted easy credits, they signed up for underwater basket-weaving. Now they just need a political cause.

The University of California, Berkeley is offering students college credit to work for an expressly political organization fighting for affirmative action and immigrant rights…………….

via BLOGGER.GUNNY.G.1984(+): Berkeley offers college credit to ‘fight the new Jim Crow’.

The Reich Class: The USA’s Modern Bourbons by William L. Anderson

The Reich Class: The USA’s Modern Bourbons by William L. Anderson

The Reich Class: The USA’s Modern Bourbons by William L. Anderson: “A video by former Clinton administration Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has been making the rounds, as Reich (who now is teaching at the University of California-Berkeley) claims to have ‘solved’ our economic problems. What is the problem, according to Reich? Marginal taxes are not high enough.

Indeed, as we shall see, Reich represents a class of people who yearn for the 1950s, when a third of the workforce was unionized, people ‘believed in government,’ tax rates were high, industries such as banking, railroads, airlines, and trucking were tightly regulated, and Americans were fed the kind of news via Progressive newspapers and a regulated broadcast media that the ‘Reich Class’ believed they should have. If one can liken this group to any in history, it would be the Bourbon Dynasty, of which Tallyrand once said, ‘They learned nothing and they forgot nothing.’”

Posted by Gunny G at Tuesday, July 19, 2011

via BLOGGER.GUNNY.G.1984(+): The Reich Class: The USA’s Modern Bourbons by William L. Anderson.

US Air, Stop the Lies by Kathryn Muratore

In a letter dated Nov 3rd, Jan Fitz stated that there were no concessions that US Air was willing to make regarding my trip to California in December. I received the letter on Nov 8th, and received a call from a representative named Cheryl on the afternoon of Nov 9th.

Cheryl was very polite and stated that US Air would in fact waive the change ticket fee of $150. She also connected me to Reservations and I did change my ticket so that I will now be flying out of the nearest airport without a scanner.For the privilege of not having my natural human right to protection of my own body violated, I am being charged by your company an extra $90, paying to rent a car and child seat one-way, will be driving 4 hours, and will be flying an additional 3 hours including an additional layover. I hope you can see why I find Cheryl’s new offer unsatisfactory, and I told her that when I spoke with her.

The letter that Jan Fitz wrote to me says: “US Airways likes to ensure the safest trip possible for all of our passengers.” I don’t know whether Jan is lying or just very poorly informed, and it certainly does not seem like she read my initial letter. US Airways, and all of the other airlines, has ceded control of passenger safety slowly over the last 40 years, and at an accelerated pace in the last decade.

You have ceded control to a government bureaucracy, which, by its very nature is inclined to be wasteful, incompetent, and corrupt. How is this at all consistent with ensuring passenger safety?Cheryl started her conversation with me by saying that she understood my concern about the scanner. I would like to repeat here what I told her: I seriously doubt that she understands my concern. If she did, I would not be offered a mere pittance of a waiver of the penalty fee for changing my ticket.

In a letter dated Nov 6th, I shared how deep my concern is rooted: I was in tears last weekend as I contemplated the corner that the airline industry has backed me into. I must either become a victim of voyeurism or become a victim of sexual assault in order to take my daughter to see her grandparents, great aunt, great uncle, and great grandmother for Christmas. Not only that, but I have to make the same choice for my child.

I absolutely will not allow either of us to be victims of abuse.