This and That...

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LGBT Jobs Fair Tries To Prevent Straight Students From
Attending Over Fears They Will Offend Gays

(It's OK to discriminate against the non-fabulous...
so sez the head fairy)

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Via Campus Reform:
When it comes to finding a job after graduation, business students are throwing their sexual orientation into the mix as well.

Reaching Out MBA, an annual conference of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender graduate business students, completes its three-day lineup of speakers and workshops with a job fair—a job fair that is becoming increasingly exclusive.

According to Matt Kidd, executive director of Reaching Out MBA, 10 percent of the 1,100 attendees at last year's conference identified as straight. Because of that, this year attendees are now required to submit an essay on why they wish to attend the conference or be recommended through campus LGBT organizations so that the conference can vet potential attendees.

Kidd told Bloomberg Businessweek that the conference wasn't trying to exclude LGBT-allies and also recognized that several conference attendees come from large, southern MBA programs where the LGBT students may not feel as readily accepted and may not be as readily apt to divulge their sexual preference.

But Kidd said that the straight students attending the job fair were "offensive" as LGBT-identifying students overheard things such as "Dude, I'm not gay" or "There needs to be less focus on gay stuff at this event."

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POS Obuma Abandons Israel At U.N. Security Council

(Surprised it took this long)

Via Foreign Policy:
Despite a history of rocky relations between U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Obama administration could largely be counted on to watch Israel's back in the U.N. Security Council, where it succeeded for more than five years in blocking successive efforts by the Palestinians to gain more of the trappings of an independent state and to get the world body to formally censure Israeli settlement policies.

That changed after the stroke of midnight Sunday when, in the early minutes of Monday, July 28, the U.N. Security Council, with the backing of the United States, issued a formal "presidential statement" demanding that Israel and Hamas implement an "immediate and unconditional" cease-fire to end fighting that has left more than 1,000 Palestinians and 43 Israelis dead. The Palestinians say they will continue to seek Security Council support for a legally enforceable resolution demanding that Israel halt its military offensive in Gaza.

The latest U.N. diplomacy comes during a period of deepening tensions between the United States and Israel over the course of Israel's military operation in Gaza, which Obama maintains needs to stop now, but which Netanyahu insists must be allowed to continue in order to destroy Hamas's network of subterranean tunnels used for raids on Israel. "I understand that Israel can't have a cease-fire in which they are not able to — that somehow the tunnels are never going to be dealt with. The tunnels have to be dealt with. We understand that; we're working at that," Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters in Paris on Saturday in a press conference with the foreign ministers of Turkey and Qatar. "By the same token, the Palestinians can't have a cease-fire in which they think the status quo is going to stay and they're not going to have the ability to be able to begin to live and breathe more freely and move within the crossings and begin to have goods and services that come in from outside."

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Stingray, the fake cell phone tower cops and carriers use to track your every move

By Joel Hruska
http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/184597-stingray-the-fake-cell-phone-tower-cops-and-providers-use-to-track-your-every-move

(Thank you George Bush and your Patriot Act  )

Over the past 12-18 months, there's been an increased level of scrutiny applied to the various ways local, state, and federal law enforcement officials track and monitor the lives of ordinary citizens. One tool that's come under increasing fire is the so-called stingray — a fake cell phone tower that law enforcement officials deploy to track a suspect, often without a warrant or any other formal approval.

A stingray is a false cell phone tower that can force phones in a geographical area to connect
to it. Once these devices connect, the stingray can be used to either hone in on the target's location or, with some models, actually eavesdrop on conversations, text messages, and web browser activity. It's not clear how much the police cooperate with the cell phone carriers on this — in at least some cases, the police have gone to carriers with requests for information, while in others they seem to have taken a brute-force approach, dumping the data of every single user on a given tower and then sorting it to find the parties they're interested in tracking. Stingrays can be used to force the phone to give up its user details, making it fairly easy for the police to match devices and account holders.

The potential uses for the information are enormous. Say a murder occurs on a particular street with an estimated time of death between 2 and 4 AM. Local law enforcement would have an obvious interest in compelling cell phone companies to turn over the records of every cell phone that moved in and out of the area between those two time periods. At rush hour, this kind of information would be useless — but if the cell phone network data shows a device in the same approximate area as the murder suddenly leaving the area at a high rate of speed, that cell phone owner is a potential suspect.

Virtually all the stingray devices in use across the United States are manufactured by one company, the Harris Corporation, which makes a variety of other tracking devices. Its other products can be used to conduct denial-of-service attacks on cell phones, monitor voice traffic, amplify the range and power of stingray attacks, and more sophisticated monitoring tools for triangulating an individual's location.

A consistent disregard for constitutional safeguards

Used properly, stingrays could be an incredibly useful tool for law enforcement, but there are enormous problems with their current deployments. Police often fail to submit a warrant request — one police department in Florida has admitted to using a stingray more than 200 times since 2010 without ever getting a warrant for its use. These devices are indiscriminate — in rare cases, such as a stolen cell phone, police may know in advance precisely which device to target, but in the majority of scenarios they're fishing for bait to see what they can find. The only indication that a phone has been trapped into connecting to a stingray may be a sudden increase in power consumption (the stingray tells the phone to run its antenna at maximum power).

The problems only increase from here. The Harris Corporation has an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) in place with all its customers that explicitly forbids them from disclosing the fact that they use or own a stingray device. In the aforementioned Florida case, police have acknowledged that they avoided applying for a warrant specifically so they would not have to explain the use of the stingray to a judge.

https://www.aclu.org/maps/stingray-tracking-devices-whos-got-them

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration, having learned its lesson over repeatedly attempting to quash the Snowden disclosures, has welcomed discussion of how these devices are being used to spy on Americans by local officials without any regard for the rule of law.

Just kidding!

The Obama Administration is actually telling police agencies to refuse FOIA requests on security grounds or censoring such documents to the point of worthlessness. Last week, the US Marshals interfered in a case in Florida to prevent the ACLU from meeting with local police officials to discuss the use of stingray technology. According to the ACLU, the Marshal's deputized the local police force, declared all materials related to stingray use to be government property, and took the records off-site.

The problem here isn't necessarily the capability, but the ways in which that capability is being used. As with license plate detectors, the police have eagerly embraced the idea of tracking the movements of innocent people with no regard for how that data might be misinterpreted or abused. They've signed NDAs with a company that seeks to circumvent the Freedom of Information Act, and avoided disclosing the existence of programs in order to avoid the chance of possible censure.

New technology like DNA analysis and fingerprinting has often been controversial at the outset, but this widespread mobile tracking has no analog in history. There's an ongoing campaign to blanket the US in local Freedom of Information Act requests for data on stingray use across the country; if you're interested in contributing, details are here. The goal is to map individual departments and derive an understanding of how practices differ across the nation.

Checkout more INFO on Stingray: https://www.aclu.org/node/37337

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Pelosi To Dem Voters: Give Us Money Or Obama Will Be Impeached

(This is the third email today from the DCCC, all of them warn of Obuma being impeached  )

Subject: kiss all hope goodbye
From: Nancy Pelosi <dccc@dccc.org>
Date: July 28, 2014 8:24:46 PM EDT
To: Philip Warph

If Boehner has his way, we might as well kiss all hope goodbye for the remainder of President Obama's term.

Case in point: this week, Boehner is planning a vote to sue the President. The House of Representatives has never sued a sitting President in all of U.S. history. And if they do it, impeachment may very well be the next step.

Make no mistake: these Tea Party Republicans are obsessed with tearing down President Obama, not making progress for the middle class.

Philip, this is it. It's time to go all in defending President Obama.

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Denver Homeless Shelters Overflowing As City Deals With Surge Of Younger People Attracted To Legalized Marijuana

(Rocky mountain high)

Via Daily Mail
Officials at some Denver homeless shelters say the legalization of marijuana has contributed to an increase in the number of younger people living on the city's streets.

One organization dealing with the increase is Urban Peak, which provides food, shelter and other services to homeless people aged 15 to 24 in Denver and Colorado Springs.

'Of the new kids we're seeing, the majority are saying they're here because of the weed,' deputy director Kendall Rames told The Denver Post. 'They're traveling through. It is very unfortunate.'

The Salvation Army's single men's shelter in Denver has been serving more homeless this summer, and officials have noted an increase in the number of 18- to 25-year-olds there.

The shelter housed an average of 225 each night last summer, but this summer it's averaging 300 people per night.

No breakdown was available by age, but an informal survey found that about a quarter of the increase was related to marijuana, including people who moved hoping to find work in the marijuana industry, said Murray Flagg, divisional social services secretary for the Salvation Army's Intermountain Division.

Some of the homeless have felony backgrounds that prevent them from working in pot shops and grow houses, which are regulated by the state, Flagg said.

He also thinks others may find work but don't earn enough to pay rent in Denver's expensive housing market.

At the St. Francis Center, a daytime homeless shelter, pot is the second most frequently volunteered reason for being in Colorado, after looking for work.

St. Francis executive director Tom Leuhrs also sees an economic reason for the increase of the number of homeless young people. They're having difficulty moving from high school and college to the workforce, Leuhrs said.

'The economy is not supporting them. There are not enough jobs,' he said.

Edward Madewell said he was on his way back home to Missouri when he decided to head to Colorado so he could keep smoking the marijuana he uses to control seizures.

'I'm not going to stop using something organic. I don't like the pills,' he said.

Dusty Taylor, 20, said he moved back to Colorado, where he grew up, to avoid legal problems.

'I don't want to catch a felony for smoking,' he said.

[Ross]

Judge Jeanine:
'Time for Papacy to Get Out in Front
of Christian Massacre'

Judge Jeanine Pirro last night called on Pope Francis to take action as Christians in the Middle East are faced with the choice to either convert, leave or die.
Read the transcript below.

Tonight, Christians in the Middle East marked for death because of their faith, and no one is fighting for them.

As Christians are slaughtered, churches torched, and families forced from their homeland, the mass murder of Christians is underway. While Israeli Jews are under similar attack, at least they have Netanyahu, a leader who is willing to fight to the death.

So, who should be defending Christians? Who? The leader of the Catholic Church, the pope, the man who shepherds the faithful.

Now, it may seem to you that the destruction of biblical antiquities, the looting of churches, and the persecution of Christians are a half a globe away. It's someone else's problem. After all, you're safe. You live in the United States of America.

But you need to worry. A reverse crusade is already underway, and some of those extremists are already in the United States.

The radicalized Muslim group that has already created a caliphate in Syria, Iraq and the border of Jordan – a nation described not by nationality but by religion – issued an ultimatum to Christians to leave their homeland, convert to Islam, or die by the sword.

They spray paint the homes of Christians to identify those who must convert, leave, or die.

And as ISIS – no stranger to technology – posts pictures of Christians crucified, their intent to purge Christians from the Middle East is unquestioned.

And while I'm on the subject of who should be defending Christians, I might add that we are a nation founded on the Judeo-Christian ethic – as evidenced by our founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution – so we should be doing something.

Why has the Obama administration's foreign policy ignored the killing of Christians in the Middle East?  Why has he provided funding to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt when the Egyptians themselves wanted the Brotherhood out because of their intolerance of other religions?

And while Iran's supreme leader promises a world free of infidels and the flag of Islam in all four corners of the world, our president negotiates for Iran's nuclear enrichment.   

But now to the papacy: I am a Christian. I am a Catholic. I went to Catholic schools. My children are baptized. And I mean no disrespect, but it is time for the papacy and Pope Francis in particular to start protecting his Christian flock.

This month, Pope Francis preached that immigrant children in facilities around the United States should be "welcomed and protected." Your holiness, they're in the United States.  They are protected. They are being given food, and clothing and shelter. No children are being killed by the United States. Christian children are being killed in the Middle East!  And while we appreciate your prayer for those in the Middle East last week, it's just not enough!

Everything about who we are, evidence of from whence we came as Christians is being destroyed.  They are taking crosses off churches and turning them into mosques with loud speakers! Priceless relics are being destroyed or sold. And for the first time in 1,600 years, Mass will not be held in the ancient city of Mosul, Iraq. The language of Jesus, Aramaic, could be lost as well as Christians who speak it are murdered.

Your holiness, you are the leader of the flock. You control one of the wealthiest organizations in the world. And with wealth comes power.

Your recent trips and your planned trips do not reflect the urgent concern necessary for Christians in Iraq, and Syria and Egypt.

Your pronouncements span the globe. They're repeated in hundreds of thousands of churches throughout the world to millions of parishioners. Every church in the world should be repeating a strong urgent message from the papacy condemning this slaughter and calling for the world to stop the annihilation of the innocents instead of worrying about immigrant children already protected by America.

As a brutal band of jihadists attempt to remove all evidence of Christianity and destroy biblical tombs like that of Jonah, you must act.

Your holiness, the papacy was silent during World War II. You cannot afford to let history repeat itself.

And your holiness, the papacy also lagged behind the sex abuse scandal. I know – I drafted the first grand jury report detailing the movement of pedophile priests in the nation.

It is time for the papacy to get out in front of this Christian massacre. You have incredible power. The Vatican is a country with ambassadors and a Secret Service. You can put political pressure on nations. You can provide sanctuary. You have resources for humanitarian aid. But most of all, you have the power of the pulpit, the power to change the world.

'Turn the other cheek' does not mean that you cannot respond.  It does not mean that you cannot provide humanitarian aid. 'Turn the other cheek' does not mean that the most you can do is offer a prayer. It does not mean that you cannot go to Iraq and give those Christians who are marked for certain death – willing to die because of their belief in Jesus – some consolation before their inevitable end. 

http://foxnewsinsider.com/2014/07/27/judge-jeanine-%E2%80%98it-time-papacy-get-out-front-christian-massacre%E2%80%99

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