Alternative Knowledge

[Jack]

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is an upcoming trade deal among 12 countries, and a corporate power grab on an unprecedented scale. It's notable mostly for its exploitable broad language, the extension of copyright, establishment of criminal enforcement of copyright violation, and the establishment of a international corporate tribunal which all signatories will be subjected to. The latter completely nullifies the signatories' sovereignty, making local laws and rights meaningless. Despite the far-reaching implications of the deal, the negotiations and details of the text have been kept totally secret, and only became available to the public when leaked via wikileaks. TTIP is another very similar trade deal between the US and EU.

The TTIP and TPP trade deals: enough of the secrecy

While there were many civil society groups protesting the deals from the start, it wasn't until WikiLeaks published draft versions of TPP that public sentiment turned against it. The US trade representative even admitted at the time that the administration knew if the public found out what is in these trade deals, public opposition would be significant.

While lobbyists are given a free hand to help write the deals, even members of legislative bodies have to jump through absurd hoops just to lay eyes on the document. Draconian restrictions were put on US members of Congress if they wanted to view TPP while it was in negotiation, so much so that they were even threatened with prosecution if they talked about it.

Free trade on steroids: The threat of the Trans-Pacific Partnership

But this agreement would force Americans to compete against workers from nations such as Vietnam, where the minimum wage is $2.75 a day. It threatens to roll back financial regulation, environmental standards and U.S. laws that protect the safety of drugs we take, food we eat and toys we give our children. It would create binding policies on countless subjects, so that Congress and state legislatures would be thwarted from mitigating the pact's damage.

The EFF paints the IP enforcement aspect of it in broad strokes:

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a secretive, multinational trade agreement that threatens to extend restrictive intellectual property (IP) laws across the globe and rewrite international rules on its enforcement.

All signatory countries will be required to conform their domestic laws and policies to the provisions of the Agreement.

[It will] Create copyright terms well beyond the internationally agreed period in the 1994 Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The TPP could extend copyright term protections from life of the author + 50 years, to Life + 70 years for works created by individuals, and 70 years after publication or after creation for corporate owned works (such as Mickey Mouse).

It will compel signatory nations to enact laws banning circumvention of digital locks (technological protection measures or TPMs) that mirror the DMCA and treat violation of the TPM provisions as a separate offense even when no copyright infringement is involved.

With no good rationale, the agreement would outlaw a country from adopting rules for the sale of software that include mandatory code review or the release of source code. This could inhibit countries from addressing pressing information security problems, such as widespread and massive vulnerability in closed-source home routers.

[It will] Adopt criminal sanctions for copyright infringement that is done without commercial motivation. Users could be jailed or hit with debilitating fines over file sharing, and may have their property or domains seized or destroyed even without a formal complaint from the copyright holder.

The Final Leaked TPP Text Is All That We Feared

Help us fix the TPP

Damaging intellectual property rules in the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) would give pharmaceutical companies longer monopolies over brand name drugs. Companies would be able to charge high prices for longer periods of time. And it would be much harder for generic companies to produce cheaper drugs that are vital to people's health.

Patently perturbed: Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal raises fears about drug patent periods, higher costs

Top 5 Reasons Eaters should be Worried about Obama's New Trade Deal

TPP countries growing genetically engineered crops could challenge U.S. state regulations, like Vermont's, that require labels on GE foods. More broadly, any U.S. food safety rules on labeling, pesticides, or additives that is higher than international standards could be subject to challenge as "illegal trade barriers."

TPP's inclusion of an Investor-State Dispute Settlement, or ISDS, is very troubling. Under ISDS, multinational corporations can sue a country in a closed-door international court over a domestic environmental, public health or other regulation that it believes inhibits its potential profits.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership clause everyone should oppose

ISDS would allow foreign companies to challenge U.S. laws â€" and potentially to pick up huge payouts from taxpayers â€" without ever stepping foot in a U.S. court. Here's how it would work. Imagine that the United States bans a toxic chemical that is often added to gasoline because of its health and environmental consequences. If a foreign company that makes the toxic chemical opposes the law, it would normally have to challenge it in a U.S. court. But with ISDS, the company could skip the U.S. courts and go before an international panel of arbitrators. If the company won, the ruling couldn't be challenged in U.S. courts, and the arbitration panel could require American taxpayers to cough up millions â€" and even billions â€" of dollars in damages.

Bonus flavour: Recent examples of how competently corporations use the current level of copyright enforcement afforded to them:

Warner Bros. Flags Its Own Website as a Piracy Portal

Photographer Files $1bn Copyright Claim Against Getty Images

EDIT: Another article: Paramount Wipes "Infringing" Ubuntu Torrent From Google

[Jack]

This article appears in the new issue of EuroPhysicsNews, a publication by the European Physical Society.

15 Years Later: On The Physics of High-Rise Building Collapses [full issue]

Not only do they address the basics of structural physics and controlled demolition, but also NIST's utterly lacking and otherworldly scientific rigor in the investigations. They look at WTC7, and do something I never felt comfortable doing myself: Going into the physics behind towers 1 & 2.

Excerpts: 

Steel-framed high-rises are designed to be highly redundant structural systems. Thus, if a localized failure occurs, it does not result in a disproportionate collapse of the entire structure.
[...]
The above graph [10] compares David Chandler's measurement [9] of the velocity of the roofline of WTC 1 with Bažant's erroneous calculation [11] and with Szamboti and Johns' calculation using corrected input values for mass, acceleration through the first story, conservation of momentum, and plastic moment (the maximum bending moment a structural section can withstand). The calculations show thatâ€"in the absence of explosivesâ€"the upper section of WTC 1 would have arrested after falling for two stories (Source: Ref. [10]).
[...]
The total collapse of WTC 7 at 5:20 PM on 9/11, shown in Fig. 2, is remarkable because it exemplified all the signature features of an implosion: The building dropped in absolute free fall for the first 2.25 seconds of its descent over a distance of 32 meters or eight stories [3]. Its transition from stasis to free fall was sudden, occurring in approximately one-half second. It fell symmetrically straight down. Its steel frame was almost entirely dismembered and deposited mostly inside the building's footprint, while most of its concrete was pulverized into tiny particles. Finally, the collapse was rapid, occurring in less than seven seconds.Given the nature of the collapse, any investigation adhering to the scientific method should have seriously considered the controlled demolition hypothesis, if not started with it. Instead, NIST (as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which conducted a preliminary study prior to the NIST investigation) began with the predetermined conclusion that the collapse was caused by fires.
[...]
NIST was able to arrive at this scenario only by omitting or misrepresenting critical structural features in its computer modelling.[4] Correcting just one of these errors renders NIST's collapse initiation indisputably impossible. Yet even with errors that were favorable to its predetermined conclusion, NIST's computer model (see Fig. 3) fails to replicate the observed collapse, instead showing large deformations to the exterior that are not observed in the videos and showing no period of free fall. Also, the model terminates, without explanation, less than two seconds into the seven-second collapse. Unfortunately, NIST's computer modelling cannot be independently verified because NIST has refused to release a large portion of its modelling data on the basis that doing so “might jeopardize public safety.”
[...]
As for eyewitness accounts, some 156 witnesses, including 135 first responders, have been documented as saying that they saw, heard, and/or felt explosions prior to and/or during the collapses [14]. That the Twin Towers were brought down with explosives appears to have been the initial prevailing view among most first responders. “I thought it was exploding, actually,” said John Coyle, a fire marshal. “Everyone I think at that point still thought these things were blown up” [15].

Sticking to the physics of the collapses, they do not go into the numerous amounts of critical evidence known to be destroyed by the US government, the stand-down of norad, or the list of unanswered questions and highly suggestive related events. Indirectly it once again paints the picture of a laughable investigation held up by the dismissive guffaws from the USG on this verboten subject.

The self-deception required to look at something like this and dismiss it out of hand must be out of this world. While it continues to amaze me, I'm not going to argue these points. Just know that my mouth hangs opens for you, and real resources are being employed toward finding out what went wrong.

[Danvzare]

I was wondering when you were going to cite that article.
I heard about it a few days ago.

Ah, it's good to be back in the conspiracy theory stuff, and away from that scary realistic internet censorship stuff.

[Stupot]

How about not, just for today.

[Jack]

I was wondering when you were going to cite that article.
I heard about it a few days ago.

Yeah, thought I'd save it for the day. Where did you hear about it, BTW? Don't tell me you've started reading washington's blog.

[Danvzare]

Yeah, thought I'd save it for the day. Where did you hear about it, BTW? Don't tell me you've started reading washington's blog.

I heard on 9gag (don't judge). People were making memes about it.

[Jack]

Creepy Clowns Are Terrorizing Children, Parents And Schools All Over America

Obviously a satirical take on the run-up to the US election, right? Wrong. This goes in the WTF section.

An epidemic of creepy clown sightings is sweeping America, and authorities don't know who or what is behind it.  In some instances, clowns with horrific expressions painted on their faces have been spotted standing on the side of the road, lurking near the edge of the woods or just roaming about town staring at random people.  But in other instances there have been reports of clowns actually attempting to lure children with gifts, and there have even been some reports of children running away from creepy clowns that were chasing after them.  While doing research for this article, I came across recent creepy clown sightings from South Carolina, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, California, Alabama, Georgia and West Virginia.  This is truly a nationwide phenomenon, and many believe that it will get even worse as Halloween approaches.

[Danvzare]

Weird, I've heard about something like that before, but I thought someone was just making a joke about the film IT or something. I can't believe it's actually true!

Maybe there's a group of people called Creepy Clowns Anonymous, where the members promote a fear of clowns, because they really REALLY hate clowns.

[Mandle]

I'm not surprised to see West Virginia on the list...

It's just John Keel's "parade of the damned" putting on new masks and coming out to play as they do every few decades...

[Stupot]

Well there is a new IT remake coming soon. Probably a twisted publicity campaign to get people talking about scary clowns.

[Mandle]

Naw... it's just more bigfoot sightings... except bigfoot is made-up...

[Mandle]

Really? ...nobody saw what I did there?

I was pretty proud of it... A few pity 's at least?

[Babar]

I learnt a new and horrifying thing today, something I feel all of the internet should know!
Check it out here

Spoiler

What did I learn? That the internet is absolutely insane. What is that article, even?

[close]

[Mandle]

I learnt a new and horrifying thing today, something I feel all of the internet should know!
Check it out here

Spoiler

What did I learn? That the internet is absolutely insane. What is that article, even?

[close]

Well...If Obama IS the Anti-Christ...He should probably make his move sometime soon...

It would be so awesome to see him grow horns on a live White House broadcast to the nation and just declare the November election invalid because both runners had already signed their souls over to him...

Can we live in that world for just a little bit?

[Jack]

I remember this from the time of his initial win. There was a snopes article to put everyone at ease.

I forgive the people in 2008 for assuming it is the end of times and that Oboner would be the last US president. It may not have been the end, but the illusion ended for many.

Looking back, those were white glove days. Now it's all green screen and manipulation by google.

[Scavenger]

I forgive the people in 2008 for assuming it is the end of times and that Oboner would be the last US president. It may not have been the end, but the illusion ended for many.

Let's be honest, they did it because he was black, I wouldn't forgive them one bit.

Also, even if these health rumours meant anything (we've had plenty of very sick presidents before, some of them beloved), I would totally vote for a corpse over Trump.

[Mandle]

Let's be honest, they did it because he was black, I wouldn't forgive them one bit.

It probably wasn't even mostly a racial issue.

Somebody always tries to float an antichrist theory like that about pretty much every major world leader:

I remember when Reagan was elected: Ronald Wilson Reagan... See anything interesting about the letter counts?

And I heard about that as a child, living in Australia, and before the internet. It wasn't on TV or anything: It just was going around the world-wide-word-of-mouth rumour-mill, which just goes to show how popular antichrist theories are:

They are the religious adult's version of campfire ghost stories: Scary, but secretly thrilling, and they just can't wait to pass the story on...

The same thing's been going on forever, it's just hugely accelerated and amplified now because of the internet...

Heck, even the number 666 was a numeric code fingering Emperor Nero as the antichrist so, hilariously, all this time people have actually been trying to prove that Hitler, Saddam, or Putin are actually...GASP!....NERO!!!

Finding Nero...

[Jack]

Creepy Clown Sightings Sweep The Nation As The Threats Of Violence Become Even More Chilling

Individuals posing as “creepy clowns” on social media are openly naming specific schools that they plan to target and are threatening to commit horrific acts of violence.  That may sound like an interesting plot for a Hollywood horror movie, but in real life these kinds of threats have very serious consequences.

Imagine the pressure a nation must be under to mutate in this way.

"We a bunch of doomed bastards. Dayum!"

[Jack]

Sorry for the double post, but:

[Danvzare]

Oh no, Ubisoft is funding Hillary!
America is doomed!
Although at least is isn't EA.