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rptv-starwars · 3 years

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The Empire Strikes Out

Inside the Battle of Hoth

https://www.wired.com/2013/02/battle-of-hoth/

By Spencer Ackerman | Date of Publication: 02.12.2013

AT-ATs fire on the rebel base on HOTH.

How did the Galactic Empire ever cement its hold on the Star Wars Universe? The war machine built by Emperor Palpatine and run by Darth Vader is a spectacularly bad fighting force, as evidenced by all of the pieces of Death Star littering space. But of all the Empire’s failures, none is a more spectacular military fiasco than the Battle of Hoth at the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back.

From a military perspective, Hoth should have been a total debacle for the Rebel Alliance. Overconfident that they can evade Imperial surveillance, they hole up on unforgiving frigid terrain at the far end of the cosmos. Huddled into the lone Echo Base are all their major players: politically crucial Princess Leia; ace pilot Han Solo; and their game-changer, Luke Skywalker, who isn’t even a Jedi yet.

The defenses the Alliance constructed on Hoth could not be more favorable to Vader if the villain constructed them himself. The single Rebel base (!) is defended by a few artillery pieces on its north slope, protecting its main power generator. An ion cannon is its main anti-aircraft/spacecraft defense. Its outermost perimeter defense is an energy shield that can deflect Imperial laser bombardment. But the shield has two huge flaws: It can’t stop an Imperial landing force from entering the atmosphere, and it can only open in a discrete place for a limited time so the Rebels’ Ion Cannon can protect an evacuation. In essence, the Rebels built a shield that can’t keep an invader out and complicates their own escape.

When Vader enters the Hoth System with the Imperial Fleet, he’s holding a winning hand. What follows next is a reminder of two military truths that apply in our own time and in our own galaxy: Don’t place unaccountable religious fanatics in wartime command, and never underestimate a hegemonic power’s ability to miscalculate against an insurgency.

Vader’s Incoherent Strategy in Outer Space

Vader realizes the opportunity at hand for an end to the Rebellion. Yet his bumbling fleet admiral leaves hyperspace too close to Hoth, losing the element of surprise and allowing the Rebels to activate the shield. Vader rolls with it (after killing Admiral Ozzel): He orders a ground assault on the Rebel base with the sound objective of destroying the generator that powers the shield. Once the shield is down, the Star Destroyers that make up the majority of the Imperial Fleet can launch the bombardment the shields prevent. Vader further orders that no Rebel ship be allowed to leave Hoth alive.

Sounds simple, right? Alas, Vader’s plans are at odds with each other. Vader jumps into the Hoth system with a handful of Star Destroyers; only six are shown on screen. That’s got to enforce a blockade of an entire planet. His major ally is the Rebel energy shield itself, which bottles up a Rebel escape to the Ion Cannon’s line of sight. But Vader doesn’t seem to realize the shield’s ironic value. Once Vader orders the shields destroyed, he lacks the force to prevent a pell-mell Rebel retreat.

A smarter plan would have been to launch TIE fighters against Echo Base — since aircraft and spacecraft can get past that Rebel enemy shield — to lure the Rebels into an evacuation from Hoth through their shield’s chokepoint. Concentrating the Imperial Star Destroyers there would lead the Rebellion into a massacre. At the very least, Vader has to sacrifice the ground-assault team entrusted with bringing down the generator powering the Rebel shield for a laser bombardment from the Star Destroyers.

Vader does none of this.

The Ground Assault

The first phase of the battle is a ground assault launched against the generator. Vader devotes five (or maybe four, since Irvin Kershner’s directing isn’t consistent) Imperial AT-AT Walkers to the task. Vader sees no need to give them air cover, even though he’s tasted the quality of Rebel piloting during the destruction of the Death Star. Two of the Walkers are destroyed, one by Luke Skywalker’s Snowspeeder squadron, and another by Luke himself.

Yet the ground assault is pretty successful — by accident. The weaponry on the AT-AT Walkers doesn’t overwhelm or destroy the few laser-artillery pieces the Rebels have to protect the generator. Only when Rebel General Rieekan orders the full evacuation of Hoth do the Walkers destroy the generator. (That’s an unforced error: The Rebels need to protect that generator at the cost of their lives, lest their evacuation be totally exposed.)

Still, a win is a win. Vader is now clear to destroy the Rebel base, and the escaping Rebel ships, with a punishing Star Destroyer bombardment. Presumably, if the Rebels are abandoning their generator, they’re also abandoning the Ion Cannon that protects the evacuation.

(In)Vader

Only Vader can’t bombard the base: He’s in it. For reasons that never get explained — and can’t be justified militarily — Vader joins the Stormtrooper assault on the base. So much for his major weapon against the Rebels, and the primary reason for ordering the Walkers to invade and destroy the generator. Once Vader opts to bring down the shield and lead the invasion, he’s lost the battle.

Worse, Vader is late to the fight. If he wanted to kill some Rebel scum himself, the only ones remaining at the base when Vader arrives are Han, Leia, Chewbacca and C-3PO, who run to the wheezing Millennium Falcon for their own escape. “This bucket of bolts is never gonna get us past that blockade,” Leia frets.

What Blockade?

She shouldn’t have worried. Not only is there no laser bombardment from space once the shield is down, there’s no Imperial blockade worth speaking of. By sheer bad luck, Han flies into three of the Star Destroyers, which threaten to overwhelm the Falcon. But he’s just too good of a pilot, evading their pincer movement by taking advantage of the Falcon’s superior maneuverability. He flies into an asteroid belt — which somehow the Imperial Fleet had failed to account for when planning its hasty “blockade” — and the Falcon has defied the odds.

Nor does that “blockade” trap Luke, who flies to Dagobah without a single Imperial ship harassing him. That’s the worst possible news for the Empire: Luke is about to rekindle the Jedi order that poses the biggest danger to the preservation of everything Vader and Emperor Palpatine have built. While I’m not comparing the Rebel Alliance to al-Qaida or the Galactic Empire to the United States, in strategic terms, this is like Osama bin Laden’s escape from the December 2001 battle at Tora Bora, Afghanistan — a disaster masquerading as a tactical success. Indeed, once Vader returns to his Star Destroyer, he gets a message from Palpatine explicitly instructing him to prevent Luke from training as a Jedi. Oops.

So Much for Striking Back

What did the Empire gain at Hoth? It had the opportunity to deal the Rebel Alliance a defeat from which the Rebels might not have recovered: the loss of its secret base; the loss of its politically potent symbol in Leia; and most of all the loss of its promising proto-Jedi in Luke. Instead, Luke escapes to join Yoda; Leia escapes with Han to Cloud City (where Vader has to resort to Plan B); and the Rebel Alliance’s transport ships largely escape to join up at a pre-established rendezvous point, as we see at the end of the film.

At the very most, the Empire’s assault on Hoth killed a couple of low-ranking Rebels and destroyed a few transit ships — which we don’t even see on screen. Instead of crushing the Rebels, it scattered them, leaving them to survive for the additional successes they’ll achieve in Return of the Jedi. It’s a classic fiasco of overconfidence and theology masquerading as military judgment — and the exact opposite of the Empire striking back.

[Illustrations: Ross Patton, Dennis Crothers ]

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lionboy5-blog · 4 years

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knight-otu · 5 years

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Toady’s Devlog for 01/29/2020 - Dwarf Fortress 0.47.01 released!

Toady One, from the Dwarf Fortress Development Log:

Here is the villains release! There are various bits we're going to have to loop back around to after the graphics work is complete (see previous lengthy dev log), so perhaps this should be called the first villains release, or more "the guilds and temples and adventurer parties and pets release which also has artifact heists and extensive historical villainy, with lots of new mostly evil magical stuff", ha ha. We will get to the fortress plots beyond artifact heists when we return, as well as the ability for the adventurer to be a villain and to investigate them more effectively.

The features are listed below. For fortress mode, the most important new elements that will be commonly encountered are petitions for guildhalls and temples. When enough believers or laboring dwarves are in the fort, you'll receive a petition, and it's up to you if you want to try to build the location for them or not. To satisfy the temple petitions, you must assign a priest (the game will remind you with an announcement when your temple is ready for one, after a certain value threshold is crossed.) The main benefits of guildhalls and priests currently is the ability of guild members to share knowledge, and of priests to give inspiring sermons and comfort stressed-out dwarves.

Less commonly, but also important, a villain may target your fortress, especially when you get up to having artifacts they might covet. If you notice an artifact has been stolen in a non-kobold way (the announcements will be different, make sure you have a sheriff to receive the reports), you will be able to interrogate anybody about the crime - witness reports might be useful with a name, or they might just indicate the artifact is missing. Interrogation leads to a report indicator on the left, which you can read in the usual way (with 'r'.) This also opens up the counterintelligence screen, which will keep track of information for you. If you manage to interrogate the handler of any treacherous dwarf, generally on a return visit, you might even get the name of their master, if they have one, or get details of other plots throughout the world, though most of them cannot impact your fort directly (yet.)

Dwarves have some more general relationship types now (especially the historical ones, who can arrive as war buddies or athletic rivals), and they can also have multiple lovers or get divorced or have children before they are married.

Most aquifers in the fort are now slower filling. You still have to act pretty quickly (this makes them remain useful for wells and other liquid matter), but it is very possible to just wall them off or otherwise deal with the water if you are ready. You can still place a wall on top of shallow water. If you want an old-style aquifer, just embark where there's a "heavy aquifer."

Your fort may also be invaded by horrible things if the necromancers or demons have been entertaining themselves.

The main new bit in adventure mode is right in the beginning - well, not quite. Don't be fooled by the first character creation screen (which is unchanged), you'll get to the good stuff right after. There are a lot of new options there (starting background, religion, starting site selection, equipment including quality, mounts/pets), including the option to make party members, who can be from different civilization. Mounts greatly speed up travel if everybody has one (make sure the mount is their pet.) If you forget a mount or meet with tragedy, you can claim a new mount generally from the pastures of human cities, or wherever tame animals can be found. You do not have to purchase them currently. Just press 'h' near one (the same key you use to mount and lead animals.) If the wrong party member claims it, that party member can give it to the right one as a gift (a new conversation option which can be applied to anybody.) Pack animals (including many mounts) can also carry items. Press 'p' to place an item on a creature. This can greatly increase your capacity to carry food or treasure. If you claim a pet that is unnamed, you can name them as a conversation option (with the pet.)

In adventure mode, if you have judge of intent, you'll be able to see the new readout of your conversation partner's mood/relationship with you (without that skill, you still get some basic info.) You have the ability to interrogate people, using the persuade and intimidate skills, though this is limited now because we didn't get to most evidence. People can confess to schemes, and sometimes that'll even be meaningful, but it's mostly a giant mush of data until we add more structure. But it shouldn't be hard to find some even without proper story/evidence hooks - just go to a nearby castle in a human town, and some portion of the nobles and administrators there will be up to something. But it'll be ultimately unsatisfying until we get to more. As a small note, only confessions of schemes will show up in the new adv mode intrigue view currently (confessions of masters/handlers don't have a proper evidence link yet.) Finally, there were a ton of existing conversation options and most are not linked to the new conversation variables (like confidence and agitation and how much they want to leave.) But you should see them in action if you interrogate, argue about values, flatter, tell jokes or pacify. Additionally, depending on personality, most people slowly loses patience with a conversation no matter what the subject is, unless they are kept entertained. These ephemeral conversation values are reset every two hours, so don't worry if you lose a chance to speak to somebody at a given time.

If you want to play with divination dice, you'll need to find a pedestal with some at a shrine. About half of the shrines should have them, though a lot of the smaller road and intersection shrines won't have room and will just have statues. Shrines labeled in text on the travel map have the best chance, since they are large. Temples can also have them in the basement with the relics. To roll dice, make sure they are in your hand and 'I'nteract with them. Rolling should be an option there. Once you do that, the roll announcement has a lot of information. Statues generally give some idea as to whose shrine you are at. Shrines can be both for organized religions or generally to a deity, and both types can have divination traditions.

New stuff

Guilds organize and petition for guildhalls, guild members can do skill demonstrations

Members of organized religions can petition for temples and priesthood recognition, priests give sermons and comfort stressed dwarves

Traitor dwarves, artifact heists, interrogation for crime from the justice screen, counterintelligence readout with organization charts

Most aquifers are much slower filling

Can start with a party in adventure mode

Specify background and starting location and beliefs in adventure mode (most labor skills still meaningless)

Can start with specified equipment and pets in adventure mode

Tactical combat mode for adventurer party

Adventurer can ride mounts, place items on pack animals, lead animals, claim pets, gift pets, and name pets (rider skill matters for melee/ranged rolls currently)

Can pet animals in adventure mode

Addition mood information in adventure mode conversations, (simple) interrogation options, flattery, joke-telling, calming remarks, (very simple) sermons

Simple intrigue display with actors and charts discovered in interrogation in adventure mode (in 'Q')

Divination shrines with dice and various effects

Lots of new intermediate positions (mostly without new mechanics) in entities (chamberlains etc.)

Alliances against world-ending threats in world generation

Various villainous activity in world generation, in play off-site, and (more limited) in fort mode, world generation surveillance, interrogation and punishment. Historical plots include theft, sabotage, abduction, assassination, coups, corrupt advancement promises, embezzlement, starting wars, and framing enemies.

Romantic relationship changes (multiple lovers, affairs, children outside marriage, divorces, etc.) as well as other relationship changes and details (friendship/rival types, variables like trust, respect and loyalty)

Merchant companies, military orders and mercenary companies, craft guilds in world generation

Individual mercenaries and companies can upgrade their equipment, and richer world gen people can purchase houses and build up their own city towers

Various religious interactions (shrine building, sermons, persecution) in world generation, lots of religious demographics tracking which influences shrine creation, religious sites and sermons influencing membership numbers, holy cities and a few levels of priest

Various horrifying new necromancer/mummy/demon/vampire etc. matter - snow-balling zombie invasions, multiple experiment types, intelligent undead lieutenants with new powers, nightmarish summons, spreading evil zones, promises of immortality in villainous plots

Dwarves can trigger dig-deep disasters in world generation, with repercussions coming to other sites, including fort mode

Some new locations, some map details still in-progress, monasteries, private city towers, guildhalls, merchant counting houses, forts (bandits and mercenaries), castles have returned (basically unchanged), better necromancer towers and simple outlying buildings

Major bug fixes

Fixed visitor crash related to broken meetings

Fixed crash related to broken crimes and travelers/sent-away dwarves

Other bug fixes/tweaks

Changed werecreature trigger condition

Bogeyman limited to a few regions and given new powers

Fixed error where bandit groups would be deleted prematurely in worldgen

Fixed size issue with certain werecreatures

Fixed bug where only last half of performance sentence was shown

Fixed problem where biome and landmass names were sometimes split on the same biome/landmass

#Dwarf Fortress #Development log

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anearthstruckalien · 5 years

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[[ Another non-RP (but still relevant) thing that I thought I should stick on here is a few notes to make about Psions, of which is new information and altered old information (in that it differs a little from what I originally said since the concept of Psions has developed more since then) accordingly:

-Both Psions and Ancient Ones* exist in the modern day. But whereas the former is well-known across the universe as terrifying and powerful conquerors of worlds, the latter disappeared from history because that particular faction from so long ago further isolated themselves from the rest of the universe.

-Ancient Ones are the ‘mysterious’ civilization that created the Apple of Enlightenment. At the peak of their existence (prior to the disaster caused by a powerful invading force at the time) they were very advanced in technology –basically like a beacon of modern (relative to that time) progress. Which in turn is a good part of what drew said invading force to them.

And between their lack of actual military forces and basic and inexperienced fighting skill as well as their organic composition (which was targeted by said force) though they drove them off thanks to their hyper-advanced technologies which compensated for their weaknesses, it really wrecked their planet and left a lot of things not only in ruins but scattered across the universe.

-The nature of the Ancient Ones was a rather peaceful and mostly good-natured kind (enough that they didn’t ever focus much on having a military force), but in the end, they were also very isolationist and beyond the reasons I’ve already mentioned, that’s what really got them in the end. Being disinterested with the ongoings of the universe and neutral to the conflicts of others cut them off from any hopes of receiving assistance when they were invaded.

-The idea of entities entering in and out of this blog’s universe is a common occurrence that is regularly recorded by the Psions. So, they are very much aware of the entry points, route travelled, and exit points of whatever comes through including that of other characters that have done so here before. The reason why one never sees them bother with addressing it is because they haven’t deemed it necessary yet.

The only times where Psions may consider interfering more directly (i.e capturing and either interrogating or picking apart for study or more commonly? both; it really depends on what’s more beneficial) is if there are signs or patterns that come across as suspicious. Repeatedly entering the universe and leaving for instance (seemingly without doing anything significant) is extremely suspicious. Or repeatedly entering the universe and being a powerful entity (requires less repeated entries tbh) is also very suspicious. Or most easily? entering and having suspiciously powerful technologies relative to a given species (such as humans) is also very well? suspicious.

So unless the intent is to directly interact with Psions (not Giegue) in some capacity, it’s better to tread carefully because the Psions are observing and recording everything about one’s movements up to and including flare-ups of power or activations of powerful technologies.

-Because the Psions have surveillance and recording technologies with very powerful capacities, this also means that while the official verdict is that Giegue is dead because of the overwhelming evidence for it, they are not entirely certain on whether or not to believe that in the end. They can detect his extraordinarily powerful signature because it’s so powerful and in-your-face through their technologies SO they know that something of higher power exists, but can’t really discern the identity as that of Giegue precisely because it’s been warped from his recorded trademark via corruption. Not unless they get closer to said source.

-The Psions have discarded anything that has to do with Giegue specifically (i.e anything that’s been ‘tainted’ by him) but though the results of the experiment were disastrous and have effectively gotten them to back away from using emotions, said results are still useful to them.

That is, prior to Giegue’s apparent ‘demise’ during the second invasion of Earth, they did have samples of his exoskeleton stored (both collected from him throughout his existence there among them and routinely sent by him when he was out on missions including the first Earth one) SO they have a lot of material infused with his extraordinary power.

Well except for anything that arose during Mother 2 since he had cut off contact with them by then.

Either way, the point is that through these materials and what they learned from the Giegue experiment, they will essentially use that as a template upon which to create a living core for their super-weapon. A living core that won’t (and can’t in fact) go out-of-control or disobey them based off Giegue’s exoskeleton fragments, the power they have, and the information they contain within themselves.

They might not want anything to do with Giegue, but it’s no complicated task for them to just ‘purify’ or purge these exoskeleton samples of any traces attached to Giegue to give themselves a perfectly clean slate from a new Psion, raw material from which to build a new creature.

-So the reason why they wanted Giegue to return is so they’d have more material to work with (via terminating him and applying the ‘purification’ process of his remains, exoskeleton and energy in kind to remove all traces of an individual attached to it) and because he had gotten even stronger since then.

-Part of the reason why Psions took such an interest in humanity and the Earth for study is precisely because of previously documented instances of an incredible power (the Earth’s Power) being applied by certain select humans (Chosen Ones) to avert great disasters and accomplish impossible tasks. They were aware of this power and wanted to see if it could potentially be harnessed and utilized for their super-weapon or if alternatively, they could replicate it in someone using ‘human emotions’; something they had later on discovered as holding the potential for great power.

#.outofcharacter #.headcanon #.worldbuilding

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selenecrawford · 6 years

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Selene Crawford: The Mission, The Clan , The Judgment

Warnings: Violence, kidnapping situations, guns, Cursing (yup is still there)

The soft notes of the piano could be heard at the mansion. Luxury, pure tones of pearl, gold and black where everywhere. On the main bath of suite Selene was at the bath tub being cleaned up by the maids. In order to prevent her from escaping Tobias kept her drugged. He didn't want her precious flower to whither before the main event. Selene was being treated as a queen even though she will be judged as a traitor. Tobias, still thought he could change her mind. Men were blindfolded in to prevent them see her naked body.

Once dry she was pampered, and dress with exquisite care, like a princess. Selene try not to cry since she knew this was only a preparation for what she will have to face. The law inside the clan was absolute. Still Tobias wanted to buy her with luxury and pampering. Her mind then went to Masamune. His smile, his mischievous smile and his passionate look when they made love. Desperate she tried to think in an escape, but her main concern being unable to move was her main worry.

(Calm down, I need to think. There is got to be a way, but which?)

“I bet you are thinking in a way to leave. See, how perfect I am for you? Why can't you see that?” Tobias approached her silently and surprised her with a soft whisper to her ear.

Selene shudder internally, the sound of a drop began to be heard on her memory. A distant image became clearer are Tobias kept talking. With a deep sigh, Selene began meditating ignoring the whispers. All she wanted to see was Masamune, with this she blocked Tobias alluring words turning into just gibberish. If Ian wanted her on top shape she will have to start preparing. There was no time to loose. Tobias, frown after saw Selene's deep breath, the treatment was not working. Fine, he did all he needed to do. Applying the antidote, he left leaving Selene on her own.

“So be it love. Is your choice. Bring her in 5 hours to the chamber.”

“Yes, Sir.” said one of the guard at the entrance of the room.

Tobias walked punched one of the marble walls. Cursing Selene's stubbornness he went to prepare for the judgment.

“If you won't be mine then you will pay for your treason with your life.”

At Mai's warehouse, the preparations for the invasion of the clan's lair were advanced. The guys will be diving in two main groups. Sasuke, Mitsurani, Lancelot, Mai, Yuki and Shingen will stay at the base. Shingen, Mitsurani and Yuki as back up in case they need to get them out if they can't. The rest as technical, and surveillance support.

The main group was compose of Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, Kenshin, Ieyasu and Masamune who refused to stay.

“You can't go Masamune, you might risk a fracture or even death. You are not in conditions to go into a fight. Are you out of your fucking mind? Nobunaga aren't you going to tell him something?” Ieyasu was at wits end trying to prevent Masamune from going.

“I will do the same if I were him.” was the only thing Nobunaga could say while discretely looking at Mai.

“So he wants to go and kill himself OK, no problem, now why the fuck am I have to go? Can you answer me that?” Although pissed off Ieyasu was looking more calm than agitated.

“We need all the man power we can. Also you are a good fighter. “Yasu”.” Hideyoshi took several assault rifles and bags.

“Don't call me that.” sneer Ieyasu.

Masamune stood next to Ieyasu. “I'm not a man of going around pleading, but Selene is precious to me. Your help getting her back safe will mean a lot to me, and her. You need to meet her.” putting his hands on his pockets Masamune gave Ieyasu a sad smile.

“Too bad I met her before you. And you don't need to convince me. I'm going, she deserves to be happy. Just know that if you make her cry even once I'm making you pay for it.” Ieyasu smirk at the face of surprise of Masamune when he heard the information. Taking that as his sign Ieyasu took his equipment and left for the car.

“Where is the Snake?” Kincaid was looking for Mitsuhide.

“He went ahead, he is securing the perimeter and our contact in and out.” said Mai before Nobunaga could open his mouth.

“Mitsuhide can you hear us?”

“Loud and clear my little mouse. There is not movement at the castle yet. I'm already in position.” his voice have a tone of diversion and pleasure.

Everyone was tense and getting ready. Ieyasu secured Masamune's chest with a special bandage that will protect him for getting hard hits. The bandage was cool so will maintain part of the swelling down. Popping pain killers like candy Masamune took a couple and went to put his own equipment on one of the 3 black RTR's assigned. Nobunaga/Hideyoshi , Kenshin, Ieyasu and him on the third one. Kenshin didn't mind alone since he thought having a partner was more a hindrance. Once everyone was ready they left one by one. The road to the castle was a bit long but they managed to get a stop to eat something light before arriving to the spot Mitsuhide was stationed.

The castle was at the top of the cliff with a dignified view of the ocean.

“OK, who are these people first of all? And why they have a castle on a cliff erosion anyone?” Ieyasu's statement might be cliche, but so it was the location of the castle.

“What's the status Mitsuhide?” it was Nobunaga's turn to ask.

“The bells sounded 3 times one hour later 2 times and a couple of minutes ago 1 time. So far no more sounds or movement after that.

“The judgment that asshole is going to judge her.” Lancelot's emotive statement puzzle everyone. It was the first time his tone was out of the educated and polished manner was out of place.

“What does that mean?” Masamume was now concerned.

“ According to out research, the clan have a way to deal with those who do not follow the rules. They make a trial and force the partners to fight to death and if the traitor lives is executed.”

“Partners?”

“ Yes Dragon. According to tradition, the new generation is chosen when they are kids. They train together and when the time comes they marry and take the rains of the clan and make the next generation. If one dies before having children another pair of children is choose. When Selene refused the laws of the clan this got her branded as a traitor. But Ian pretended to protect her.” indicated Lancelot.

“And you deemed necessary to share this information now because?” it was Mitsuhide's time to be inquisitive. “It's interesting how much you know about the clan for people who were kept in the dark.”

“No need for your venom Snake. We didn't say anything for security measures. Both me and Kincaid are part of the clan. We thought to let the tradition die. Many of the methods to get the kids were cruel and aberrant.”

“What methods?, what are you talking about Lancelot?” Nobunaga didn't like the sound of that.

“What you are imagine Devil, in order to recruit our new recruits they must be break and their soul pulverized. Their soul must be tarnished, with blood, darkness and hate.” Corrupting them on a early age is part of the process.” continue Lancelot explaining.

“Wait, you don't mean...” Ieyasu tried to speak but his voice trailed off.

Yes, Dr. Tokugawa, Selene's parents didn't die on a car accident. We killed them in order to recruit Selene.”

The sound of the sea at the distance was the only thing breaking the deafening silence thru the communications channel.

Selene was escorted to the main inside patio of the castle. The sound of the agitated was around. The smell of salt, old stone and lime was strong. This help Selene to clear completely her mind. As a last request from Tobias she had a light meal. Wearing a pair of hand cuffs she walked slowly, without haste. This is her last minutes alive, she was on her way to be judge. Wearing skinny black jeans with black leather corset and a black shirt under. Complementing the outfit a military jacket with crossing zipper. Her hair was done on a french braid with a sultry make up and red cherry lips. The look made her a totally different person, someone she refused to be ever since she was trained for it. The walk ended once they arrived once they got into the inside Patio. A circle of wood was around the place. Looking around the smell of gasoline hit her like a slap on the face. Torch were around with potent light from the ceiling. Outside the circle were many people clothed on ninjitsu uniforms and face covered.

Outside of the circle on a podium was Ian wearing a dark robe. Inside the circle Tobias was armed and waiting for her. Taking a deep unperceptive breath Selene entered the circle. The place was spacious enough for them to fight. Little by little Selene connected some of the pieces. Ian began to speak.

“We are gathered here to pass judgment and uphold our traditions and values.”

“What values? Killing, for money? Are you fucking kidding me?” Selene dint let Ian continue. She need to stall the process until they arrive.

“You are so easy to read love, stalling this won't help. You made a choice.” No I didn't, I never asked for it. And I'm' not your love.” that last sentence was made into a sneer full hate.

“You never respected our traditions, you stepped on them. We gave you food, a roof, money.”

“Really? A conditionally love, as long as I learn to kill, deceive and steal. What kind of life is that for a child? You never cared for me. You only wanted me to lead the clan with Tobias. How could you kill your wife, his mother? I know your secret Ian.”

“And who you think killed your parents Selene?” asked Tobias walking towards her to take her handcuffs off.

Selene tried to talk but no sound went out of her mouth. “What?” was the breathless question that she could articulate. Walking around her Tobias smile sweetly while circling her life a shark at the ocean.

“My...my parents died in an accident.” said Selene trying to research her mind for her details of that fateful night.

“You see you are wrong, mi gatita(my kitten), on that night, we choose you, I, no the clan choose you as my bride.” Tobias stood in front of her.

“We were six and yet I fell in love with you that day at the park. I remember telling dad I wanted you. So, we followed you and I decided to get you. See, you might had block some parts of that night, but I stood in the middle of the road and your father loose control.” Once you crashed I just gave the killing blow and killed them with a knife while they were unconscious. They bleed to death. My first trophies.” Tobias stopped to take a good look at Selene.

Selene couldn't believed her ears, but one part of her knew the truth. In her mind the fog that covered the events of that night began to lift. She remembered in slow motion how they went out of the park and suddenly on part of road a little kid run in causing them to crash. After that she lost consciousness. When she woke up she was an orphan absorbed by the system.

“No, its not true you didn't, THAT'S LIE!!!!!!” she managed to shout before covering her ears and fell to her knees.

“Oh no, you are not getting out of this easily. Yes, I killed your parents, for you. You are mine and only mine. After all the trouble I went to get you and this is how you repay me, repay us.” Tobias took her by the hair and started drag her in front of his father.

“Selene Crawford, by the law of the Clan and committing the sacred sin of betrayal, your only absolution is to die. Torch it.”

The bystanders took the torch and started burning the circle of wood around them. Once the circle was completely ignited, Tobias lifted and throw her to the other side of the circle. Trembling in shock, Selene looked at Tobias taking of his trench coat. After all of these years the man she thought she knew was never there. Instead, before was Ankou the angel of death.

@datemasamunemaiwaifu @unstoppablelinda @elievalentine @yeshasays @mikamiw @shouta-bakugou @pirateprincessyuki @la-piperina @notsafefortum-blr @masa-little-kitten @sengokuotaku82 @serenity-writes @colivara @kimi00twin @kouei116 @cailannuesugi @xathia-89 @jennacat84 @epicdragonlady @blue-bean-exe

#ikesen #ikesen masamune #fanfic

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market-research-updates · 3 years

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Critical Infrastructure Protection Market Current Trends, Segmentation, Key Players Analysis and Forecast to 2025

The global critical infrastructure protection market was valued at USD 71.83 billion in 2019 and is projected to be worth USD 108.57 billion by 2025, registering a CAGR of 7.08% during the period from 2020 to 2025. Critical infrastructure plays an active and dynamic part in supporting the seamless progression and assimilation of modern society. The performance, safety, reliability, continuous operation, maintenance, and protection of critical infrastructure are among the national priorities for countries around the world. - The critical infrastructure sectors comprise assets, networks, and systems, whether physical or virtual. The physical protection of critical infrastructure can prevent the commission of high-impact terrorist attacks and avoid the cascading effects that are frequently associated with such attacks. INTERPOL has observed an increase of 200%, in the number of profiles of foreign terrorist fighters, between January 2017 and April 2018. - The issue of critical infrastructure protection is emerging as one of the primary concerns for the national governments, infrastructure managers, and local authorities. The European Union (EU), through its European Program for Critical Infrastructure Protection (EPCIP), announced the importance of CIP to all its member states and the citizens. - Due to rapid urbanization across the world, there has been immense stress on infrastructure in cities, and the governments are focusing on improving the infrastructure, such as transport, energy, and water, in order to provide better livability stature. The information and the telecommunications sector also play a very crucial role in CIP.

Click Here to Download Sample Report >> https://www.sdki.jp/sample-request-90002 - Industrial control systems (ICSs) are yet another essential type of the critical information infrastructure in the industrial ecosystem that supervises and control processes in industrial infrastructures, such as bulk energy generation systems, electrical distribution and transmission systems, water treatment systems, oil and gas pipelines, and chemical plants and refineries. - According to the Kaspersky and Symantec, attacks on industrial control systems are increasing. Developing countries are being attacked primarily, as in the countries in Western Europe and North America such as the United States. Most attacks are through the internet, removable drives or email. Furthermore, 1%-4% of the IC systems are attacked by cryptocurrency malware each month. - According to the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), spending on smart cities is expected to reach USD 34.35 billion by the end of 2020, up from USD 14.85 billion. The increase in investment in smart cities is expected to augment the demand for critical information systems protection solutions. - Moreover, the use of connected devices led to the vulnerability of cyber threats, and the governments have incorporated them as an essential part of the critical infrastructure. For instance, according to Cisco Systems Inc., 500 billion devices are anticipated to be connected to the internet by 2030. All these factors are expected to drive the growth of the market studied, over the forecast period. Key Market Trends Sensitive Infrastructure and Enterprises Sector Vertical to Grow at the Highest Rate - The financial services sector is a vital component of the nation's critical infrastructure. Recent natural disasters, large-scale power outages, and an increase in the number and sophistication of cyberattacks demonstrate the wide range of potential risks facing the sector. - Owing to the presence of a large networking framework, coupled with sensitive and critical data, the BFSI sector is facing several data breaches and cyberattacks, due to the large customer base served by the industry. ATMs face various security challenges, such as robberies, vandalism, and fraud. - The increasing customer propensity towards ATM withdrawals is also expected to contribute to the market’s growth. For instance, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has made it mandatory for banks to have the entire area under CCTV surveillance. The primary aim is to identify unscrupulous elements, like the circulation of fake currency in the banking system. - Additionally, the Trojan malware steals credentials for e-payment and online banking systems, intercepting one-time passwords, and then sending the data to the attackers behind the Trojan. According to Kaspersky Lab, of 889,452 attacks, almost 25% of them were corporate, a figure that remained consistent for the past three years. - Some of the prominent players in the industry, through R&D, have been able to develop advancements in technology, which is expected to boost the adoption of critical infrastructure during the forecast period. For instance, in December 2018, Intracom Telecom announced the launch of SIS-C2, a command, control, and integration management platform for border surveillance, critical infrastructure protection, homeland security, and maritime domain awareness. - According to a 2018 report by EfficientIP, the telecom sector is one of the worst at tackling cyber threats. In 2018, 43% of telco organizations were victimized by DNS-based malware, and 81% took three days or more to apply the critical security patch. As telecoms are often the gateway into numerous businesses, the aim of direct cyber attacks is to access the core infrastructure of the telecom companies. Hence, there is an increasing need for protecting such infrastructure. Thus, creating opportunities for the market.

- The increasing initiatives by the government, in order to protect the defense critical infrastructures, are expected to boost the market’s growth during the forecast period. For insatnce, in March 2019, Raytheon Company announced that it would deliver advanced surveillance towers to a Middle Eastern nation to help protect that nation's borders and military installations. - Government surveillance has been brought increasingly under public scrutiny, as it increases security, and opponents are decrying its invasion of privacy. For instance, In June 2019, the AAP government formally launched a flagship scheme in which it installed 1.4 lakh CCTV cameras in public places of the city for the safety of women around the city. - Furthermore, over the years, activities to protect public spaces against terrorism have evolved and been strengthened, focusing on protecting critical infrastructure. North America is Expected to Hold Major Share - Owing to the growing adoption of CIP solutions and services across different end-user verticals in the region, North America is expected to be a prominent market. The region has a strong foothold of vendors, which contributes to market growth positively. Some of them include Honeywell International Inc., Raytheon Co., General Electric Co., General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin Corporation, and Northrop Grumman Corporation. - In October 2019, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) selected Raytheon to help protect government networks. Raytheon would offer full lifecycle development and sustainment support under a new contract costing USD 1 billion. - DHS implemented a risk-informed, all-hazards approach to safeguard critical infrastructure in the cyberspace, by focusing on protections for privacy and civil liberties, transparent and accessible security processes, and international and domestic partnerships. The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency leads the nation’s efforts to protect critical infrastructure. - The United States has been witnessing a mature market in terms of CIP application. Back in 1996, the program was introduced to ensure the safety and security of critical and IT infrastructures. And in 2005, the country adopted smart grid technology to prevent power failure and promote self-repair among the connected computers. - According to US Department of Energy, the annual investment on smart grids technology in United States is expected to reach USD 13.8 billion. The increasing investment in smart grid technology to improve the reliability, flexibility, security, and efficiency of the electricity system is also driving the market in the region. - Besides, with the implementation of the National Strategy and Action Plan for Critical Infrastructure, a risk-based approach for reinforcing the resiliency of Canada's vital systems and assets such as electricity grids, transportation, communications and public safety systems is confirmed, thereby, supplementing the overall market growth. - The action plan for 2019-2020 for enhancing the resilience of critical infrastructure in Canada support three strategic objectives that are identified in the National Strategy - Building partnerships, Sharing and protecting information and Implementing an all-hazards risk management approach. - In Canada, cybercrime is rapidly gaining high traction as the impact is increasing at a significant rate, and organizations across Canada are spending highly on cybersecurity. Moreover, The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP) have partnered with Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance (CATAAlliance) to create the eCrime Cyber Council (ECC) to improve national cybercrime strategy for Canada. - According to the Canadian Department of Public Safety, the country suffers losses more than CAD 3.2 billion per year due to cybercrime, and SMEs account for around 71% of data breaches. In order to tackle this, the cybersecurity regulatory landscape across the region is fueled by the enforcement of Bill S-4, the Digital Privacy Act. - Moreover, according to Scalar Decisions Inc.’s 2019 study on Canadian organizations’ cyber resilience, the average cost per organization from recovering of cyber security incidents increased to between USD 4.8 million to USD 5.8 million, up from USD 3.7 million as compared to last year. - Furthermore, Statistics Canada Is planning to shift its data to digital cloud as a part of the federal governments ‘cloud-first strategy’ to seek benefits like additional processing power and storage, better data processing etc. However, such moves by the company demand high security of sensitive information. Competitive Landscape The critical infrastructure protection market is highly competitive, owing to the presence of many small and large players in the market operating their business in domestic and international markets. With the advent of infrastructure attacks, many vendors respond to the rising threat by offering critical information security solutions. These offerings have to lead to new services, technologies, and partnerships with leading essential providers of infrastructure. - June 2020 - The company and Kuwait Integrated Petroleum Industries Company (KIPIC) have participated in strategic collaboration, signing a five-year, multi-million dollar contract for services to protect, optimize and maintain operations at the Al Zour refinery and liquefied natural gas import (LNGI) terminal in southern Kuwait. - Jan 2020 - The company partnered with Amossys at International Cybersecurity Forum (FIC). The partnership has three focus areas i.e. detecting vulnerabilities, studies, and innovation work (AI) and the development of Airbus’s cyber range platform. Reasons to Purchase this report: - The market estimate (ME) sheet in Excel format - 3 months of analyst support

For more information, please contact:

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Shibuya Data Count Email: [email protected] Tel: + 81 3 45720790

Related Links https://www.sdki.jp/

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foursprout-blog · 6 years

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An Empire Of Nothing At All - A Staggeringly Well-Funded Blowback Machine

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/wealth/an-empire-of-nothing-at-all-a-staggeringly-well-funded-blowback-machine/

An Empire Of Nothing At All - A Staggeringly Well-Funded Blowback Machine

Authored by Tom Engelhardt via TomDispatch.com,

[This essay is the introduction to Tom Engelhardt’s new book, A Nation Unmade by War, a Dispatch Book published by Haymarket Books.]

As I was putting the finishing touches on my new book, the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute published an estimate of the taxpayer dollars that will have gone into America’s war on terror from September 12, 2001, through fiscal year 2018. That figure: a cool $5.6 trillion (including the future costs of caring for our war vets).

On average, that’s at least $23,386 per taxpayer.

Keep in mind that such figures, however eye-popping, are only the dollar costs of our wars. They don’t, for instance, include the psychic costs to the Americans mangled in one way or another in those never-ending conflicts. They don’t include the costs to this country’s infrastructure, which has been crumbling while taxpayer dollars flow copiously and in a remarkably — in these years, almost uniquely — bipartisan fashion into what’s still laughably called “national security.” That’s not, of course, what would make most of us more secure, but what would make them — the denizens of the national security state — ever more secure in Washington and elsewhere. We’re talking about the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. nuclear complex, and the rest of that state-within-a-state, including its many intelligence agencies and the warrior corporations that have, by now, been fused into that vast and vastly profitable interlocking structure.

In reality, the costs of America’s wars, still spreading in the Trump era, are incalculable. Just look at photos of the cities of Ramadi or Mosul in Iraq, Raqqa or Aleppo in Syria, Sirte in Libya, or Marawi in the southern Philippines, all in ruins in the wake of the conflicts Washington set off in the post–9/11 years, and try to put a price on them. Those views of mile upon mile of rubble, often without a building still standing untouched, should take anyone’s breath away. Some of those cities may never be fully rebuilt.

And how could you even begin to put a dollars-and-cents value on the larger human costs of those wars: the hundreds of thousands of dead? The tens of millions of people displaced in their own countries or sent as refugees fleeing across any border in sight? How could you factor in the way those masses of uprooted peoples of the Greater Middle East and Africa are unsettling other parts of the planet? Their presence (or more accurately a growing fear of it) has, for instance, helped fuel an expanding set of right-wing “populist” movements that threaten to tear Europe apart. And who could forget the role that those refugees — or at least fantasy versions of them — played in Donald Trump’s full-throated, successful pitch for the presidency? What, in the end, might be the cost of that?

Opening the Gates of Hell

America’s never-ending twenty-first-century conflicts were triggered by the decision of George W. Bush and his top officials to instantly define their response to attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center by a tiny group of jihadis as a “war”; then to proclaim it nothing short of a “Global War on Terror”; and finally to invade and occupy first Afghanistan and then Iraq, with dreams of dominating the Greater Middle East — and ultimately the planet — as no other imperial power had ever done.

Their overwrought geopolitical fantasies and their sense that the U.S. military was a force capable of accomplishing anything they willed it to do launched a process that would cost this world of ours in ways that no one will ever be able to calculate. Who, for instance, could begin to put a price on the futures of the children whose lives, in the aftermath of those decisions, would be twisted and shrunk in ways frightening even to imagine? Who could tote up what it means for so many millions of this planet’s young to be deprived of homes, parents, educations — of anything, in fact, approximating the sort of stability that might lead to a future worth imagining?

Though few may remember it, I’ve never forgotten the 2002 warning issued by Amr Moussa, then head of the Arab League. An invasion of Iraq would, he predicted that September, “open the gates of hell.” Two years later, in the wake of the actual invasion and the U.S. occupation of that country, he altered his comment slightly. “The gates of hell,” he said, “are open in Iraq.”

His assessment has proven unbearably prescient — and one not only applicable to Iraq. Fourteen years after that invasion, we should all now be in some kind of mourning for a world that won’t ever be. It wasn’t just the US military that, in the spring of 2003, passed through those gates to hell. In our own way, we all did. Otherwise, Donald Trump wouldn’t have become president.

I don’t claim to be an expert on hell. I have no idea exactly what circle of it we’re now in, but I do know one thing: we are there.

The Infrastructure of a Garrison State

If I could bring my parents back from the dead right now, I know that this country in its present state would boggle their minds. They wouldn’t recognize it. If I were to tell them, for instance, that just three men — Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffett — now possess as much wealth as the bottom half of the US population, of 160 million Americans, they would never believe me.

How, for instance, could I begin to explain to them the ways in which, in these years, money flowed ever upward into the pockets of the immensely wealthy and then down again into what became one-percent elections that would finally ensconce a billionaire and his family in the White House? How would I explain to them that, while leading congressional Democrats and Republicans couldn’t say often enough that this country was uniquely greater than any that ever existed, none of them could find the funds — some $5.6 trillion for starters — necessary for our roads, dams, bridges, tunnels, and other crucial infrastructure? This on a planet where what the news likes to call “extreme weather” is increasingly wreaking havocon that same infrastructure.

My parents wouldn’t have thought such things possible. Not in America. And somehow I’d have to explain to them that they had returned to a nation which, though few Americans realize it, has increasingly been unmade by war — by the conflicts Washington’s war on terror triggered that have now morphed into the wars of so many and have, in the process, changed us.

Such conflicts on the global frontiers have a tendency to come home in ways that can be hard to track or pin down. After all, unlike those cities in the Greater Middle East, ours aren’t yet in ruins — though some of them may be heading in that direction, even if in slow motion. This country is, at least theoretically, still near the height of its imperial power, still the wealthiest nation on the planet. And yet it should be clear enough by now that we’ve crippled not just other nations but ourselves in ways that I suspect — though I’ve tried over these years to absorb and record them as best I could — we can still barely see or grasp.

In my new book, A Nation Unmade by War, the focus is on a country increasingly unsettled and transformed by spreading wars to which most of its citizens were, at best, only half paying attention. Certainly, Trump’s election was a sign of how an American sense of decline had already come home to roost in the era of the rise of the national security state (and little else).

Though it’s not something normally said here, to my mind President Trump should be considered part of the costs of those wars come home. Without the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and what followed, I doubt he would have been imaginable as anything but the host of a reality TV show or the owner of a series of failed casinos. Nor would the garrison-state version of Washington he now occupies be conceivable, nor the generals of our disastrous wars whom he’s surrounded himself with, nor the growth of a surveillance state that would have staggered George Orwell.

The Makings of a Blowback Machine

It took Donald Trump — give him credit where it’s due — to make us begin to grasp that we were living in a different and devolving world. And none of this would have been imaginable if, in the aftermath of 9/11, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney & Co. hadn’t felt the urge to launch the wars that led us through those gates of hell. Their soaring geopolitical dreams of global domination proved to be nightmares of the first order. They imagined a planet unlike any in the previous half millennium of imperial history, in which a single power would basically dominate everything until the end of time. They imagined, that is, the sort of world that, in Hollywood, had been associated only with the most malign of evil characters.

And here was the result of their conceptual overreach: never, it could be argued, has a great power still in its imperial prime proven quite so incapable of applying its military and political might in a way that would advance its aims. It’s a strange fact of this century that the U.S. military has been deployed across vast swaths of the planet and somehow, again and again, has found itself overmatched by underwhelming enemy forces and incapable of producing any results other than destruction and further fragmentation. And all of this occurred at the moment when the planet most needed a new kind of knitting together, at the moment when humanity’s future was at stake in ways previously unimaginable, thanks to its still-increasing use of fossil fuels.

In the end, the last empire may prove to be an empire of nothing at all — a grim possibility which has been a focus of TomDispatch, the website I’ve run since November 2002. Of course, when you write pieces every couple of weeks for years on end, it would be surprising if you didn’t repeat yourself. The real repetitiousness, however, wasn’t at TomDispatch. It was in Washington. The only thing our leaders and generals have seemed capable of doing, starting from the day after the 9/11 attacks, is more or less the same thing with the same dismal results, again and again.

The U.S. military and the national security state that those wars emboldened have become, in effect — and with a bow to the late Chalmers Johnson (a TomDispatch stalwart and a man who knew the gates of hell when he saw them) — a staggeringly well-funded blowback machine. In all these years, while three administrations pursued the spreading war on terror, America’s conflicts in distant lands were largely afterthoughts to its citizenry. Despite the largest demonstrations in history aimed at stopping a war before it began, once the invasion of Iraq occurred, the protests died out and, ever since, Americans have generally ignored their country’s wars, even as the blowback began. Someday, they will have no choice but to pay attention.

#Wealth

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stormmall27-blog · 4 years

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Facelift

vaginal Femiwand tightening Up solution Lipo360 citizen

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Skindeepstudios.

skincare specialist.

seeking To purchase Cryotherapy Ampoules?

The professional's guide On just How To get radiant Skin.

evaluation examination.

What's the Most Effective treatment To minimize Cellulite?

You might see results after 4 weeks, nevertheless the complete outcomes will be seen after 6-- 12 weeks. We do demand that you come back 6 weeks after your visit for a follow up consultation and after that once more at week 12 for a last action as well as image if appropriate. All comply with up consultation are completely at no cost and form component of your aftercare. You need to wait a minimum of 3 months after regular birth of your child or a minimum of year after a C section. It is best to get GP approval blog post giving birth prior to beginning with treatment.

Skindeepstudios.

As we make use of a solid non-invasive suction to gather the target area, you might really feel a 'clutching' feeling originally which wanes within a number of mins. You will then experience an air conditioning sensation throughout the treatment. The Cryo360+ supplies soft silicone to raise convenience in the therapy area.

Does the mole remover pen work?

We have 8 treatments at Facility 33 with each area serving a specific treatment objective. We have all 4 of the various fat freezing makers, each with differing technologies. Since June 2020 this additionally consists of the most up to date and globes most sophisticated Cryotherapy maker including 360 degree air conditioning with 8 various vacuum cleaner mug capacities. Having actually delivered over 65,000 treatments with absolutely phenomenal outcomes, she has actually acquired the affection and regard of TELEVISION personalities, star figures as well as several of Britain's the majority of familiar faces. For Nyla, the security of her individuals is critical to her techniques.

skin Care expert.

Is it safe to remove moles at home?

Have a look at these prior to and after images to see the distinction this treatment has actually made. Usually in between 4-8 hours in total amount, dependent on location being treated. If you want to discover more about our CoolSculpting or to reserve an appointment, connect with Illuminate Skin Center in Kings Hill, Kent today for an initial appointment with among our CoolSculpting specialists. Skyncare is a market-leading innovation company for aesthetic appeals experts, and is a happy partner and also suggested laser innovation carrier of VTCT.

We additionally include a complimentary aftercare session in the cost, to maximise your recovery. The RUBY applicator head with a dimension of 200 mm length x 38 mm width x 74 mm hight is excellent for big fat folds, specifically for the abdomen location. The SAPPHIRE applicator is planned for dealing with smaller sized areas around the tummy area.

https://datchet.lipofreeze2u.co.uk/ will certainly speak to you in depth about this during your appointment as this varies from person to person. The specialist works a modern probe over the selected location, using vacuum cleaner suction which produces a cozy and after that a cool sensation as the treatment works. Harnessing the power of reduced temperature levels, this therapy intends to aid contour bodies when used together with a healthy lifestyle. The increase in oxygen supply improves collagen production, boosting the flexibility of the skin. Muscle mass pull back with the chilly for a firm effect on the skin. The Cryoskin 3.0 utilizes trendy temperature levels to invigorate the face. Numerous procedures are done annually, as well as it's verified to be both safe as well as reliable.

Lowering satchels as well as upper leg fat general, particularly on the outer upper legs, can be very tough. This is where CoolSculpting comes to be a good choice for lots of as it is created to minimize fat in these stubborn areas. The arms are an additional common location of concern for our clients, as well as specifically Bingo Wings. These are the loose and flabby fat deposits which hang from the undersides of a person's upper arm.

You'll also be revealed existing before and also after pictures of customers just like you, so that you'll obtain an actual feeling for exactly how your body could be changed. Some patients experience some minor bruising and/or numbness after the cryolipolysis treatment, yet this usually subsides within 10 days. Keep in mind that also non-surgical liposuction procedures are not suitable for pregnant/breastfeeding women. If done safely by a professional, fat freezing can without a doubt aid you shed fat.

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To reserve a cost-free assessment or this treatment, please call our pleasant group now. There are practically no negative effects related to Fat Freezing. The targeted area of your body will certainly really feel cooler in the prompt after-effects of the treatment and may be momentarily pink. Outcomes differ in between individuals and Fat Freezing need to constantly work together with a healthy diet regimen and lifestyle to see the best results. We suggest 4 treatments to really see the impacts of Fat Freezing. https://caversham.lipofreeze2u.co.uk/ is the procedure of damaging and also damaging down fat cells.

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All treatments carried out by the Light Touch Clinic will only ever be performed by very trained practitioners. Step 5) On the day of your evaluation, attempt to wear the exact same clothes you used to your therapy for a much more accurate picture contrast. Secretive, your professional will experience your outcomes with you and can intend additional therapy if required.

How bad does cryotherapy hurt?

The price of Radiofrequency as well as Cryolipolysis machines ranges from over ₤ 40,000 to as low as ₤ 5,000. A higher-priced maker may supply a slower roi, while a machine at the lower end of this rate variety will certainly be not likely to have the same sophisticated attributes to make sure treatment efficiency as well as safety. Value is relative to cost and also performance, so it is important to take both these right into factor to consider rather than simply the cost. Whichever is your preferred technology, see to it you acquire your device from a credible business that will offer you with the top quality as well as assistance you require for your business. As RF and also Cryo both make use of temperature to accomplish their therapeutic result, it is necessary to pick a gadget with advanced individual security attributes, such as real-time temperature surveillance. Clients will typically really feel a comfy warm sensation with Radiofrequency body sculpting, and when integrated with various other complementary innovations such as roller massage, it's actually rather enjoyable.

aiming To purchase Cryotherapy Ampoules?

Throughout your therapy, a handheld applicator is made use of to deliver concentrated warm at a specific depths below the surface area of the skin.

HIFU is likewise effective at extending the outcomes complying with a medical facelift.

You will certainly really feel a warm/hot sensation, or identifies of warmth, deep within your skin.

If you're looking for a non-surgical option to ageing skin, then the HIFU Non-Surgical Facelift is for you.

Throughout the treatment we can adapt the power outcome of the ultrasound to fit each client's convenience degrees.

The procedure is finest fit for customers between the ages of 30-- 75 years, that have moderate to modest skin laxity or looseness, as well as that are aiming to delay the skin's natural ageing procedure.

This is a sign that the collagen structure process is functioning.

The Fat Freezing procedure is totally non-surgical, so you can commonly go back to regular activities quickly. For further details concerning cryolipolysis read various other short articles in our glossary area about cryolipolysis and also the primary article concerning cryolipolysis. The cryolipolysis prices differ by location-- the price of one cryolipolysis belly session by a physician begins at GBP 895.

Prevent intense exercise that will certainly place added strain on the treated location. Excess fat on top of the outer thigh and below the hips is often described as a saddlebag.

The professional's guide On exactly How To obtain glowing Skin.

Why is cryotherapy so expensive?

What makes cryotherapy so expensive is the cost of the chamber and liquid nitrogen costs. Added to this is the rental cost of the liquid nitrogen tank and the liquid nitrogen itself. hifu hungerford have the added cost of payroll for their employees and the building lease.

testimonial consultation.

It's pain-free as well as allows you to normally eliminate any kind of damaged fat cells. Whether you're aiming to enhance your body shape, do away with stubborn fat, or just feel and look comfy in your garments once again, CoolSculpting ® might be the response. If you battle with pockets of stubborn body fat, you're not the only one. More than 85% of females fight with some body fat, with many finding it tough to change no matter just how well they consume and also work out.

This stubborn fat area can be very hard to move via arm toughness workouts. You might really feel moderate pain during the initial 10 mins of the treatment or during the massage therapy that follows. Some postponed beginning discomfort might also be felt by those who have CoolSculpting treatment to the belly area. Dr Sophie will certainly recommend a preventative pain reliever for this if called for. While your therapy is happening you will have the ability to see TELEVISION, checked out a book, consume a treat as well as have a cup of coffee.

This is why only one of the most experienced certified aestheticians deliver therapies. It is not constantly convenient to pay for our industry-leading therapies in one go. At the moment we offer Fat Freezing in 7 of our centers, sign up for our advertising emails over to be notified when our continuing to be clinics offer this treatment. Heaven cells in this image represent the fat that has actually been damaged by the awesome temperatures.

The cells start to damage down as well as gradually leave the body via the lymphatic system, which is a natural and secure procedure in for the body to dispose of fat. The unwanted fatty adipose tissue rests near the surface of the skin. This is targeted and sucked right into the handheld Fat Freezing device to be cooled. The effects of Fat Freezing were very first discovered via ice-lollies! Physicians noted irreversible dimples had shown up in the vulnerable fat of kids's cheeks after consuming big amounts of ice-lollies, suggesting that fat can be completely eliminated from the body when subjected to isolated chilly temperature levels. Fat Freezing expenses much less than various other contouring therapies giving comparable results, i.e. liposuction. Fat Freezing has been medically tested and also is accepted for medical usage, having been granted the CE-Medical mark.

What's the Very Best treatment To decrease Cellulite?

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Your professional Skin examination.

During your assessment with us, we'll address any kind of questions or worries you may have. Being located within the M25, our clinic is under an hour far from London Waterloo Station. Simply catch a consistently leaving South West Train to Weybridge and also our facility is a leisurely walk from the terminal or a fast taxi trip. We have discrete exclusive parking spaces at the rear of our facility.

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shirlleycoyle · 4 years

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Drug-Running Plane Seized by Feds Used to Spy on George Floyd Protests

A government-owned aircraft that circled the unrest in Minneapolis following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police originally belonged to Air America, an international drug smuggling front in the 1980s.

Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) aircraft N528NR was seized by the U.S. Marshals via asset forfeiture and later acquired by the DNR. The aircraft circled for hours over the protests and later riots on May 30th and 31st.

Prior to the surveillance flights in late May over Minneapolis, the Cessna T310R could typically be spotted flying over the forests of northern Minnesota. The stated objective of DNR aviation operations is to inventory and manage forestlands, provide wildfire reconnaissance and other ecological activities. The DNR has a law enforcement component, the role of which following the murder of George Floyd isn’t entirely clear yet. DNR internal documents, communications and other records are being sought to further understand the department’s place in the unprecedented law enforcement response to the protests and riots.

The plane, according to decades-old documents, is equipped with thermal imaging technology. Web searches for information about DNR forestry operations indicate the aircraft also uses what’s known as hyperspectral imaging, which is becoming fairly common in resource management. This powerful imaging technology uses lasers to collect “204 millions samples per second,” according to a 2018 forestry inventory webinar, in order to ascertain information about the plant life below. How this technology can be applied to police surveillance efforts such as the two protest overflights in late May is not fully understood at this time. The DNR is currently processing a public information request submitted by Motherboard for these and other details, and the department communicated it would begin handing over documents next week.

Federal Aviation Administration records obtained by Motherboard show a fascinating and wholly unexpected chain of custody for N528NR, from drug smuggling operation to government surveillance plane.

What these documents reveal is truly mind boggling: drug runners created a small fortune running cocaine into the United States using a Cessna plane. That aircraft ferries Congressmen and others around in between drug smuggling flights. The Marshals and their partners seize that property for their own purposes, including transporting prisoners from their war on drugs. Later on, that same Cessna plane is outfitted for surveillance, is flown over Americans engaged in protest and civil unrest.

The plane’s story begins with the investigation and trial of Frederick Luytjes (pronounced Lie-Chess), the convicted proprietor of Air America who pleaded guilty to flying 7.5 tons of cocaine into the United States from 1980 to 1984. “Flying out of the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Airport, stripped down planes would leave for Colombia with $1 million stashed in duffel bags and return with 1,300 pounds of cocaine. Authorities estimated that Luytjes made $25 million in five years, laundering much of the profit through legitimate businesses. Authorities testified that Luytjes' employees at times took cardboard boxes filled with cash to local banks for deposit.”

Luytjes acquired a great deal of property and obviously cash from these exploits. His personal estate, according to the government agents who later seized it, amounted to the largest property forfeiture action to date. Prior to his downfall, “Luytjes raised money for local and national Republican political candidates, had his picture taken with President Gerald Ford, socialized with former Gov. William W. Scranton and often flew Rep. Joseph M. McDade to Washington on Air America planes.” This coziness, between the underworld and those occupying high offices, was surprising to many and prompted those officials to publicly disavow any knowledge of Luytjes’ dealings.

The name “Air America” may sound familiar, because it was the name of an airline secretly operated by the CIA from 1946 to 1976 and which contributed to the Vietnam War efforts. The Wikipedia entry explains, “Air America flew civilians, diplomats, spies, refugees, commandos, sabotage teams, doctors, war casualties, drug enforcement officers, and even visiting VIPs like Richard Nixon all over Southeast Asia.” Allegations of drug running have haunted the legacy of the CIA’s Air America since the airline folded in 1975.

In his book, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, Alfred McCoy argues illicit drugs including heroin were, “transported in the planes, vehicles, and other conveyances supplied by the United States. The profit from the trade has been going into the pockets of some of our best friends in Southeast Asia. The charge concludes with the statement that the traffic is being carried on with the indifference if not the closed-eye compliance of some American officials, and there is no likelihood of its being shut down in the foreseeable future.” During the Vietnam conflict, the majority of the global supply of heroin originated in the Golden Triangle, which remained true until it was surpassed by Afghanistan following the US invasion.

Investigators suspected that Luytjes chose the name “to create an impression he was connected with the Central Intelligence Agency,” the New York Times reported in 1986. Luytjes openly claimed to his South American business partners that he was working as a CIA informant. Apparently, his cohorts believed this would provide them some sort of cover for their operations.

“As part of his defense, Luytjes maintained he was an informant for the DEA and CIA. In one mission, he claimed, he had tried but failed to fly a general and gold out of Nicaragua… A DEA agent and a law enforcement official were among those called by Luytjes to confirm that he had assisted their agencies in investigations.” The Morning Call, a Pennsylvania newspaper, reported in 1986 that “after he was arrested… Luytjes again claimed he was on a ‘high government mission’ and really wasn't a drug smuggler.”

Just as appealing as this supposed cover were Luytjes’ professionalism and the quality of his planes. These highly modified aircraft were “guaranteed, in part, by state-of-the-art technology—custom-designed airborne radar detectors, for example, and computerized fuel management systems. In the course of about 40 missions over a four-year period, the ring never failed to make a delivery,” the New York Times reported in 1988. Luytjes used to boast that Air America's pilots could guarantee their arrival times within three minutes. “Nobody else can do that,' he claimed, 'not even Federal Express.’”

Luytjes was clearly at the pinnacle of the drug running world, largely due to his skills with aircraft acquisition and modification. This is evident by the fact that he sold the very C-123 aircraft that, upon being shot down over Nicaragua, began what’s now known as the Iran-Contra Affair.

In video from a 1988 Senate investigation Gary Betzner, another convicted drug pilot, admitted that he encountered the infamous Barry Seal at “an Air America facility in Pennsylvania.” Barry Seal was a military pilot turned drug smuggler turned informant who was ultimately gunned down by a cartel hitman.

Whether Luytjes was really involved with the CIA or not will probably never be truly settled, but regardless, the drug smuggling Cessna T310R’s strange journey was not finished.

After Air America was shut down and its assets seized by the state, it became a bonanza among government agencies to try and absorb the plentiful yield of drug money and assets. “The Deputy Attorney General presented an Equitable Sharing award in the amount of $1.1 million to the Attorney General of Pennsylvania… The US Customs Service … request[ed] office machines/equipment, furniture, conveyances, and some items of shop equipment.” The memo goes on to explain that the DEA was also preparing a list of asset requests but the Marshal’s were unaware of what that list would include at that time.

According to one document obtained by Motherboard, the U.S. Marshals wanted to use the Air America facility to “support air operations of the National Prisoner Transportation System (NPTS) throughout the Mid-Atlantic and New England regional areas.” The document goes on to explain how use of this facility and the seized aircraft could save a lot of money for their prisoner transportation operations.

The Marshals noted that their agency was the only one asking specifically for the facilities and aircraft. “The assets sought for official use by the Marshals Service… consist of a five-building complex… two aircraft [and] two motor vehicles…” On June 2nd, 1987 the Marshals received notice that the Deputy Attorney General approved the transfer of the seized Air America assets.

At the time of the property transfer from Air America to the Marshal’s Service, the aircraft now operated by the Minnesota DNR had logged nearly 1,000 hours. That total would increase for a few years in service of the Marshal’s Air Operations Division and then even further under the Minnesota DNR. Upon last check of flight history via ADSB Exchange, a flight tracker, the DNR did not operate extensively this summer after circling the George Floyd protests.

Prior to the adoption of the aircraft by the Forestry wing, the DNR housed the aircraft in their Division of Enforcement, a registration more in line with the previous history of the aircraft. The DNR entered into an agreement with the General Services Administration (GSA) in late 1994 requesting the aircraft for their own purposes. The GSA brokered the deal on behalf of the U.S. Marshals, which made use of the aircraft until it was no longer required. The deal was notarized in 1996.

It appears efforts have been undertaken to keep the plane shrouded in some degree of mystery.

In 2017, an official within the DNR’s Forestry division requested a change in tail-numbers, from N37250 to the current sequence. In doing so, the old registration information would not be as easily linked to this specific aircraft and the true history of its origins would remain largely unknown to most observers. Interestingly, the old tail number N37250 currently appears in the FAA civil registry under completely unrelated and deregistered status. The years of operation under the Air America status are simply absent from the registry.

Drug-Running Plane Seized by Feds Used to Spy on George Floyd Protests syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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lupine-publishers-oajess · 5 years

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Lupine Publishers|Wheat Leaf Rust Detection at an Early Stage with Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM)

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Abstract

In this study, we demonstrated the early stage wheat rust diagnosis using Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). Wheat rust is a common disease, caused by parasitic fungus and reduces crop yield up to 30 to 40 percent by effecting leaf and stem of plant. The wheat seed having fungus are the carrier of rust infection for the plant. The infected seed and rust fungus not only reduce food quantity but effect its quality. In our experimental research, the wheat leaf sample of day 10, 27, 35 and 45 were analyzed. The rust appears after day 24 on leaf, and rusted leaf has higher surface roughness than the normal one. We analyzed shape, surface structure of normal and rusted wheat leaf surface with AFM. The leaf protein and structure with high-resolution AFM imaging under controlled environmental conditions. The results revealed the morphological details of normal and viral infected proteins of wheat leaf with high-resolution in vivo study. The findings provide the basis for AFM as a useful tool for investigating microbial-surface structures and properties at an early stage of rust. We can visualize the starch granule surface at different stages of maturity reveals information regarding the development of granule architecture. The changes in infected leaf compared to normal can be seen at starch granule interior throughout the growth. Leaf surface shows depressions on the granule surface and changes in protein for the infected, and we can manage the disease at an early stage of rust development. These results will be used for an early stage detection of wheat rust and can be extended to other crops diseases detection using AFM and laser-scanning microscopy.

Keywords:Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM); Wheat Rust; Fungal Infection; viral detection

Introduction

In recent decades, there has been impressive growth in food production worldwide, which have been attributed to the development of improved, disease-resistant varieties, increased use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Although enough food is produced, but yet this food and the technology to produce it does not match the requirements and as a result about thousand million people do not get enough to eat and several millions die worldwide from hunger or hunger-related diseases [1-3]. During the period 1995 to 2050, the world’s population is projected to increase by 75 percent and food security projected to become more critical, increasing wheat yield potential in the developing world remains a high priority [4]. Among the other fungal and viral infections, wheat leaf rust caused by viral fungus continue to pose a major threat to wheat production over large areas, particularly in Asia. Rust diseases significantly influence several crop species and considerable research focuses on understanding the basis of host specificity and resistance. Like many pathogens, rust fungi vary considerably in the number of hosts they can infect, such as wheat leaf rust (Puccinia triticina), which can only infect species in the genera Triticum and Aegilops. Rusts often produce spots similar to leaf spots and are bright yellow, orange-red, reddish-brown or black in color. The pustules are usually raised above the leaf surface, and some types of rust occur on stems. Rusts are common on grains and grasses [5-7].

Wheat rusts spread rapidly over long distances by wind. If not detected and treated on time. For effective integrated management of wheat rust diseases close monitoring, international collaboration and strengthening of national capacities are crucial. Although in certain cases fungicide application may be necessary, preventive approaches are the most effective and environmentally friendly means of wheat rust management. specialists from international institutions and wheat producing countries work together to stop these diseases that involves continuous surveillance, sharing data and building emergency response plans to protect their farmers and those in neighboring countries. In general, a fungal infection can cause local or extensive necrosis and can inhibit normal growth of entire plant [8-10].

Several studies worldwide have been carried out for early rust detection. We have applied the surface morphological structure characterization using atomic force microscopy (AFM). It is a non-invasive method and are used for a variety of materials in surface science, biochemistry and biology [11-12]. It is a powerful technique and has the ability to obtain topographic information on, and surface morphology of, the sample. It can also use to investigate chromosomes, proteins, living cells, carbohydrates and DNA [13]. In addition to obtain detailed structural information on the sample and allows us to visualize the cell surface properties on the nanometer scale [14]. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) provides images of biological structures without requiring labeling and to follow dynamic processes in real time. In structural biology, it has proven its ability to image proteins and protein conformational changes at sub molecular resolution, and in proteomics, it is developing as a tool to map surface proteomes and to study protein function by force spectroscopy methods. The power of AFM to combine studies of protein form and protein function enables bridging various research fields to come to a comprehensive, molecular level picture of biological processes [15]. In this study, a wheat leaf rust through the field experiment by the identification and disease index inversion is investigated successfully at an early stage with AFM. The aim of this study is to provide a method for monitoring and evaluating the diseases, so that proper management for rust protection can be made will in time.

Materials and Methods

The normal and rusted wheat leaf were collected during the season from National Agricultural Research Council (NARC). The samples were fixed, and changes are observed using the Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM, Alpha Contac, Germany). About 40 samples including 10 control and 30 rusted are taken from field. The AFM system installed at National Institute of lasers and Optronics (NILOP) used to analyze the fresh sample taken from field in 1 to 2 hours. The sample of day 10, 27, 35 and 45 are observed. The rust appears after day 24 on leaf, and rusted leaf has higher surface roughness than the normal one. The surface imaging was performed in the contact mode in air. Silicon nitride tips (Alpha Contac, Germany) were used for all AFM experiments. The radius of the cantilever of the tip was 7 nm and the diameter of the tip was 14 nm. The length of the cantilever was 12.6 μm, thick-ness 3.52-4.08 μm, width 30-31 μm, and had an oscillation frequency of 287-336 kHz and a force constant of 28-45 N m-1. The images were analyzed by using WSXM 4.0 Develop 12.1 software for gaining information from the topography of the cells. The observation was performed inside a chamber at room temperature [1,2,3,16].

Results and Discussion

The leaf rust, caused by Puccinia triticina, is an important disease in most wheat growing areas. The use of genetic resistance is the most economical and environmentally friendly way to combat this disease. For early stage rust fungus detection, several conventional methods are being utilized [17-18]. Atomic force microscopy is a powerful technique, which allows surface imaging of non- conducting samples in nanometer scale. In this experiment wheat leaf are imaged under ambient conditions, i.e. in air and with minimal sample preparations. The wheat corps of normal and rusted field are shown in Figure 1. Determining the time and scale of primary infections is also difficult with leaf rust because P. triticinainfected wheat crops show weak symptoms during the latent period of the disease. The samples were collected from the field for day 10, 27, 35 and 45 and shown in Figure 2. The rust appears after day 24 on leaf, and rusted leaf has higher surface roughness than the normal one Leaf rust symptoms are also checked several times to distinguish it by stem rust outbreaks at different time. Wheat leaf rust samples collection and examination of signs and symptoms in the field is very essential before AFM test. In some cases, diagnosis of leaf rust often requires isolation of the fungus and identification of the fungal pathotypes on differential host genotypes, which is complicated and time-consuming. Monitoring and early detection of this disease is crucial for the effective control and implementation of measures. Recent developments of remote sensing technology had the potential to enable direct detection of plant diseases under field conditions. However, sometime due to poor resolution the detection probability reduces.

Figure 1: The field picture of wheat leaf normal and rust fungus infection crop overview.

Figure 2: The wheat rusts fungal infected leaf samples of day 10 (a) normal and for day 27 (b), day 35(c) and day 45(d) are collected and analyzed with Atomic Force microscopy (AFM) topographic, phase images, and their cross-section analysis.

The AFM study of rusted wheat leaf from very early stage of growth provides a means to quantify their mechanical properties and examine their response to nanoscale forces, pulling single surface proteins with a functionalized tip allow one to understand their role in sensing and adhesion. The combination of these nanoscale techniques with modern molecular biology approaches, genetic engineering and optical microscopies provides a powerful platform for understanding the sophisticated functions of the plant machinery, and its role in the onset and progression of complex diseases. Topographic image and the cross-section analysis of the samples of day 10, 27, 35 and 45 were imagine with AFM. The results can be seen in Figure 3 for the sample collected on day 10 (normal sample). It can be seen in Figures 2(a) & 3, no fungus attack is observed on leaf and it represents normal study. The rust fungus appears after day 24 on leaf, and rusted leaf has higher surface roughness than the normal one at day 10. The leaf starch granule surface structure can be seen in Figure 3. The observation represents essentially a top view of the surface enabling estimations in two and three dimensions of the size of different microstructures. The rust fungus appears after day 24 and the sample in Figure 2(bd) and two and three-dimensional AFM images in Figure 4. As seen in the topographic image block lets are clearly visible in image.

Figure 3: The Atomic Force microscopy (AFM) 2D and 3D topographic, phase image of Wheat leaf rust infection at day 10 for normal leaf. Scale of the axis of the cross-section analysis of topographic is 10 μm, angle 10-15o, whereas depth is 2.4 nm.

Figure 4: The Atomic Force microscopy (AFM) 2D and 3D topographic, phase image of Wheat leaf rust infection at day 45 for rust fungus infection. Scale of the axis of the cross-section analysis of topograph is 10 μm, angle 10-15o, whereas depth is 2.4 nm.

The AFM 2D and 3D images had dimensions between 10 x10 μm. Apparently, the blocklets were clustered or fused together at different heights forming nodules and are mostly elongated in shape. Depressions were also observed on the surface of the granule. Phase image in an AFM study highlights the stiffness of the sample surface. It records the phase lagging between the cantilever oscillation and the phase of driving signal giving an indication of relative stiffness at different locations of the surface of the sample, indicating rust formation. Thus, phase images can be utilized to recognize fungus and understand the microstructure inside depressions, which were hidden in the topographic image. The topographic image shows some corresponding features, surface roughness hinders the identification of domains. The phase image allows unambiguous resolution of the different material phases. The surface of the day 35 and 45 are similar to day 27 and indicate that top of the nodules was mostly stiffer than valleys, as shown in Figure 4.

The cross-section analysis of phase images, the stiffness of granule surfaces for normal and rusted leaf is different. The phase image further visualized the texture of surface depressions, which may be hidden in the topography, and the presence of deep gaps dividing bundles of nodules from each other. In contrast to the surface with blocklets commonly observed and reported in literature [19]. We can see that the presence of 4.5 nm deep depressions with higher stiffness similar to regular granule surface in the background of the amorphous surface suggests that these depressions likely extend to the underneath semi-crystalline growth ring. These depressions might also be a part of internal channels. The wheat tissue morphology can be described as a succession of more or less thick layers including the starchy endosperm layer, the protein stored as granules in the cells of plant seeds layer and the internal cells layers with external pericarp.

In past some researchers worked on an optical light detection for visible and near-infrared region to detect different types of rust at the leaf scale [20]. In this study, none of these indices were able to detect and discriminate the types of rust. However, the anthocyanin reflectance index can be used to detect yellow rust, and the transformed chlorophyll absorption and reflectance index can be used to detect leaf rust [21]. In another study conducted by Frank and Menz, hyperspectral and leaf multispectral data were used to estimate the severity of wheat leaf rust [22]. Results indicated that leaf rust could be detected in the early symptoms by using hyperspectral data. The algorithm used in this research was based on the minimum noise fraction transformation. The reflectance spectra of the infected, non-infected, and dry area, as well as the soil class were taken at the canopy level. Ashourloo et al. showed that the disease symptoms have a high impact on the infected plant reflectance spectra [23]. This means that as the disease severity increases, so does the collected spectrum variations at a specific disease severity. Results showed that as the disease severity increases, the scattering of the numerical values for all of the indices also increases. For the different amounts of scattering and classification accuracy are not the same and depend on the wavelength of light used. Wheat leaf rust at the leaf scale was studied for two purposes, one is to estimate the reflectance spectra of various disease symptoms; and other is to introduce an index for precise determination of disease severity using the spectral reflectance of leaf [24]. In our previous study we have applied optical detection techniques to several viral infection monitoring using human blood in vivo and in vitro [25-32].

Conclusion

In this, experimental studies we demonstrated that Atomic Force Microscopy AFM provides a powerful platform for detect wheat leaf rust fungus at nanoscale level. The main advantages of AFM are the ability to image and manipulate early stage fungus infection at nanometer resolution and its operation under a wide variety of physiological conditions for quantifying the physical properties of cellular structures and leaf surface molecules topography and structure morphology. The applied technique provides early stage detection of fungus pathogen, when it it cannot be observed visually. So, the protection management with anti-pathogen chemicals can be made to save the crop from disease. The development and combination of multiple orthogonal, yet complimentary, biophysical tools will clearly play a major role in illuminating a deeper understanding of the complex interplay between physical and biological information.

Collaborations between the Nano, physical and life sciences will lead to the AFM being used more routinely in studies of fundamental and complex biological processes. Such studies will lead to the understanding of the importance of the physical mechanisms governing fungal infection and its characteristics in biology. The atomic force microscopy (AFM) provides the structural, mechanical strength, topography, and surface morphology of the sample in easy way. The information related to the rust fungus infection at an early stage can facilitate the wheat management planning. AFM qualitative and quantitative imaging of granules and stomata support blocklet structural information of diverse starch systems. This imaging methodology will enhance other early stage rust detection techniques to be utilized for wheat food improvements.

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outweek30 · 5 years

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"Yes. I'm a lesbian. It's part of what motivates me to be a revolutionary."

Lesbian Political Prisoners

"Gay people have no stake in a system that is racist and sexist and that impoverishes some sectors of this society in order to enrich others ... I don't think that we will ever be liberated under this system. We may have a few more rights, but we'll never win our liberation as human beings without some kind of real revolutionary changes."

Shortly after she began to make these realizations in the late 60s, Laura Whitehorn was a Chicago housewife. She came out as a lesbian at about the same time that the Black liberation struggle and the anti-Vietnam War movement had convinced her that nothing short of revolution would guarantee human equality. And, for over 20 years, Whitehorn was an activist in women's communities and Black and Puerto Rican movements. In 1985 she was arrested for weapons possession.

In her statement to the court, Whitehorn declared that she lived by "revolutionary and human principles." Those words, said the judge, were reason enough to hold her indefinitely in preventive detention, under the Bail Reform Act of 1984. Four and a half years later, Whitehorn, at 44, remains in prison without bail. She has yet to be tried on the charges for which she was arrested. During her years of incarceration, she has been placed in 11 different jails and prisons, allegedly for security reasons. After she was moved to the Federal Correctional Institute in Pleasanton, California, Whitehorn was reunited with her friend, Linda Evans.

Evans, the daughter of an industrial contractor and a schoolteacher, had lived all her life in the Midwest, and had come to Chicago in the late 60s to enter college. She met Laura Whitehorn in the SDS, and has been a lesbian activist ever since. Twenty years later, she smiles and declares: "Yes. I'm a lesbian. I'm proud of it. ... It's part of what motivates me to be a revolutionary."

Linda Evans has spent her life as a community organizer. She organized so well against racism in lesbian, Chicano and Black communities, in fact, that the Ku Klux Klan put her on its death list. Evans bought four handguns to protect herself. She was arrested in 1985 for weapons possession, and sentenced by the state of Louisiana to 40 years in prison for making false statements to purchase these guns. At the age of 42, Linda Evans is serving a reduced sentence of 35 years. "The thing that's interesting about the Louisiana case," she says, "is that it's the same jurisdiction where the Ku Klux Klan tried to mount an invasion of Dominica, a Black island in the Caribbean in 1981. Don Black had ten other men with him; he had almost a million dollars in cash; they had a boat full of illegal weapons, machine guns and stuff. ... And he received a total sentence of three years and was out in 24 months."

Laura Whitehorn and Linda Evans are two of an estimated 200 progressive and leftist political prisoners in the United States. Held indefinitely without bail, convicted on exaggerated, if not false, charges, sentenced to many more years in prison than right-wing defendants, these prisoners are invisible to the general public. Their numbers include a range of activists, from New Afrikan and Puerto Rican nationalists who identify as "prisoners of war" and support armed struggle, to sanctuary workers and anti-nuclear protestors, who have received as many as 18 years in prison for their nonviolent opposition to government policies. The gay and lesbian movement, increasingly radicalized by government indifference to the AIDS crisis, is becoming more aware of these prisoners. In doing so, lesbians and gay men have begun to ask: What makes these people so threatening to our government? What does it mean to us and our movement that these prisoners exist?

Whitehorn and Evans are now in the Detention Facility in Washington, D.C They await trial there with four other political prisoners — Susan Rosenberg, Marilyn Buck, Alan Berkman and Tim Blunk — for the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Capitol Building and three other government sites in the D.C. area. The bombings, protesting the invasion of Grenada and other acts of U.S. foreign aggression, damaged property but injured no one. The defendants — who face up to 45 years in prison, if convicted — express support for the bombings, but maintain that they did not carry them out. The government, moreover, admits that it does not know who committed the bombings and that it has neither evidence or witnesses to prove that any of the accused were directly involved.

Yet the Resistance Conspiracy trial, as the defendants call it, promises to be one of the most politically vindictive events in decades. Although the trial will probably not take place until early 1990, the government has already installed a bulletproof plexiglass wall to separate defendants from the rest of the courtroom. Special video monitors have also been positioned to observe spectators and the defense table, but not the prosecution. These courtroom security measures — which legal experts say will intimidate spectators and make an impartial jury trial impossible — are virtually unprecedented in U.S. judicial history. They were noticeably absent when Oliver North was tried last spring, in the same courthouse.

North, who admitted having helped engineer the illegal drug and weapons sales that killed thousands of Central Americans, was never held in any form of preventive detention, and was not sentenced to any term in prison. "So the whole case is political," concludes Nkechi Taifa, attorney for Laura Whitehorn, adding "The whole pre-trial detention is political. And the government should not be allowed to use the criminal justice system to suppress political opposition."

The indictment, if successful against these defendants, may help set precedents in suppressing political activism. Because the government has no direct evidence to convict the six, it has charged them with aiding and abetting, and with conspiracy to "influence, change and protest policies and practices of the U.S. government...through the use of violent and illegal means." These are ingeniously broad charges, which could, in the future, be brought against an increasing number of protestors, whose dissent is labelled "violent" or "illegal" by the government. And though it may not be used immediately against actions like sit-ins and blockades, it could well discourage them from happening. "They want to make sure that they can determine the boundaries of our activity at every point," says Linda Evans.

Conspiracy and aiding and abetting charges are traditionally easy to prove. Once a jury is convinced that defendants hold the same political sympathies, convictions can be obtained through mere circumstantial evidence. The prosecution in this case will use the defendants' own political writings and personal letters — exempt here from First Amendment protection — to establish that the six have all known each other and oppose government policies. A jury might, therefore, have no trouble finding a "conspiracy," given such evidence as Evans' and Whitehorn's lifelong friendship and the fact that both were underground at the time of their arrests. "Linda and I have known each other longer than anyone else in this case," Laura Whitehorn says. "I'm proud of that. And so, some of our proudest history is what they're going to bring against us."

Going underground, leaving friends and lovers perhaps forever, was a difficult decision for Whitehorn and Evans. But as their activism grew, including Whitehorn's support work for the Black Panther Party, so did FBI surveillance. When Panther leader Fred Hampton was murdered, Whitehorn thought very hard about what Malcolm X had said before he was killed. "I'll never forget the picture of the Chicago police carrying [Hampton's] body out on a stretcher and grinning. ... And it was proven that not a single shot had been fired from inside the apartment. It was a complete assassination of this man. ... We all pretend that it doesn't happen here. But they do things that actually torture and kill people. And I just feel like it's the height of self-deception to think that we can draw lines about what we will and will not do to stop that kind of thing."

Their years of support not only for the rights of lesbians and gays, but also for Black and Puerto Rican nationalist groups, made them phenomenally threatening to the government. Eventually, Whitehorn and Evans decided, they could be freer to do their political work if they dropped out of the public movement. Observes Linda Evans, "If we really want to change the power structure, I think there's going to have to be a revolutionary movement in this country. But, in order to build it, we have to build the capability that's not completely infiltrated and controlled by the government, the FBI. ... That applies not only to the AIDS movement, but to all the solidarity movements. ... It's just not enough to believe that we're going to be able to win change through the legislatures."

Although they have lived in different parts of the country, Evans and Whitehorn always remained close, always supported one another in a variety of political work. So, while Linda Evans was living in a women's commune in Arkansas, fighting developers who were clearing the land with Agent Orange, Laura Whitehorn was in Boston, taking over the Harvard Building with a group of anti-imperialist women — an action that led to the founding of the Boston/Cambridge Women's School. And while Whitehorn was helping to defend Black homes during the anti-busing violence in Boston in the mid-70s, Evans was teaching women to print in a press collective in Texas. While Evans was struggling against the Texas Neo-Nazis and the Klan, Whitehorn was organizing the Madame Binh Graphics Collective in New York City.

"We come out of a sector of the anti-imperialist movement that was dominated by women and lesbians," says Laura Whitehorn, "and I think the government is very well aware of that. And that's why one of the things that we've seen in the last few years was he development of the Lexington High Security Unit, to deal with women political prisoners."

The Lexington High Security Unit was opened in 1986 and within months became infamous for its isolation and sensory deprivation measures used to subdue women whom the Bureau of Prisons deemed "assaultive" or "escape prone." Yet the women assigned to the Unit — political prisoners Susan Rosenberg, Silvia Baraldini and Puerto Rican "prisoner of war" Alejandrina Torres — had never been convicted of injuring or assaulting another person. Nor had any of them presented behavioral problems while in prison. Finally, in 1988, after an international campaign that included the efforts of Puerto Rican groups, women's communities, church organizations and Amnesty International, the Lexington HSU was closed by court decree as a violation of the prisoners' First Amendment right to political freedom.

The closing of Lexington is known to many activists. What is not yet known is the fact that the government appealed the closing, and on September 8, 1989, won its appeal. Implications for every political prisoner in this country are devastating. "Now," says Linda Evans, "the Bureau of Prisons has absolute license to put us in any conditions it wants to, based solely on our past political affiliations and beliefs."

Although the government may not reopen the Lexington HSU, it has begun to create conditions in the Shawnee Unit for women in Marianna, Florida, that duplicate if not intensify, those of Lexington. Already, continues Evans, "They have installed television sets in the cells, which means they can lock us down and say that we're having social interaction via television, instead of via human beings."

"Lock down" is a form of solitary confinement familiar to political prisoners. People in lock down are caged in tiny, often parasite-infested cells for 23 hours each day. They are allowed out, in handcuffs and leg shackles, for one hour to shower and make phone calls. If Evans, Whitehorn, Susan Rosenberg and Marilyn Buck are convicted of the D.C. bombings, say defense attorneys, they will undoubtedly be sent to Marianna. Their codefendants Alan Berkman and Tim Blunk will be sent to the Marion Prison for men in Illinois, which is under permanent lock down.

Tough new "anti-crime" campaigns are making an open secret of the fact that U.S. prisons are used to dispose of unwanted sectors of society. In April 1989, the Justice Department reported that there was a total of 627,402 men and women in U.S. prisons. This is the largest prison population of any country in the world and, in less than five years, it is expected to rise to well over one million. Most U.S. prisoners are people of color, who, outside prison, represent "minority" populations. The rate of Black imprisonment alone is twice that of South Africa. "What I see in this jail," says Laura Whitehorn, "and in every jail I've been in, is genocide against Black people, and I think it's worse than it ever was."

Given our society's dependence on prisons, it is in the interest of the social "order" to strip prisoners of any form of self-respect. Women are continually under threat of sexual attack by male guards, and frequently raped with speculums or hands by prison officials in search of "contraband." Male prisoners are often beaten when they refuse to obey an order. Prisoners of both sexes are routinely subjected to humiliating — and unnecessary — strip searches. "Sexuality is not possible in prison," says Laura Whitehorn. "Sex is, but sexuality as a creative form of human expression — forget it. Certainly not under these conditions."

Yet in filthy, overcrowded U.S. prisons, lesbian and gay prisoners still attempt to love each other. They must literally risk their lives to have sexual relationships, since prisons have categorically refused to give out condoms or materials on safer sex. "They can bust you at any point," says Linda Evans. "Because sex is illegal in prison. And so you can be punished for having loving relationships, even though that clearly is one of the most rehabilitative things that can happen to someone."

Obviously, the primary purpose of U.S. prisons is not rehabilitation. While heterosexual prisoners in the general population may at times receive conjugal visits from their spouses, gay prisoners cannot even afford to acknowledge that they have lovers on the outside. Recently, report Whitehorn and Evans, a male prisoner's lover of three and a half years was stricken from the visiting list after authorities discovered that the prisoner was gay. Suspected of being gay or of IV drug use, prisoners in some states are tested against their will for HIV, the virus associated with AIDS, although treatment is rarely available. Once discovered to carry it, they are subjected to enormous abuse and contempt.

Whitehorn and Evans knew that they were taking a great risk in coming out as lesbians in prison. They realized they would open themselves up to the same kind of danger and humiliation that gay people face daily on the street; only in prison, the danger would be constant and inescapable. But coming out, they decided, was something they could do to continue to resist. And being open about their sexuality at times connects them solidly with the women around them. "I'm not saying this is Sisterhood City," remarks Laura Whitehorn, "but I find that there's something about talking to women about why I'm a lesbian, which has a lot to do with my own feelings of love for women and affirming that love, that come back positively."

Their defense attorneys see the "conspiracy" as the government's, not their clients'. If everything goes according to government plans, they say, Laura Whitehorn, Linda Evans and their codefendants will die in prison. They will be known, if they are known at all by the general public, as "terrorists," with a bizarre taste for violence. And those on the outside will judiciously avoid any semblance of extremes in their political speech or activity.

But all this may not prove to be so easy for the government. Already, activists have begun to learn about the case and respond. And 80 percent of this response, say Evans and Whitehorn, comes from lesbians and gay men. An open letter asking the government to drop the charges against the Resistance Conspiracy six has appeared in several gay and progressive publications; so far, 12 ACT UP chapters across the country have signed it, as well as hundreds of individual lesbians and gays. People in the community have also begun writing to these prisoners. Linda Evans speculates on the reason for this involvement:

"I think some of that is because the gay and lesbian movement is extremely under attack, because of the problems that our community has with AIDS and because of the rise in violence. ... and of the increasing sexism in our society in general. And I think that that means lesbians and gay people have recognized that, being under attack, we have to fight back."

— Susie Day, OutWeek Magazine No. 20, November 5, 1989, p. 16.

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anearthstruckalien · 6 years

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[ It was predictable. Inevitable. The consequence of being so closely entangled to such a despicable creature. It is the ultimate culmination of everything that has occurred since the cyborg arrived here. This is it. It has all been leading up to this point like ‘fate’ itself. This was to be their destiny it seemed; serving someone that is flawed beyond all belief until further notice. And yet… his overall posture was tense, his tail rigidly set atop the cold floor, pale hands clawed into fists while his blankly neutral gaze was rigidly set on a blank wall opposite to the surveillance monitors. The confrontation between the cyborg and their ‘master’ had long since ended. Both of them had long since exited this universe entirely. But, here he still was anyways. Staring at a blank wall ever since he had turned away from the monitors following the cyborg’s (literally) crushing demise. He doesn’t comprehend it. He doesn’t comprehend why this… bothers him so much. This had long since been accepted as a likely outcome to this situation. And his choice to do nothing had been the rational one to make with respect to his goals here on Earth… for even if he had gotten involved and prevailed over the Arkan leader… what then…?

A leader like that has stupidly loyal followers. Many of them whom might retaliate against Giegue himself or even this world as a whole because of what one individual did… as was the case with George. And even if he would counter it every single time… just how many times would it take? How many times would her home-planet be put in danger because of his own actions…? How many times would the life on her home-planet have to suffer again and again before it stops…? Would it ever end or are the rest of these creatures just as flawed (or even more so) as their leader? One entity is not worth betraying what he had promised to do. It isn’t worth betraying her. And so, in the end… the Psion doesn’t regret his decision. Not really. He did not even have a genuine emotional attachment to the cyborg anyways. So it shouldn’t rationally bother him. But it did… upon seeing them get treated that way. And it still does long after their demise where ultimately… –recommissioning will certainly be what they will have to forced to endure back on their home-planet. All the same, this is what is best for the Earth. It was the most rational course of action he could have possibly taken here. And yet… that feeling won’t go away. That terrible feeling won’t disappear. He’s just… sad. Not drowning in despair or heartbroken. Just irrefutably sad. A slow and bemused blink. But… why? Why should he even be sad at all…? It doesn’t even make sense in this case.

A moment or two of mental silence passes… before the answer just hits him out of nowhere, as though it were another emotion of his. Because someone had something precious taken away from them. Right after being told that it could not possibly apply to them; something that they most desired and cherished, snatched away from them just so that they could be used for someone else’s petty goals instead. Because some general characteristics of that entire interaction had served as a reminder of the miserable past. A rat-like tail begins to swish about uneasily from side-to-side. Of all the times he had been scolded for being who he was at his very core. For emulating his adoptive human parents. Of all the times he had been told that how he felt about his parents was little more than a ‘misguided attachment’ to ‘lower life-forms’ and that saving George from termination (and thus inadvertently enabling his escape) was a disgusting reflection of that. Of all the times he was told that he needed to be ‘better than this’ and live up to the promise the experiment had instilled in him… –to overcome his flawed way of thinking and start being a productive member of Psion society as is what was expected of him and so much more. Of when he had failed his first invasion of Earth and… was almost… well… it didn’t happen. That’s what matters most now. It didn’t happen. He didn’t let them terminate him and attempt to start over using his remains. And he never will.

A deep inhalation of breath and he closes his singular dark blue void for a moment. Then another. And another… before his train of thought continues, some internal peace returning. The reason why he is sad is because there’s something decidedly… painful about being reminded of all that. And that doesn’t even cover everything. A brief shake of the head to himself. No. There’s still more as to why he’s so sad about this turn of events. And now, he knows that it is undoubtedly because the reason why any of this happened at all is due to his own presence here on Earth. That unnatural and overwhelming presence whose extraordinary power would never fail to shine through no matter what attempts he may make to conceal it. It seems that it is an inevitable and unavoidable beacon for those whom have an interest in it for one reason or another. Dangerous and utterly ruthless entities like the one that had recently left. That Giegue himself is here on Earth at all is precisely what’s putting its life-forms along with the planet itself in danger to begin with. That was certainly the case here and it will likely continue to be the case in the future given the infinite number of possible universes (and the entities that they harbor –that this universe alone harbors amidst its dark depths) comprising the multiverse.

The swishing of his tail comes to an abrupt halt mid-air and he opens his eye anew. That is why he has to leave this planet as soon as possible… and never come back. He now (at long last) begins to move from his position and walk towards the surveillance room’s exit. Yes. If he hopes to fulfill what he had promised ever since that time he had returned to 1997... what he vowed he would do for her... then he must leave to protect her home-planet, all the innocent life-forms inhabiting it, and most importantly of all... members of her bloodline. From now on… there will be no more staying on any kind of planetoid for very long. The pale alien’s dull gaze sharpens a little in a kind of concentrated determination as the sadness further fades away, slowly yet certainly being replaced by indomitable resolve --the same kind which had driven him to defy ‘fate’ itself. And any location that does get visited at all would have to be either what is absolutely necessary and barely noticeable or dead worlds that have no life on them and that any significant civilization has long since stopped caring about. All he needs to do now is call all of his starmen back and make all other required preparations to depart…

It had taken a bit of time (not too much though) but now he’s ready to depart in the ship he had built in anticipation of the possibility that he may have to leave Earth be it for one reason or another. One glance up at the sky outside would indicate that it’s late into the night by now. But, he doesn’t look. Not at the night sky nor at any other of his surroundings. There’s no use in looking back now. And no point in saying ‘goodbye’ to any of it either. This had never been his home. And he had never bothered with forming any emotional attachments to the life-forms on this planet... which in light of everything that has led up to this point… is for the better. It is better that his circumstances are this way. Because in the absence of things like a home, family, and friends… not only is there an absence of what would otherwise distract him from properly achieving his goals, but it also simplifies the matter of doing what has to be done… –of making choices like this one to simply leave. As such, once the Psion is outside where his ship is located at the back of Mt. Itoi, he doesn’t hesitate to teleport on it and almost as quickly, the ship too disappears off into the pitch black of the star speckled night skies. ]

#.writingpost #.giegue #here's a follow-up of my own on things and wow it took a lot to write it up #i'm all burnt out but yeah tldr; giegue left earth because he thinks that his being there is putting it in danger #of course this is just in relation to the 'main' stuff that happens on here #in alternative continuities on this blog where something like this doesn't happen... he's still on earth obviously pf #.ruler of scientists: rp 5 #.rulerofscientists: rp 5 #.timeline: interuniversal interference

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tak4hir0 · 5 years

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The Fantasy of Opting OutThose who know about us have power over us. Obfuscation may be our best digital weapon. There are still ways to carve out spaces of resistance, counterargument, and autonomy. Image: Lianhao Qu, via UnsplashBy: Finn Brunton & Helen Nissenbaum Consider a day in the life of a fairly ordinary person in a large city in a stable, democratically governed country. She is not in prison or institutionalized, nor is she a dissident or an enemy of the state, yet she lives in a condition of permanent and total surveillance unprecedented in its precision and intimacy. As soon as she leaves her apartment, she is on camera: while in the hallway and the elevator of her building, when using the ATM outside her bank, while passing shops and waiting at crosswalks, while in the subway station and on the train — and all that before lunch. A montage of nearly every move of her life in the city outside her apartment could be assembled, and each step accounted for. But that montage would hardly be necessary: Her mobile phone, in the course of its ordinary operation of seeking base stations and antennas to keep her connected as she walks, provides a constant log of her position and movements. Her apps are keeping tabs, too. Any time she spends in “dead zones” without phone reception can also be accounted for: Her subway pass logs her entry into the subway, and her radio-frequency identification badge produces a record of her entry into the building in which she works. (If she drives a car, her electronic toll-collection pass serves a similar purpose, as does automatic license-plate imaging.) If her apartment is part of a smart-grid program, spikes in her electricity usage can reveal exactly when she is up and around, turning on lights and ventilation fans and using the microwave oven and the coffee maker. Surely some of the fault must lie with this individual for using services or engaging with institutions that offer unfavorable terms of service and are known to misbehave. Isn’t putting all the blame on government institutions and private services unfair, when they are trying to maintain security and capture some of the valuable data produced by their users? Can’t we users just opt out of systems with which we disagree? Before we return to the question of opting out, consider how thoroughly the systems mentioned are embedded in our hypothetical ordinary person’s everyday life, far more invasively than mere logs of her daily comings and goings. Someone observing her could assemble in forensic detail her social and familial connections, her struggles and interests, and her beliefs and commitments. From Amazon purchases and Kindle highlights, from purchase records linked with her loyalty cards at the drugstore and the supermarket, from Gmail metadata and chat logs, from search history and checkout records from the public library, from Netflix-streamed movies, and from activity on Facebook and Twitter, dating sites, and other social networks, a very specific and personal narrative is clear. If the apparatus of total surveillance that we have described here were deliberate, centralized, and explicit, a Big Brother machine toggling between cameras, it would demand revolt, and we could conceive of a life outside the totalitarian microscope. If the apparatus of total surveillance that we have described here were deliberate, centralized, and explicit, a Big Brother machine toggling between cameras, it would demand revolt, and we could conceive of a life outside the totalitarian microscope. But if we are nearly as observed and documented as any person in history, our situation is a prison that, although it has no walls, bars, or wardens, is difficult to escape. Which brings us back to the problem of “opting out.” For all the dramatic language about prisons and panopticons, the sorts of data collection we describe here are, in democratic countries, still theoretically voluntary. But the costs of refusal are high and getting higher: A life lived in social isolation means living far from centers of business and commerce, without access to many forms of credit, insurance, or other significant financial instruments, not to mention the minor inconveniences and disadvantages — long waits at road toll cash lines, higher prices at grocery stores, inferior seating on airline flights. It isn’t possible for everyone to live on principle; as a practical matter, many of us must make compromises in asymmetrical relationships, without the control or consent for which we might wish. In those situations — everyday 21st-century life — there are still ways to carve out spaces of resistance, counterargument, and autonomy. We are surrounded by examples of obfuscation that we do not yet think of under that name. Lawyers engage in overdisclosure, sending mountains of vaguely related client documents in hopes of burying a pertinent detail. Teenagers on social media — surveilled by their parents — will conceal a meaningful communication to a friend in a throwaway line or a song title surrounded by banal chatter. Literature and history provide many instances of “collective names,” where a population took a single identifier to make attributing any action or identity to a particular person impossible, from the fictional “I am Spartacus” to the real “Poor Conrad” and “Captain Swing” in prior centuries — and “Anonymous,” of course, in ours. We can apply obfuscation in our own lives by using practices and technologies that make use of it, including: The secure browser Tor, which (among other anti-surveillance technologies) muddles our Internet activity with that of other Tor users, concealing our trail in that of many others.The browser plugins TrackMeNot and AdNauseam, which explore obfuscation techniques by issuing many fake search requests and loading and clicking every ad, respectively.The browser extension Go Rando, which randomly chooses your emotional “reactions” on Facebook, interfering with their emotional profiling and analysis.Playful experiments like Adam Harvey’s “HyperFace” project, finding patterns on textiles that fool facial recognition systems – not by hiding your face, but by creating the illusion of many faces.If obfuscation has an emblematic animal, it is the family of orb-weaving spiders, Cyclosa mulmeinensis, which fill their webs with decoys of themselves. The decoys are far from perfect copies, but when a wasp strikes they work well enough to give the orb-weaver a second or two to scramble to safety. At its most abstract, obfuscation is the production of noise modeled on an existing signal in order to make a collection of data more ambiguous, confusing, harder to exploit, more difficult to act on, and therefore less valuable. Obfuscation assumes that the signal can be spotted in some way and adds a plethora of related, similar, and pertinent signals — a crowd which an individual can mix, mingle, and, if only for a short time, hide. There is no simple solution to the problem of privacy, because privacy itself is a solution to societal challenges that are in constant flux. There is real utility in an obfuscation approach, whether that utility lies in bolstering an existing strong privacy system, in covering up some specific action, in making things marginally harder for an adversary, or even in the “mere gesture” of registering our discontent and refusal. After all, those who know about us have power over us. They can deny us employment, deprive us of credit, restrict our movements, refuse us shelter, membership, or education, manipulate our thinking, suppress our autonomy, and limit our access to the good life. There is no simple solution to the problem of privacy, because privacy itself is a solution to societal challenges that are in constant flux. Some are natural and beyond our control; others are technological and should be within our control but are shaped by a panoply of complex social and material forces with indeterminate effects. Privacy does not mean stopping the flow of data; it means channeling it wisely and justly to serve societal ends and values and the individuals who are its subjects, particularly the vulnerable and the disadvantaged. Innumerable customs, concepts, tools, laws, mechanisms, and protocols have evolved to achieve privacy, so conceived, and it is to that collection that we add obfuscation to sustain it — as an active conversation, a struggle, and a choice. Finn Brunton is assistant professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. He is the author of “Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet” and coauthor (with Helen Nissenbaum) of “Obfuscation: A User’s Guide for Privacy and Protest,” from which this excerpt is adapted. Helen Nissenbaum is professor of information science at Cornell Tech and the author or coauthor of several books, including “Privacy in Context” and “Values at Play in Digital Games.” She is one of the developers of TrackMeNot, a browser extension used to foil the profiling of users through their searches.

#The MIT Press Reader

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briannamcguireblogpost1medi-blog · 7 years

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Social and Interactive Media

Media 104 Social and Interactive Media: Short Discussion Paper YouTube

Brianna McGuire

YouTube allows processes such as social capital and social surveillance that enabled creators to produce, conduct and create content while building their own self-entitlement in commercial situations. The following authorizes and increases content creator’s popularity, gaining an economic capital.

YouTube is a form of social network entertainment that allows creators to share and upload videos. The website is free for the public to subscribe to a content creators channel and watch any of their videos. Processes and norms like Social capital and social surveillance are frequently established in YouTube allowing creators to develop a lifetime career. Jake Paul, Jeffery Star, and Zoella are clear examples of creators using their own platforms as a source of social norms, social capital and social surveillance gaining views and increasing their economic capital.

Processes within interactive social media such as Norms is an informative guideline as to what is considered normal or correct social behaviour within a society. An example of this is a recent rule among YouTube within the last year is, creators are not allowed to swear or say anything inappropriate. They are unable to use songs for a period of time or otherwise the video is considered copyright. This is disrupting the way creators present their content. Having to adjust to new YouTube rules otherwise YouTubers will not get any profit. Affecting their economic capital as the website is constantly surveilling YouTubers. A Positive outcome is its allowing creators to be more creative without using foul language and using copyright music. YouTube has also YouTube has updated and upgraded introducing Livestream for content creators. Broadcasting live, users are able to ask questions and comment via the comment section, connecting and feeling as if you are skyping or talking to the creators. Social surveillance is normalized throughout social practices in today’s society. Zoella, is an English fashion and beauty YouTuber, with 11 million subscribers. Majority of her viewers are young fangirls that aspire to live and be like her. She has been sponsored by companies and brands, the online clothing store Boohoo sponsored three of her videos. She picked clothes she found attractive and created a Boohoo haul. Sponsored videos is a social norm among YouTube, defining how successful the creator has become as they are able to be sponsored by big corporate companies. Jake Paul, is a young YouTube sensation. Some of his social norms are not accepted by viewers and creators of the YouTube community. “The song sucks, it’s really a trash song” (H3H3 Productions). He is a bad influence within his fan base as he is bringing his destructive behaviour into the YouTube community and educating his fans to act wildly and irrationally. Throughout his content, he is constantly always in new relationships. YouTube has normalized and accepting relationships or anything to be used as clickbait. Jake Paul applies this to entice his audience into watching his videos. I have observed that Jake and many other YouTubers tend to put on the act in front of the viewers when filming. We as users have normalized and accepted this concept without even consciously knowing it. The performance is a part of creator’s job, it is very repetitive presenting them in a specific way in front of a camera. Jeffery Star, the beauty guru is an example of this. In all of his intros in his videos, he says, ‘What’s up everybody, welcome back to my channel!’. Its apart of creators and who they are. YouTubers have started a social norms trend where the creator does a draw my life video explaining their entire upbringing. Yet this is socially normal among the YouTube community it is also invasive and exposing their life to everyone on the internet.

Social Capitalism is trusting relationships which allow users to support one another. Trust allows users to find and work with a community in social networks. Creators build their social capital by producing trusting relationships and opportunities. This helps other people within the community. YouTube community, users, and creators are able to promote and advocate each other. YouTube allows creators to social capital, by sharing, adverts, promotions, views, likes, subscribe mentioning, merch, suggested videos of the same YouTuber along the right side of the video. Increasing the chance your video will not only end up in the trending section of the social network but also suggested on other people’s videos if a word is in the title of another creator’s content. This is a huge part of YouTube as trending is the most viral and popular videos for the day. An example of social capital is Jake Paul, his social platform, and social capital has skyrocketed within the past 6 months gaining up to 5 million subscribers. He has 11 million subscribers. He has two other YouTube channels suggested on the right side of his channel. The more views and likes he receives from his channel (social capital), the more advertisements you will get, expanding your economic capital. Jake has organised a group of young males and females YouTube stars that have been signed up to contracts to Jakes company labelling them as Team 10. The group gets paid a certain percentage from all videos made Jake Pauls social capital large. Team 10 do not swear for age appropriation as they are aware of the younger fangirls watching their content. The team pull pranks on one another and produce carnage usually for entertainment, views, and clickbait as everything is videoed. For example, he pretended to get married to his girlfriend. The YouTube sensation is the first social media influencer to be regular on a TV series. He was a main character in the Disney TV show Bizzardvark. He regularly mentioned Disney and his show encouraging his consumers to watch the show benefiting not only himself as fans would tune into his show but increase Disney’s numbers of viewers. He has labelled his fans as ‘Jake Paulers’ to develop a community and family of his fans. Developing this community of social capital, girls are able to connect and establish new friendships as they all have an idol to discuss and bond over.

The star is a clever powerful man with his economic capital as ‘the amount of power a person has within a field depends on that person’s position within the field, and the amount of capital she or he possesses. Of course, one of the advantages of being in a position of power is that it enables groups or agents to designate what is ‘authentic’ capital” (Webb 23). He created a video called its everyday bro and it got approximately 127 million views. He references “It’s everyday bro” in all videos to share an interactive connection with his viewers. Climaxing his social capital, also perusing his viewers to subscribe and buy his merch at the end of his videos. Everyday bro has caused a lot of controversy as a large portion of his users are people that dislike him but cannot resist the captivating, cringy, clickbait titles. However, it has so many views it did not matter as his economic capital climaxed. “YouTuber hit headlines for all the wrong reasons recently, when claims that he’s turning his residential street into a ‘living hell’ for neighbours spread earlier this month” (Wood). Reiterating the nuisance, he is to others within the YouTube community. Other big creators of YouTube have reacted to his everyday bro song increasing their social capital gaining his subscribers and watch because they dislike Jake Paul is destructive as he uses his social capital to show off his bad behaviour in front of his subscribers, he is not a good role model. He’s made videos about burning couches, causing havoc throughout the family neighbourhood. Jake’s destructive content has afforded him to have haters, causing a negative side of YouTube. Explaining his 2 million dislikes on everyday bro video. He manipulates the audience with his social capital to increase his economic capital. Jake is a new young YouTuber and has turned his channel into a pure business, as all he wants is views. Older content creators love creating videos whereas young YouTubers are milking the site for profit.

Social Surveillance is monitoring and observing the behavioural, activates or other information that is changing. Purposes of influencing, directing and protecting people. This includes observation from electronic equipment, such as CCTV cameras or internet traffic. Social surveillance is the “[S]ystematic and routine attention to personal details” (Marwick 381). This is via internet social platforms among every person that signs up and creates an account. A lot of people are unaware of “Social technology's role in surveillance is well-documented”(Marwick 379). Social networks collect the personal data provided by users. The reasoning as to why there is so much social surveillance throughout social platforms is because the government wants to determine and be conscious if any users are obliging or doing any illegal matters. This asserts power and acknowledges visibility by social networks. YouTube stars, bloggers, celebrities are conscious of this. For instance, Jake Paul is a daily vlogger and is constantly uploading giving his consumers a sneak peek into his everyday life. Jake exposes a lot of himself on the network, implying he always has social surveillance from his consumers watching his content and YouTube.

Norms and Processes like social capital and surveillance is a benefit to YouTube content creators, growing their platform, communicating to consumers while being observed by users and the network YouTube itself. Jake Paul, Zoella, Jeffery Star and H3H3 productions have all creators that have followed these processes. Modifying and shaping YouTubers content creatively to develop a successful career.

#media104 #jake paulers #zoella #jefferystar #social capital #socialsurveillance

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s-leary · 8 years

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Fascism Watch, March 4-5

Trump

Trump, Offering No Evidence, Says Obama Tapped His Phones. This whole article is amazing. Here's a small portion:

"It would have been difficult for federal agents, working within the law, to obtain a wiretap order to target Mr. Trump’s phone conversations. It would have meant that the Justice Department had gathered sufficient evidence to persuade a federal judge that there was probable cause to believe he had committed a serious crime or was an agent of a foreign power, depending on whether it was a criminal investigation or a foreign intelligence one.

Former officials pointed to longstanding laws and procedures intended to ensure that presidents cannot wiretap a rival for political purposes.

“A cardinal rule of the Obama administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice,” said Kevin Lewis, a spokesman for Mr. Obama. “As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen.”

But a senior White House official said that Donald F. McGahn II, the president’s chief counsel, was working on Saturday to secure access to what Mr. McGahn believed was an order issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorizing some form of surveillance related to Mr. Trump and his associates.

The official offered no evidence to support the notion that such an order exists. If one does, it would be highly unusual for a White House to order the Justice Department to turn over such an investigative document, given the traditional independence of law enforcement matters."

White House requests Congress investigate whether Obama administration abused power

Trump flashes anger over Sessions recusal, Russia stories in tense Oval Office meeting

The Conspiratorial Game of Telephone in Bannon’s Rag that Made Left, Right, and POTUS Go Crazy

Comey Asks Justice Dept. to Reject Trump’s Wiretapping Claim

Mr. Comey, who made the request on Saturday after Mr. Trump leveled his allegation on Twitter, has been working to get the Justice Department to knock down the claim because it falsely insinuates that the F.B.I. broke the law, the officials said.

A spokesman for the F.B.I. declined to comment. Sarah Isgur Flores, the spokeswoman for the Justice Department, also declined to comment.

Mr. Comey’s request is a remarkable rebuke of a sitting president, putting the nation’s top law enforcement official in the position of questioning Mr. Trump’s truthfulness.

It's literally pay to play at Mar-a-Lago

It's a nice setup for those who want some government favor and can afford a six-figure check. And it's a nice setup for Donald Trump.

Jeff Sessions, who couldn't possibly have anything better to do this weekend, was greeting guests at a gala.

Trump sons, planning expansion of family business, look to leverage campaign experience

The company says it has signed at least 17 letters of intent with potential developers. It is targeting an array of cities such as Austin, Dallas, St. Louis, Nashville and Seattle — and Trump Jr. said the campaign proved useful in forging relationships with potential new connections.

“I met people along the way that would be awesome partners,” he said.

Yet another person connected to Trump and Russia has died: Alex Oronov. Oronov was connected to Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, whom you might remember from his colorful threats to the Daily Beast over their coverage of Ivana Trump's abuse claims.

Last week I wrote about Michael Cohen and his extensive network of personal and business relationships in the Ukrainian-American emigre community. One of those was a man named Alex Oronov, who runs a major agribusiness concern in Ukraine. Oronov was a partner in the ethanol business Cohen and Cohen's brother Bryan set up in Ukraine about a decade ago. Oronov is Bryan Cohen's father-in-law. Today we learned that Oronov apparently organized that 'peace plan' meeting that brought together Ukrainian MP Artemenko, Cohen and Felix Sater. About four hours ago Andrii Artemenko, the Ukrainian parliamentarian who came to New York with that 'peace plan', went on Facebook to announce that Alex Oronov has died.

Oronov reportedly lived in one of Trump's Florida condos.

Keystone pipeline won't use US steel despite Trump pledge

Trump campaign applies to trademark ‘Keep America Great!’ as his 2020 campaign slogan

Trump's long history of racism is well documented, but this moment from Don Cheadle is just... wow.

(@DonCheadle tweet)

Immigration

Trump to unveil new immigration ban on Monday. Here's the weird part: “Employees at DHS were instructed to work from home on Monday morning.” Are we planning for a Reichstag fire, or do we just not want anyone at work to answer the phone?

Trump admin. plans expanded immigrant detention. We'll have the best internment camps, big league, lots of federal contracts, with bonus slave labor.

(@Luvvie tweet)

ETA: The sign appears to be street art.

After Decades In The U.S., NY Immigrant With Years-Old Pot Conviction Faces Deportation

Deportation of grandmother leaves a San Diego military family reeling

Clarissa Arredondo, 43, is the mother of Adriana Aparicio, whose husband is a Navy veteran working as a contractor in Afghanistan. The couple has two daughters, 2 and 3, and Arredondo, who came to the U.S. more than 25 years ago, helped take care of them.

Congress

Some GOP lawmakers’ block-everything mentality could imperil big-picture plans

Across the Capitol, there’s a new generation of Republicans who have risen to power since the GOP last attempted to enact a sweeping agenda that would overhaul big pieces of the economy such as the health-care and tax systems. Quite simply, there aren’t many Republicans around with muscle memory of what it’s like to craft large pieces of legislation that rely almost entirely on votes from their side of the aisle.

The problem is particularly acute in the House, where just 60 Republicans — a quarter of their caucus — have ever served in the majority with a GOP president.

Moreover, more than 160 House Republicans are getting their first taste of working with a Republican president. Their entire legislative careers until now have been dedicated to stopping an administration’s actions.

Cabinet & Federal Appointees

Sessions Will Submit Amended Testimony, Address Senators’ Questions on Monday. Get your popcorn ready.

Home Alone in the Trump Administration

President Trump has appointed fewer than three dozen of the top 1,000 officials he needs to run the federal government. Worse, he doesn’t think that’s a problem.

The president seems to have lost interest in the nomination process after making his cabinet and Supreme Court picks, people involved in the transition say. Now, he’s trying to pass off his inattention as some kind of plan. “In many cases, we don’t want to fill those jobs,” he said on Fox News this week. “What do all these people do? You don’t need all those jobs.”

The Washington Post has a handy tracker for positions requiring Senate confirmation. Trump keeps complaining that Congress is dragging its feet on confirming his nominees, but there are currently 517 positions he hasn't even nominated.

The Curious Case of Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s New Terrorism Guru. He's advising on national security but doesn't appear to have security clearance.

Even Scott Pruitt thinks the not-yet-public proposed EPA budget cuts are too much.

Under Trump, an Already Depleted I.R.S. Could Face Deep Cuts. It's madness to cut the agency that's in charge of bringing in money, unless perhaps Trump doesn't like the fact that they expect money from him and his friends.

Trump's budget proposal includes steep cuts to NOAA, surprising no one. Still, that's depressing.

Trump's neglect of the CDC while China is experiencing a bird flu epidemic has set up the US for a health crisis

This Stunningly Racist French Novel Is How Steve Bannon Explains The World. '“The Camp of the Saints” tells a grotesque tale about a migrant invasion to destroy Western civilization.' It really is stunning; steel yourself before reading this.

#fascism watch #fascism #resist #donald trump #jeff sessions #james comey #steve bannon #don cheadle #scott pruitt #sebastian gorka #alex oronov #don mcgahn #nodapl

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