TBR News March 6, 2016
The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C., March 6 2016: “Turkey is now facing incipient rebellion of its Kurdish population. These represent about 25% of the population of Turkey and occupy much of that country. The government of Turkey is harassing the Kurds, who are allied with the US in Syria, and eventually, Ankara will regret its attempts to reprise the 1916 massacre of the Christian Armenians. A hostile Russia has been clandestinely supplying Kurdish nationalists with weapons and, with black humor evident, giving them American-made weapons! When the Turks find these in the hands of Kurdish nationalists, they blame the US for arming their enemies.”
Conversations with the Crow
On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA’s Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley’s widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley’s CIA files.
Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal , Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment. Three months before, July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md. After Corson’s death, Trento and his Washington lawyer went to Corson’s bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled ‘Zipper.’ This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley’s involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever
After Crowley’s death and Trento’s raid on the Crowley files, huge gaps were subsequently discovered by horrified CIA officials and when Crowley’s friends mentioned Gregory Douglas, it was discovered that Crowley’s son had shipped two large boxes to Douglas. No one knew their contents but because Douglas was viewed as an uncontrollable loose cannon who had done considerable damage to the CIA’s reputation by his on-going publication of the history of Gestapo-Mueller, they bent every effort both to identify the missing files and make some effort to retrieve them before Douglas made any use of them.
Douglas had been in close contact with Crowley and had long phone conversatins with him. He found this so interesting and informative that he taped and later transcribed them.
These conversations have been published in a book: ‘Conversations with the Crow” and this is an excerpt.
Conversation No. 24
Date: Wednesday, July 17, 1996
Commenced: 9:20 AM CST
Concluded: !0:11 AM CST
RTC: Good day, Gregory.
GD: And a good day to you, too. How are you doing? RTC: A decent day today. And you?
GD: Busy with the new Mueller book.
RTC: Anything of interest to me? GD: No, probably not at this point. I am working on the real origins of the Second World War at this point. Not the he-said or they-said fictional crap and pap but the real meat. Taylor1 covered much of this in his book on the subject but there is more. I discuss the threat of Poland in 1932 to physically invade Germany if Hitler were not silenced. They moved troops to the borders but the threats gradually subsided. Hitler, on the other hand, did not forget this. And Beck, their foreign minister, was an idiot and could easily have diverted the German threat of aggression. But I look more into the economic aspect of the war. Germany lost all her gold reserves after the war because she had to pay everyone in sight for a war she did not start. Then the western states kept the corrupt Weimar government afloat with short-term and high-interest loans. Weimar was corrupt and degenerate but Germany was a great producer of saleable goods so she was encouraged to work more. All of this post-Wilsonian manipulation was directly responsible for the conditions that allowed Hitler to assume power. There were two things he did that assured eventual war with England and the United States. One, he instituted the barter system whereby Germany would trade, let us say, new locomotives to the Argentine in exchange for their beef and wheat. Normally, Germany would have gone to the London banking houses for a loan, high interest of course. Or the Argentine people would have done the same. The barter system completely bypassed them and they stood to lose billions of pounds thereby. And, do not forget, that the British bankers were almost all Jewish and there was on-gong anti-Semitism in Germany. It wasn’t Hitler’s aim, postwar bullshit pseudo-historians to the contrary, to kill off all the Jews. He only wanted to root them out of German society and force them to emigrate.
RTC: But to where? No one wanted any of them. Jews are not liked, you know.
GD: Nor trusted. Müller set up training schools so that Jews could learn farming and go to Palestine. Wonderful! The Arabs howled and so did the British. They did not want Jews there at all. Diplomatic representations were made and Ribbentrop ran to Hitler so the useful project was stopped. Then, Mueller told me he chartered the SS. St. Louis to take 900 Jews to Havana. Everything OK except that when Roosevelt found out about this, he forced the Cubans to cancel their landing permits. Isn’t that wonderful of him? And Roosevelt and Breckenridge Long did everything they could to keep Jewish Germans out of the country. Even little children. And parenthetically, note that in 1941, Roosevelt seized over two hundred million dollars in Jewish assets in this country and kept them. Never gave a penny back either. His son got some of it. Oh, all in the archives but believe me, Robert, not a word then, now or ever in our press. Can’t do that. It was all the evil Hitler, not Roosevelt.
RTC: You say that if Hitler were not such an anti-Semite, there might not have been a war? GD: Hitler was institutionally anti-Semitic, Robert. You see, the Germans had always gotten along with their Jews who had been in the country for a long time. No, after Pilsudski, the same one who threatened to invade Germany in ’32, came to power in Poland, he forced out huge numbers of Polish Jews, most of whom fled either to Germany or the United States. The German Jews were Sephardic, Semitic and cultured but the Polish Jews were Khazars, Mongoloid Turks, brutal, nasty and detested by both the Polish and the Imperial Russians. I have met a few in situ and believe me, they are all vicious swine. So, they flooded into a prostrate Germany in the early ‘20s and stole everything they could. By the way, these so called eastern Jews were detested by the German ones. But these were the Jews that enraged their German hosts and brought down the active persecutions and expulsions. Interesting to note that after the war when many of the Polish Jews were released from the detention camps, they tried to go back to Poland where they were promptly subjected to pogroms and wholesale death. No, they then went to Israel where they make up most of the population and now practice their filthiness on the defenseless Arabs. But that’s off the topic here. It was Hitler’s attitude towards the Jews coupled with the potentially lethal barter system that spelled his doom. The Jewish bankers both in Britain and here got together and started a huge propaganda campaign against the Germans and egged both Roosevelt and Churchill into making trouble.
RTC: But Churchill was not in power in the late ‘30s.
GD: I know but he had influence and wrote for the press. These bankers hired Winnie to front for them and whore that he was, he went right along with them. You can find some of this in Fuller and the rest in other unnoticed publications but it’s all there. Marx was right when he discussed the economic backgrounds to major wars. Yes, Robert, make room for General Fuller in your library and you will have a much clearer view. Of course none of this will ever get into the American press because guess who owns it? RTC: I well know, Gregory. But they work with us and I see no Don Quixote-like necessity to cut my own throat or that of the Company. The Jews have a great power in this country now and one does not attack them; one works with them if you take my drift.
GD: Oh, I understand fully. Do you like them, Robert?
RTC: Evil little rats, Gregory, treacherous, envious and dangerous in the extreme. I know this sounds terrible but even though I am well aware that Hitler never gassed them, he should have. All of them and then there would be peace. There will never be peace in the Middle East unless and until Israel grabs up all the useful Arab lands and expels them from the area the way they were expelled from Poland and Germany. Remember, Gregory, that the abused child becomes the abusing parent. Send me the references on Fuller and I will send you a stack of papers on this subject. And if you choose to use them, for the Lord God’s sake, keep me out of it. The Jews would make my life miserable here.
GD: I know. They would insert a newly discovered chapter into the fake Ann Frank diaries all about you visiting Holland during the war and shoving plump Jewish babies into bonfires. By the way, all seriousness aside, I have discovered rare documents that at least partially supports the silly Holocaust stories. Would I bore you?
RTC: No, certainly not.
GD: In April of 1943, all the Jews of Europe were transported to Berlin and when there, were jammed into the Alexander Platz in Berlin. At the stroke of noon on April 20th, his birthday, Hitler came out onto his balcony and addressed an immense crowd of German Girl Scouts and school children. A cannon was fired and this huge army of girls, all armed with weenie forks, charged into the Alexander Platz and butchered at least thirty million screaming Jews. My God, the Swedish Ambassador wrote that huge raging rivers of blood roared down the Berlin streets, swamping cars and drowning thousands of Berliners before running into the Spee and Havel rivers. Ah, Robert, the truth is worse than the fictions. And the SS and Postal Employees barbecued the remains, after removing interesting tattoos for the lampshade makers, and Berlin feasted for weeks afterwards.
RTC: (Loud and prolonged laughter) Gregory, you are really a terrible person. You will kill me with these stories. No, I know it isn’t true. I mean I knew that when you mentioned the Postal employees. If you ever told that story to a Jew, he would either beat you to death with his purse or literally explode with anger. Do tell that to Tom Kimmel, why don’t you? I would love to hear him when he rang me up, babbling about how psychotic you are. Or, better still, why not tell it to Wolfe?
GD: Oh, I think not. Bob is very old and getting senile and he might just melt down like the Wicked Witch of the West, leaving only a pair of sodden dignity pants and a beanie behind. No, I just thought you would like to hear what that nut Irving calls the Real Truth for once.
RTC: Well, such a nice history, lesson Gregory. The Hebrews should be happy you have a limited audience or they might get agitated.
GD: Pascal once said that to destroy a man, make a fool out of him. Humor is a great weapon and as I have said before when I tell my little stories, always look for the truth in the jest!
(Concluded at 10 :11 AM CST)
Apple case exposes ongoing government rift over encryption policy
Marech 5, 2016
by Joseph Menn and Dustin Volz
Reuters
San Francisco-Even as the Department of Justice battles Apple in court over access to encrypted data, the Obama administration remains split over backing requirements that tech manufacturers provide law enforcement with a “back door” into their products, according to a dozen people familiar with the internal debate.
FBI Director James Comey and the DOJ – who are fighting to access an iPhone tied to the San Bernardino attacks – have long tried and failed to convince other departments to join the broader battle against unbreakable encryption, the current and former government officials said.
Federal justice officials argue that strong encryption makes it harder to track criminals, a central contention in the iPhone case. But officials in other departments – including Commerce, State and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy – counter that encryption is integral to protecting U.S. secrets and the technology industry. The issue has been discussed in meetings of the interagency National Security Council and elsewhere.
Some government officials also worry that confronting the tech sector on the issue could heighten distrust of American products overseas and drive terrorists and top criminals to seek foreign-made encryption.
Several key officials in the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security opposed the fight with Apple based on those concerns, the sources said.
Luke Dembosky – until recently the deputy assistant attorney general for national security and the senior cybersecurity prosecutor on some of the biggest hacking cases in recent years – cast the broader disagreements over encryption as “very healthy.”
“It’s a very big government, and everyone is trying to do the right thing,” said Dembosky, who last week joined the law firm Debevoise & Plimpton LLP. “There are countries where they don’t have these debates.”
NSA Director Michael Rogers has taken a middle ground, saying that strong encryption is important but compromise is desirable.
Years of interagency debates over encryption have left the Obama administration lacking a cohesive policy stance on the issue, many tech industry leaders have said.
The Justice Department last month persuaded a federal judge to order Apple Inc to write software to help unlock an iPhone used by shooter Rizwan Farook in the December attack in San Bernardino. Apple is fighting the order, calling the case an overreach by prosecutors that threatens the security of all iPhones. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for later this month.
NO GOVERNMENT CONSENSUS
As is customary in such cases, the decision to take action against Apple was made without consulting the White House, said two sources familiar with the matter.
“The DOJ and FBI pursue all such matters independent of the White House,” a senior administration official said.
The official added that the White House does not intend to seek legislation mandating back doors.
In an interview, John Carlin, assistant attorney general for national security, dismissed suggestions that some administration officials did not support the Justice Department’s action in the Apple case. The effort was never intended to settle the encryption debate, he said, but rather to assist San Bernardino County, which asked for help in unlocking Farook’s county-owned iPhone 5c. The tech industry has united behind Apple, with more than 40 companies this week submitting legal briefs arguing that compliance with the judge’s order would undermine encryption and public trust in Internet security.
By contrast, the division among government agencies has left some administration officials in an awkward position of publicly supporting the Justice Department’s case against Apple while also acknowledging the need for strong encryption. They have been more vocal about their concerns behind closed doors, according to four people who have spoken with them or their subordinates.
“Just to cut to the chase, I’m not a believer in back doors or a single technical approach,” Defense Secretary Ash Carter told a largely pro-Apple crowd at the RSA security conference on Wednesday. “I don’t think we ought to let one case drive a single solution.” Congress is also divided on the issue, with liberal Democrats joining libertarian Republicans in opposing government back doors.
ELUSIVE COMPROMISE
The lack of consensus prompted the White House last year to abandon a push for legislation that would require U.S. technology firms to provide law enforcement a way around encryption.
Privately, however, President Obama sought a compromise, asking large telecommunications and technology firms, including Apple and Microsoft, to work toward an “exceptional access” agreement that would provide investigators access to content that is typically encrypted, said two sources with knowledge of the discussion.
An Apple spokesman said that the company never seriously considered installing a back door and tried to shift the discussion to a broader conversation about law enforcement cooperation.
Either way, Apple CEO Tim Cook lambasted the White House for not publicly affirming support for strong encryption at a January summit in San Jose, Calif. between technology executives and senior national security officials convened largely to discuss online extremism, sources familiar with the meeting said.
Cook’s comments aggravated White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, who thought the iPhone maker was backtracking on its earlier commitment to work collaboratively on resolving law enforcement’s encryption concerns, according to one person with knowledge of the situation.
That confrontation helps explain why, after months of apparent respectful disagreement in public and private pursuit of compromise, both sides suddenly came to battle heavily armed.
Amid the hostilities between Apple and the FBI, some have called for President Obama to weigh in to help resolve the standoff.
“I’m waiting to hear what the president has to say about it,” Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, who supports Apple, said in an interview. “I know [White House Press Secretary] Josh Earnest has said he is for the Justice Department, [but] I want to hear from the president.”
(Editing by Jonathan Webe, Sue Horton and Brian Thevenot)
Libya: How Hillary Clinton Destroyed a Country
She’s learned nothing from her blood-soaked failure
March 4, 2016
by Justin Raimondo
AntiWar
“We came, we saw, he died,” exclaimed an ebullient Hillary Clinton, as she exulted over the horrific death of Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, who was sodomized with a bayonet before being brutally murdered by rampaging militiamen. Visiting Tripoli, the Libyan capital, the American Secretary of State was eager to take credit for the “liberation” of yet another Muslim country by Western powers acting in concert. An extensive and quite revealing New York Times investigation (Pt. 1 here, Pt. 2 here) reports on “a ‘ticktock’ that described her starring role in the events that had led to this moment. The timeline, her top policy aide, Jake Sullivan, wrote, demonstrated Mrs. Clinton’s ‘leadership/ownership/stewardship of this country’s Libya policy from start to finish.’ The memo’s language put her at the center of everything: ‘HRC announces … HRC directs … HRC travels … HRC engages,’ it read.”
These days, however, out on the campaign trail, Mrs. Clinton is not quite so eager to take ownership of what can only be characterized as an unmitigated disaster, a case history dramatizing the perils of “liberal” interventionism from inception to bloody denouement.
Mrs. Clinton was easily won over by the Libyan rebels who presented a utopian view of what the post-revolutionary era would look like: there would be free elections, a free media, women would be able to “do it all,” and everyone would get a pony. They “’said all the right things about supporting democracy and inclusivity and building Libyan institutions, providing some hope that we might be able to pull this off,’ said Philip H. Gordon, one of her assistant secretaries. ‘They gave us what we wanted to hear. And you do want to believe.’”
Confirmation bias in a writer or reporter is fatal, but only to his/her own career: in a Secretary of State it is a death sentence for thousands. And that’s exactly how it turned out in Hillary’s case.
To this day, Clinton avers that “it’s too soon to tell” whether the Libya intervention qualifies as an unmitigated failure – even in the face of marauding militias, no less than two self-declared governments, the horrific death of an American ambassador at the hands of the very militias we empowered, and the incursion of the Islamic State, al Qaeda, and other terrorist outfits. She refused to be interviewed for the Times article.
While Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Vice President Joe Biden opposed regime change, Clinton took the side of the younger “back-benchers,” as the Times calls them, who wanted to go in there and “get on the right side of history.” The misnamed “Arab Spring” was in full bloom, and the media was pushing the idea that this was a great awakening of “democracy.”
Hillary, who had hesitated at first to jump on the bandwagon during the Egyptian events, made up for lost time in Libya. She “pressed for a secret American program that supplied arms to rebel militias, an effort never before confirmed,” the Times reports. Those arms would be used to attack a CIA outpost in Benghazi, where Ambassador Stevens would fall at the hands of these very militiamen.
While initially the US was purportedly acting only to prevent civilian deaths at the hands of Gaddafi – a “humanitarian disaster” that turned out to be nothing but media-driven war propaganda – Hillary and her staff soon fell down the slippery slope to actively aiding the rebels. The ‘responsibility to protect” soon became another regime change operation, as in Iraq.
“’We don’t want another war,’ she told [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov, stressing that the mission was limited to protecting civilians. ‘I take your point about not seeking another war,’ she recalled him responding. ‘But that doesn’t mean that you won’t get one.’”
The French were pushing particularly hard for a more muscular Western response, and in a meeting with French and British officials the frogs played their “trump card,” as the Times describes it. Although the meeting was convened to decide whether to act, Clinton was informed that “French fighter jets were already in the air” – but, added the French official, “this is a collective decision and I will recall them if you want me to.”
This certainly gives new meaning to the phrase “leading from behind” that administration officials used to describe our role. Clinton was supposedly “irritated,” but she capitulated readily enough.
“’I’m not going to be the one to recall the planes and create the massacre in Benghazi,’ she grumbled to an aide. And the bombing began.”
The Libyan leader, who had ruled his country for more than 40 years, knew what the outcome would be. His regime, “he railed to anyone who would listen,” was Libya’s sole defense against Islamist crazies who would overrun the country if not for him. But no one in the West was listening.
Clinton was jazzed that this was supposedly a model of “multilateralism,” with the Arab League as well as the Europeans in on the deal. But that proved to be the original mission’s undoing as Qatar – a little shithole of an oil-rich country long dependent on the US military for its miserable existence – starting funneling weapons to Islamist militias with dubious credentials. This is how we were pressured into going from “humanitarian intervention” to regime change. If we didn’t arm the “good” militias, Clinton argued, the bad ones being empowered by Qatar would prevail. Yet military officials were not convinced:
“NATO’s supreme allied commander, Adm. James G. Stavridis, had told Congress of “flickers” of Al Qaeda within the opposition. Mr. [Tom] Donilon, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, argued that the administration could not ensure that weapons intended for ‘the so-called good guys,’ as one State Department official put it, did not fall into the hands of Islamist extremists.”
As the Times makes all too clear, Clinton has a bias in favor of action, as well as relying on what can only be called a woman’s intuition. Her aides, the Times says, “described her as feeling her way through a problem without being certain of the outcome.” Another word for this is recklessness.
Clinton eventually succeeded in persuading President Obama, who signed a presidential finding authorizing a covert action to overthrow Gaddafi. US weapons poured into the country. The militias were unleashed, while Clinton hailed the elections that were staged shortly after the “liberation.” Yet as it turned out the elected officials had no real power: the guns were in the hands of the militias, who extorted government officials for more weapons in return for not being killed. The country went to pieces rather quickly, but our Secretary of State and would-be President had already moved on: she was too busy plotting regime change in Syria to be bothered with the unraveling of Libya.
Clinton wanted to make a deal with the Qataris that we would arm their favored radical Islamists in Syria if they would lay off aiding al-Qaeda-type crazies in Libya. But when the President vetoed her Syrian regime change plan, the proposed deal was off – and Libya continued to deteriorate into the Mad Max scenario we see today.
She quit the State Department after losing the internal debate over Syria, and is now campaigning for the highest office in the land on a platform of “love and kindness.”
Not that there’s much “love and kindness” in the country she destroyed almost single-handedly.
This Times story dropped like a stone: although normally one would expect such a damning account of a presidential candidate’s tenure as Secretary of State to be grist for the media mill, there wasn’t so much as a peep about it from anywhere else – including from the Republican candidates, never mind from Bernie Sanders.
A woman who could very well occupy the highest office in the land, with near total control of US foreign policy, basically committed an entire nation to perdition. Where’s the outrage? Who is drawing the lessons learned from all this?
Netanyahu gov’t is implementing annexation of West Bank as secret but official policy –
March 3, 2016
by Yossi Gurvitz
Mondoweiss
Last month we at Yesh Din published our new position paper, “From Occupation to Annexation,” which deals with the way the Israeli government is implementing the conclusions of the Levy Commission Report without any public debate or even an official government decision – an implementation which is dragging Israel into de facto annexation of the West Bank, one that does not grant the annexed their rights.
First, we must distinguish between annexation and occupation. International law recognizes the legitimacy of an occupation, i.e. a state in which one power occupies a territory where a local population lives. But the assumption of international law is that occupation is a temporary affair; the occupier is considered to be a trustee who maintains what he has conquered until the conflict is over. Furthermore, the occupier is not allowed to make long-term changes in the region. An annexation is a one-sided takeover by a state of a territory by use of force or threats of it, and is impermissible under international law – a part of the lessons of the Second World War on which so much of international law is built on.
Our position paper does not deal with the Levy Report itself (to which we dedicated a whole report of our own) but with its implementation. Nevertheless, we must say a word about the report itself: it is nothing less than a revolution in the how the State of Israel has come to regard the occupied Palestinian territories. According to the report, the state’s legal position is that the occupied Palestinian Territories are not occupied, since they were promised to the Jewish people by the British Mandate.
The Israeli government never officially adopted the Levy Report. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed Levy (former minister Silvan Shalom noted the PM knew precisely why he was appointing him) but never dared to officially adopt his document. Why? To begin with, the present situation of occupation is actually good for Israel. It confers partial legal legitimacy to its military presence (not its civilian presence) in the West Bank. If the West Bank is not occupied, then the situation looks suspiciously like annexation. And as we noted earlier, annexation is prohibited.
Secondly, no one in the world would accept the legitimacy of Israeli control that leaves Palestinians devoid of rights. An official adoption of the Levy Report would be a hasbara catastrophe; no one in the world would accept the Israeli claim that nearly 50 years of military control is not an occupation.
But even though the government never officially adopted the report, it effectively began implementing it. On the legal front, the Foreign Ministry published a document in late 2015 that adopts the spirit of the Levy Report. According to the document, Israel has a right to build settlements, based on the British Mandate charter. This claim became part of the Foreign Office Cadet Training Program and was distributed to all Israeli delegations in the world, accompanied by a directive saying this is the Israeli position and that it should be translated and published on the website of every delegation.
The Justice Ministry also adopted the spirit of the Levy Report and its position vis-à-vis the legality of the illegal construction in the settlements and outposts, particularly when it relates to the possibility of future legalization.
At the same time, on the more practical (if long-term) side, the Justice Ministry began carrying out one of the report’s recommendation and on started on creating a new court that would deal exclusively with issues related to land in the West Bank. This court will only include Israeli judges, as it will likely be a military court. The meaning for a Palestinian who wants to protect his property will be clear: don’t waste your time. Palestinian trust in the Israeli military courts is already low and is in decline.
But the more immediate aspect of the Levy Report, which was also noted by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, is the retroactive legalization (in Hebrew, “kosherization” – turning something impure into something kosher) of the illegal outposts in the West Bank. Some 80 out of around 100 outposts are built, at least partially, on private Palestinian land. As such they are illegal intruders, and in addition most of the buildings have been served with demolition orders due to illegal construction. Until recent years the government did not bother to enforce its own orders, telling the courts that the buildings are in fact illegal and that they would be demolished at some future date, and according to its own preferences. This happened only in the relatively few cases in which an appeal was filed against the illegal construction. As for illegal construction that did not make it to the courts? The government had no plan of doing anything about it.
The government has changed its position since the report was published: now it tells the courts, time and again, that those same outposts are intended for legalization. True, even in the past the government delayed the evacuation until the arrival of the messiah, but at least it stated its intent to evacuate them. Not any more.
In order to legalize the outposts, the Netanyahu government has taken two main steps. In July 2015, Netanyahu ordered the creation of a “re-organizing committee” — a governmental team whose goal is the purification of the impure through “re-organizing” the legal situation vis-à-vis land, thus granting a legal cover for the outposts. This team is supposed to finish its work in the coming weeks. Needless to say, changing the rules in order to create settlements in the West Bank is a violation of international law. But international law is for the gentiles — we have the Balfour Declaration.
The second tool used by the Netanyahu government is the “re-ordering law.” This law is supposed to force the Palestinian owners of land to accept compensation for giving up their legal rights to the land they own, so as to prevent the evacuation of outposts and illegal structures. The Netanyahu government believes in private property, unless the person in question is Palestinian. The “re-organizing” law is an attempt to turn the Levy Report into legislation. The bill, as presented by MK Yoav Kish, specifically names four settlements and outposts whose evacuation or partial evacuation was ordered by the High Court of Justice. Such a law, were it to pass, would lead to land confiscation not intended for pressing military needs – an act prohibited by international law. In addition, the law itself is a declaration by the Knesset it has the right to pass legislation regarding the West Bank — a symptom of annexation. It is an acceptance of the Levy Report’s position that the laws of occupation are invalid in the West Bank, and that the territory is under the sovereignty of the Knesset.
Beyond all these tricks, whose purpose is to prevent the evacuation of Israeli land invaders, the government is busily working on enlarging the pool of state land, in a way that will permit the enlargement and legalization of outposts. This is done under the so-called “blue line team” – a team whose duty is to examine and fine-tune the borders of land that had previously been turned into “state land.” Between 2012 and 2015, state land in the West Bank grew by 63,771 dunams; state land is not allocated to the Palestinian communities in the occupied territory, as might be expected of an occupying force that obeys its legal obligations. Instead, most of it goes to the settlements and outposts. According to the data supplied by the government, the Civil Administration allocated only 7% of state land for Palestinian use.
And these are only a few of the examples presented in our position paper. When it comes to dispossessing Palestinians of their land, the Netanyahu government and its jurists are showing impressive creativity. The final result of all these processes is the creeping, de-facto annexation of large swaths of the West Bank. Beyond the fact that this is in direct contravention of international law, it is all happening without the government allowing public debate. After all, it’s taking place behind closed doors by committees whose work is anything but transparent or exposed to public criticism. Most of the time we only hear of them after they have made their decision.
Contrary to what is often said, the Netanyahu government does have a policy in the West Bank. It simply prefers you won’t hear of it. So here it is, before you.
A New Study of Modern Bigotry
Different…but the same!
by Harry von Johnston PhD
In this article the author draws strong parallels between the Evangelical Christians and the Holocaust Jewish religious/political movements.
And these parallels are most certainly there.
Both are oriented to gaining political and economic power.
Both have made extensive use of fictional writings. In the case of the Evangelical Christians, the Rapture and the Battle of Armageddon which are recent inventions (ca 1910) by a Charles Parham Fox and are not in the Bible. Parham Fox was a convicted thief and child molester.
Also, note that none of the Gospels were contemporary with the purported career of Jesus and in the ensuing centuries, have been constantly rewritten to suit current political needs. Further, the mainstay of Evangelical Christians is the so-called ‘Book of Revelations’ purported to have been written by John the Devine, Jesus’ most intimate friend. This was certainly not written by someone living at the time of Jesus’ alleged ministry but over fifty years later. The actual author was one John of Patmos who was resident at the Roman lunatic colony located on the island of Patmos. This particular work is beloved of Evangelicals because it is so muddled, obscure and bizarre that any meaning can, and is, attributed to it.
I refer the reader to “Foundations of Christianity” by Karl Kautsky (a Jewish German early Communist and secretary to Engels)
The nationalistic Zionist movement does not have a great body of historical supportive material so, like the early Christians, they have simply invented it. These fictions include, but certainly are not limited to, “The Painted Bird” by Kosinski, (later admitted by its author to be an invented fraud before his suicide, ) and “Fragments” by “Binjimin Wilkomersky” ( A Swiss Protestant named Bruno Dossecker who was born in 1944) that is mostly copied from the Kosinski book and consists of ‘recovered memory,’ and of course the highly-propagandized favorite “Anne Frank Diary” which was proven, beyond a doubt, by the German BKA(Bundes Kriminal Amt, an official German forensic agency) as a forgery, made circa 1949 (ball point ink was used on paper made after 1948 and the handwriting completely different from the original Frank girl’s school papers still extant) All of these frauds have been, and still are, considered as seminal truths by the Holocaust supporters and the discovery of fakery loudly denied by them, and questioners accused of being ‘Nazis.’ This closely parallels the same anger expressed by the Evangelicals when their stories about the Rapture or the Battle of Armageddon are questioned by anyone. Here, doubters are accused of being ‘Satanists’ and ‘Secular Humanists.’
I refer the reader to “The Holocaust Industry” by Norman Finkelstein, a Jewish academic and the son of genuine survivors of the German Concentration Camp system.
When confronted with period and very authentic evidence that the death toll among Jewish prisoners never approached even a million, or that there were no gas chambers in use at any prison camp, the standard, and badly flawed counter argument is that while the accuracy of the period German documents is not in question, as everyone knows that 6 millions of Jews perished, therefore the names are on so-called ‘secret lists.’
When asked where a researcher could view these documents (the actual German SS records, complete, are located in the Russian Central Archives in Moscow) the ludicrous response is that because these lists are secret, no one has ever seen them! This rationale does not even bear comment.
The Christians have their Passion of the Christ, which may or may not have happened, (it was in direct opposition to Roman law which governed Judea at the time,) and the Jews have their long agony of the Holocaust, which is an elaborate and fictional construction based on fragmentary facts. A Jewish supporter, Deborah Lipstadt ( a well-known academic) has said repeatedly that the word holocaust must be capitalized and can only be used to discuss the enormous suffering of the Jewish people. The huge genocidal programs practiced by the Turks against Armenian Christians in 1916 and the even larger massacres by Pol Pot in Southeast Asia may never be likened to the absolutely unique Jewish suffering, according to current Zionist-Holocaust Jewish dogma.
Both stress the suffering and death of their icons, in the former case, the leader of their cult, which initially consisted entirely of very poor Jews, and in the second, an entire people. Both sides have enormous public relations machinery in place which is used constantly to promulgate both faiths and both are hysterically opposed to any questioning or debate on any aspects of their faith.
The issues of suffering, death and prosecution are both used to fortify their positions in society and render it difficult for anyone to attack them. These issues are also used to gain political power (for the Evangelicals) and money (for the Zionist-Holocausters)
Both of these groups seek a high moral ground from which to attack any questioning of their faith and because many of the adherents to both beliefs are aware that their houses are based on sand, fight fiercely lest a storm arise, beat upon both houses and thereby cause a great fall (to be Biblical in expression.)
It’s Discounted, but Is It a Deal? How List Prices Lost Their Meaning
March 6, 2016
by David Streitfeld
New York Times
SAN FRANCISCO — As traditional retailing falters, shutting stores and shedding workers, online merchants are reaping the rewards. People like the convenience of e-commerce, and they love the feeling that they are getting a deal.
The perception of a bargain is fostered by online retailers’ use of something variously labeled list price, suggested price, reference price or manufacturer’s suggested retail price. Whatever its name, the implication is that people are paying much more somewhere else.
But with many products online, you could not pay the list price even if you wanted to. That is because hardly anyone is actually charging it. It is a sales tactic that is drawing legal scrutiny, as well as prompting questions about the integrity of e-commerce. If everyone is getting a deal, is anyone really getting a deal?
Here is one recent example of how retailers use list prices to motivate online buyers: Le Creuset’s iron-handle skillet, 11 ¾ inches wide and cherry in color.
Amazon said late last week that it would knock $60 off the $260 list price to sell the skillet for $200. Sounds like a bargain, the sort of deal that has helped propel Amazon to over $100 billion in annual revenue.
Check around, though. The suggested price for the skillet at Williams-Sonoma.com is $285, but customers can buy it for $200. At AllModern.com, the list price is $250 but its sale price is $200. At CutleryandMore.com, the list price is $285 and the sale price is $200.
An additional 15 or so online retailers — some hosted by Amazon, others on Google Shopping — charge $200. On Le Creuset’s own site, it sells the pan for $200.
“Everyone expects a deal on the web,” said Larry Compeau, a professor at Clarkson University who is an expert on pricing strategies. “Nobody wants to pay retail. Some sellers are now willing to deceive consumers to make the sale.”
The use of list prices online is at the heart of a case in a California Court of Appeal. Overstock.com, a popular online merchant, was found liable in a lower court for using misleading reference prices to exaggerate potential customer savings. It was fined $6.8 million, twice the size of the next-largest penalty for false advertising in California.
In its appeal, Overstock said it followed “standard industry practices” to come up with its reference prices. Internet retailers including Wayfair, Walmart, Rakuten (formerly Buy.com), Crate & Barrel and Williams-Sonoma employ list prices to varying degrees. Amazon, the biggest e-commerce player, uses them extensively and prominently
If some Internet retailers have an expansive definition of list price, the Federal Trade Commission does not.
“To the extent that list or suggested retail prices do not in fact correspond to prices at which a substantial number of sales of the article in question are made, the advertisement of a reduction may mislead the consumer,” the Code of Federal Regulations states. The F.T.C. declined to comment.
“If you’re selling $15 pens for $7.50, but just about everybody else is also selling the pens for $7.50, then saying the list price is $15 is a lie,” said David C. Vladeck, the former director of the F.T.C.’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “And if you’re doing this frequently, it’s a serious problem.”
All of the retailers declined to be interviewed, as did Le Creuset. Amazon pointed to a disclosure on its website where it says the list price can have many origins: It can be the price on the product itself, it can be the price suggested by the manufacturer or supplier, or it can be Amazon’s guess as to what the list price should be. The retailer also said its list prices “may or may not” represent the prevailing price “in every area on any particular day.”
“The list price has become a meaningless piece of information,” said Mr. Compeau, who was an expert witness for the California district attorneys who brought the case against Overstock.
Meaningless, but useful. Even as the importance of a fixed list price has waned in the physical world, it has become more deeply embedded online.
Retailers, as Amazon indicated, often are supplied with list prices by the manufacturer or the brand. “The manufacturer uses list price in an aspirational way — it’s what they wish they could charge,” said Victor Rosenman, the chief executive of Feedvisor, a start-up that helps e-commerce companies price competitively.
“Then the retailer says to his customer, ‘The manufacturer recommended X, but I’m selling it at Y. It’s a better deal,’ ” Mr. Rosenman said. “As to how that price compares to anyone else, it’s your job as a consumer to figure out.”
The Overstock case went to trial in late 2013. In one example cited by the district attorneys, a man bought a patio set from the retailer. It cost him $450, a discount of 55 percent from the list price of $999. The buyer was somewhat alarmed to find a Walmart price tag on his purchase for $247, a price he confirmed was the going retail price.
Overstock said that was a simple error, but among the evidence presented during the trial were internal documents indicating that deals were not as good as they seemed. “Oh I think it’s been established that the ‘List Price’ is egregiously overstated,” one Overstock memo said. “This place has some balls.”
In another email, Overstock asked a supplier to increase its list price, presumably so the Overstock price would appear even cheaper by contrast. An internal Overstock survey revealed during the trial found that its reference prices were on average 15 percent higher than the highest price that could be found online.
Overstock maintained to the appeals court that “injury to consumers was minimal” and said the $6.8 million in penalties was “grossly disproportionate.” A spokesman declined to comment.
In an earlier era, list prices were intended to prevent retailers from gouging customers — if $40 was printed on the box, a customer might flee if charged $60. Manufacturers also wanted to signal quality by discouraging deep discounting. They hoped retailers would stick to the printed price.List or reference prices are still used as selling tactics in the physical world, and companies routinely are sued for abusing them. J. C. Penney, for instance, set aside $50 million in November to settle a class-action suit in which it was accused of tricking customers into thinking they were getting big discounts.
But online, list prices are even more important.
“Offline retailers need blowout sales to draw traffic due to the costs of visiting a store — driving, then parking, walking and searching,” said Rafi Mohammed, a consultant and author of “The 1% Windfall: How Successful Companies Use Price to Profit and Grow.” “Online retailers don’t use blowout sales since it’s so easy to shop there. But to provide confidence to consumers that they are consistently getting good deals, it’s even more important for them to provide price comparisons.”
After the Overstock suit, online pricing policies are coming under greater scrutiny.
Two customers sued Amazon in late 2014, saying its list prices violated false advertising laws by bearing no relation to the prevailing market prices. The case was dismissed after Amazon pointed out that its customers gave up their right to sue in favor of binding arbitration.
“This court may hope that Amazon would take every possible step to maximize consumers’ ability to make informed decisions,” United States District Judge Cynthia Bashant wrote in her decision. “The law of contracts, however, imposes less lofty expectations.”
Last month, a proposed class-action suit was filed against Wayfair in California asserting that the retailer falsely advertised discounts for items that it had never sold at a higher price. “The referenced former retail prices were fabricated,” the plaintiffs claimed. Wayfair declined to comment.
One manufacturer, Cuisinart, acknowledged that list price had little meaning. Consider the Mini-Prep Plus Processor, displayed on its website for $40.
Amazon says the list price is $75, but in recent weeks was charging $40. That was also roughly what Belk, Bed Bath & Beyond and Kitchen & Company charged. Amazon listed dozens of third-party merchants offering the product, usually from $40 to $50. The Cuisinart Webstore, a separate entity from Cuisinart, sold it for $40.
Mary Rodgers, a spokeswoman for Cuisinart, said the $75 list price was “the highest price you could actually see the product being sold for.” She said as far as she knew, no one was selling the processor for that price.
No, Turning On Your Phone Is Not Consenting to Being Tracked by Police
March 4, 2016
by Alex Emmons
The Intercept
The Maryland Court of Special Appeals on Wednesday upheld a historic decision by a state trial court that the warrantless use of cell-site simulators, or Stingrays, violates the Fourth Amendment.
The trial court had suppressed evidence obtained by the warrantless use of a Stingray — the first time any court in the nation had done so.
Last April, a Baltimore police detective testified that the department has used Stingrays 4,300 times since 2007, usually without notifying judges or defendants.
The ruling has the potential to set a strong precedent about warrantless location tracking. “Police should now be on notice,” said Nate Wessler, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “Accurately explain your surveillance activities to a judge and get a warrant, or risk your evidence being thrown out.”
Stingrays mimic cellphone towers, tricking nearby phones into connecting and revealing users’ locations. Stingrays sweep up data on every phone nearby — collecting information on dozens or potentially hundreds of people.
The case centers around the 2014 arrest of Kerron Andrews, a suspect in a shooting that injured three people. In order to locate him, police filed a “pen register” application, which is not a warrant, and does not require them to establish probable cause. A judge granted the application, which said that police would obtain the information from Andrews’ wireless service provider.
Instead, police used a high-tech Stingray called the “Hailstorm.” They located Andrews and found the murder weapon. However, they repeatedly failed to notify the judge about the change in tactics. Finally, during a hearing last June, the police department was forced to testify about the Hailstorm, leading the judge to accuse it of intentionally withholding information from the defense.
After the trial court threw out the Stingray evidence, the Maryland attorney general alarmed civil liberties groups by arguing that anyone who keeps their phone turned “on” is consenting to being tracked by police. The full ruling, which has not yet been issued, will presumably reject that argument.
During the oral argument before the appeals court in February, one of the judges called the police’s pen register application a “completely false document,” and “completely disingenuous.”
The Department of Justice issued guidelines in September requiring federal officers to apply for a warrant before using a Stingray. Those guidelines only applied to the seven agencies known to use them, not to state and local police. In 2014, the state of Maryland passed a law requiring a warrant for police to track an individual’s current or real-time location. The law only affects cases going forward, so it did not influence Andrew’s case.
Stingrays are also piquing the interest of lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers held a hearing Tuesday on a bill that would require all police departments to get a warrant before using Stingrays. “Just because it’s easier in 2016 for law enforcement to track our location and learn intimate details about our lives, it doesn’t mean those details are somehow less worthy of Constitutional protection,” said House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz. “Get a warrant.”
In December, The Intercept published a secret catalogue of U.S. government surveillance equipment, including Stingrays. The advertisements for some items boast that they can spy on 10,000 people.
Strange but True: The Oddballs on Parade
from The Encyclopedia of American Loons
Bonnie Tarantino
Bonnie Tarantino is a faith healer whose faith healing is based on Eastern mystical beliefs rather than Christianity. Due to rampant orientalism the fact that the faith healing is Eastern rather than medieval Western somehow makes it more respectable among certain people, even though it is based on the same principles of vitalism, alchemy, and religious fluffery, and just as remote from anything resembling a foundation in reality or evidence. In Tarantino’s case, she uses the titles Melchizedek practitioner (no reliable link found – this is serious whale.to stuff), holographic sound healer (no, it doesn’t), and an Usui and Karuna Reiki Master. None of it works, and Tarantino, like the others, has no evidence whatsoever that any of it works.
As such, she is really a run-of-the mill crackpot altmed practitioner. But Tarantino’s career illustrates a really, truly insidious and scary trend: the inroads that quackery has made into academic medicine. Despite her disregard to any value associated with education, science or the search for truth Tarantino is the deranged Saruman of the University of Maryland School of Medicine Center for Integrative Medicine, and haunts the halls of the University of Maryland R. Adam Cowley Shock Trauma Center offering her services to unsuspecting patients – “preys on people in difficult situations”, as some might put it (and I wouldn’t be in a position to disagree). The Center apparently also offers e.g. acupuncture, homeopathy, craniosacral therapy, and reflexology (for instance in the form of the services of one Jean Wehner, who offers Reflexology, Life Coaching & Reiki).
R. Leo Sprinkle
R. Leo Sprinkle is a psychologist, and was once a professor at the University of Wyoming. In the 1960s, however, he became involved in the field of supposed alien abduction. Of course, that is a field that should be of interest to a psychologist, but probably not in the way Sprinkle studied it. To make a long story short, his magnum opus, his book Soul Samples: Personal Exploration in Reincarnation and UFO Experiences from 1999 was not published by an academic publisher. Coast to Coast AM, on the other hand, has been very interested in his “research”.
To get a feel for where Sprinkle is coming from, there is an interview here. Given the questionable level of coherence it is hard to get a good grasp of what Sprinkle’s views actually are, but at least he tends “to think the Star Visitors are engaged in some type of educational program for helping us to evolve inwardly or spiritually.” He also thinks that “The Star Visitors are on a different plane.” That is his explanation for why many people claim to see UFOs when no one else in their immediate surroundings see anything – the witnesses are located at a higher plane of consciousness. That is not, shall we say, the explanation that cold science would assign the highest credence in such cases. (The experiences also have symbolic meaning and help the experiencer predict the future, it seems, which suggests that Sprinkle struggles with avoiding some basic category mistakes.) The contactees also develop psychic abilities: “Many people who have had UFO experiences have been able to visualize weather changes and have them occur very quickly. They can create rain merely by visualizing the rain.”
Sprinkle also worked closely with well-known alien abductee Stan Romanek, whom he hypnotized to retrieve lost memories of the latter’s supposed abductions, which is not a very reliable method for investigating these kinds of things, to put it very, very mildly.
Stacy Swimp
Stacy Swimp is a an aggressively anti-gay fundie minister from Michigan and founder of “Revive Alive, Flint, Michigan.” Like other fundie anti-gay activists, Swimp likes to say incredibly stupid things, and appears to believe that he’s fighting for “religious freedom” (no, he hasn’t thought very seriously about it). “We need to make sure that we are doing everything we can to stop them from amending our civil rights bill to include this civil rights language, or my friends, freedom as we know it will no longer exist,” says Swimp. I think the emphasis is on freedom as we know it; that is, Swimp’s freedom to impose his views on others and be allowed to discriminate based on his hatred and bigotry under the guise of religion. He didn’t react very coherently to the Michigan marriage ruling either, claiming for instance that it ruled marriage “unconstitutional”, and joining Roland A. Caldwell and Lennel Caldwell in arguing that civil rights should not be upheld by the courts if it conflicts with the opinions of the majority (no, they aren’t very good at thinking). Also, the bill “legalizes pedophilia”, added Swimp, just in case you didn’t know, which you probably didn’t.
To make sure he has inanity well covered, Swimp also claims that gay marriage – “enemies of God” are behind it – is going to bring about the end times, just like in Noah’s day. Also, gay marriage will lead to “broken families” and “escalated crime,” and homosexuality is “bondage” that “leads to destruction and death”. He doesn’t elaborate on what he thought the causal mechanisms might be, or the data gathering process that led him to draw this conclusion.
George Edward Smock
A.k.a. Brother Jed
Brother Jed is a wingnut Methodist evangelist who travels around the US to evangelize at college campuses. He is most famous for his anti-gay rants – including his “It’s not Ok to be gay” song (it’s here, if you must) – racism (“The only thing Mexicans contribute to society is burritos and Jewish people are only good at making bagels and running banks”), and for being extremely confrontational about it. Jed also denounces the evils of kissing, bikinis, masturbation (“a masturbator today is a homosexual tomorrow”), sex (“I don’t know how the whorehouses in this town stay open — all of you sorority girls are giving it away for free!”), feminism, liberalism, and – to make sure he stays up to date with the concerns of youths – rock n’ roll.
In short, Brother Jed stands for – and flaunts – everything that is objectionable in fundie ideology, which is why he is liked by freethinker communities and disliked by other fundie groups.
Sherri Tenpenny
Sherri Tenpenny, an osteopath who doesn’t appear to practice medicine in any recognizable way anymore, is an abysmally crazy promoter of woo, antivaxx views and conspiracy theories. Her website presents her as “one of the country’s most knowledgeable and outspoken physicians regarding the impact of vaccines on health,” but Tenpenny has no relevant educational background or expertise (e.g. on infectious disease or immunology), and has published no research on any related topic. There is a good and compact portrait of her and her expertise here.
She runs the Tenpenny Integrative Medical Center, and is the author of Saying No to Vaccines, where she argues against vaccines by relying on, well, conspiracy theories, gut feelings and pseudoscience – it earned Tenpenny her own whale.to page and landed her an interview on Alex Jones’s PrisonPlanet (where she presented her conspiracy theories about the swine flu). She is also on the board of the crank antivaxx organization Medical Voices Vaccine Information Center, which does its best to challenge whale.to for trustworthiness on things medical (and publishes her stuff), prominent member of the Canary party, and on the advisory board for the Holistic Moms Network, which is possibly the place you should get your medical advice. She is, of course, also a mainstay at the annual quackfest conference Autism One.
Tenpenny is even a a germ theory denialist; according to Tenpenny disease seems to be due to toxins that damage the body, and the germs subsequently take advantage of the toxin-damaged tissues – she has even been caught quoting the well-debunked lie that Pasteur recanted his germ theory on his death bed, no less.
Tenpenny’s lack of understanding of how evidence in science works (e.g. that looking at all the evidence trumps judiciously selecting whatever superficially seems to support your belief) or the distinction between correlation and causation is brilliantly displayed in her post “Vaccines and the Blue Foot Syndrome”, discussed (in context) here, which seems to suggest that the anecdotes gathered by antivaxxers for causal claims refuted by controlled studies, shows that it is scientists who don’t understand evidence.
Crankmaster Christiane Northrup has been caught quoting Sherri Tenpenny in her rants against vaccines, calling Tenpenny “the foremost medical expert in vaccine safety”. Mike Adams is a fan as well, calling Tenpenny “a brilliant, science-minded researcher with a lot to teach the world about vaccines and immunology.”
99-million-year-old fossilized lizard found in Asia, may be ‘missing link’ to ‘lost world’
March 6, 2016
RT
A fossilized lizard preserved in amber and found in Southeast Asia is 99 million years old scientists have determined. That makes it the oldest ever specimen of its kind and could hold the key to a ‘lost ecosystem’.
The fossil is about 75 million years older than the previous oldest lizard discovered, researchers at Florida Museum of Natural History said.
“It was incredibly exciting to see these animals for the first time. It was exciting and startling, actually, how well they were preserved,” researcher Edward Stanley said, as quoted by Reuters.
He added that the reptile’s entire body, including its eyes and scales, is preserved in “superb detail.” Usually, reptiles’ bodies decay quickly.
“We can pretty much see how the animals looked when they were alive,” Professor Juan Diego Daza, who led the research, said.
The lizard is thought to have been an infant reptile, living in a tropical forest in territory that is now Myanmar, Southeast Asia.
However, its journey ended when it became trapped in sticky resin.
Other animals trapped in the amber, are a gecko and an arctic lizard, although those are not as ancient as the 99-million-year-old reptile.
What might this amazing discovery lead to?
It could help us learn more about the “lost ecosystem, the lost world” the creatures lived in. Researchers could also find out more about the animals’ modern relatives.
“It’s kind of a missing link,” the professor said, as cited by Reuters.
The research was published on Friday in Science Advances journal.