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Monthly Archives: November 2015

Anonymous vs Isis


This article from Fortune magazine and Don Reisinger is worth reading:

Anonymous Declares Cyber War on ISIS. Why It Matters

November 16, 2015, 1:58 PM EST       

When it comes to cyber war, Anonymous is good at what it does.
After claiming responsibility for the Paris terrorist attacks last week, ISIS has a new foe.
Hacker collective Anonymous posted a video Saturday on YouTube in which it declared a cyber war on ISIS. In the nearly two-and-a-half-minute video, a person wearing the group’s signature Guy Fawkes mask read a statement in French promising that the hacktivist organization would attack ISIS in cyberspace with the ultimate goal of weakening the terrorist organization.
“Expect massive cyber attacks,” the person said. “War is declared. Get prepared. Anonymous from all over the world will hunt you down. You should know that we will find you and we will not let you go.”
ISIS has claimed responsibility for the horrific attacks that killed nearly 140 people and left hundreds more injured on Friday. The attacks prompted the French government to go on the offensive against the group. Prime Minister Manuel Valls confirmed on Monday that French authorities had conducted more than 150 raids and completed a bombing campaign against suspected ISIS encampments in Syria.
Anonymous, however, has its own plans. And as history has shown that it is not one to be taken lightly.
Anonymous, made up of an unknown number of loosely connected individuals, is believed to have been founded more than a decade ago on the online forum 4chan. The organization was firmly principled when it was founded and remains so, says Ben FitzGerald, cybersecurity expert and technology director for the national security program at the Center for a New American Security.
“Anonymous has its own set of values and it’s going to defend those things aggressively regardless of whether it disagrees with the CIA or ISIS,” FitzGerald says. “It doesn’t align itself around familiar paths.”
Anonymous gained notoriety in 2008 following its cyberattack on the Church of Scientology. Soon after, the group went on to attack any organization or issue that it believed had wronged others. Indeed, the organization’s attacks have targeted everything from governments to illegal pornography sites. Anonymous has also been credited with attacking the Vatican, the CIA, and San Francisco’s BART transport system.
“Whether you agree or not, they have a clear set of principles,” FitzGerald says. “They’re not nihilists; they believe in things and take action on those beliefs.”
By 2012, Anonymous had become a household name in the technology world. It also built up a track record for impact. In 2012, Time, which owns Fortune, named Anonymous to its list of the 100 Most Influential People of 2012, saying that its attacks on networks had “earned its place on the list.”
While several similar hacktivist organizations have cropped up in recent years, few have been able to achieve the same level of notoriety as Anonymous. It is also among the more divisive of hacking groups, with some saying that it’s working in the best interests of the greatest number of people, and others arguing that it’s an illegal organization that must be stopped. Indeed, many law-enforcement officials around the world have targeted Anonymous and arrested dozens of alleged members.
Still, Anonymous has pressed on with no signs of slowing down. Just last year, after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, Anonymous reportedly launched attacks on the city that took down e-mail servers and the phone system. The group last year also declared cyber war on the Ku Klux Klan.
“Anonymous is absolutely not slowing down,” says FitzGerald. “As they often say, they are ‘legion and they are hydra.’ They are based in multiple countries. They don’t have a directory of who everyone is. It would be very hard to track all of those people down.”
Anonymous, in other words, is fully capable of launching successful attacks—and ISIS knows it.
After the attack on Charlie Hebdo in January, Anonymous posted a video that said it would attack terrorists in connection with the killings. Soon after, it brought down sites allegedly connected with terrorism (including a dating site for ISIS members) and claims to have taken down tens of thousands of Twitter accounts of people suspected of having ISIS connections.
This, though, is different, Anonymous says. It warned ISIS after the latest attacks to “get ready,” adding that it doesn’t “forgive and we don’t forget.” While Anonymous did not reveal any details about planned attacks, the threat could be serious. Given its history.
“We should expect Anonymous to target ISIS members online and make ISIS member information publicly available,” FitzGerald says. “Anonymous will go after online personas and ISIS websites.”
Ultimately, however, it’s unknown how big of an impact the attacks will have on ISIS. FitzGerald argues that while ISIS is an Internet-savvy organization, Anonymous’ efforts may prove more of “a nuisance rather than a threat.” Regardless, he says ISIS needs to watch out.
“I think Anonymous will absolutely make good on those threats,” he says.
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Teachers Resignation-Wow!


You might not remember Mark Rubio’s name in a couple of years but you won’t ever forget the name of your favorite elementary school teacher.

On October 23, 2015, Wendy Bradshaw posted her resignation from the Polk County Florida Public School system on Facebook. It went viral.

Today I resigned from the school district. I would like to share with you what I gave them. Feel free to share it if it strikes you as important.

She goes on to explain what many of us who actually listen to educators or are educators already understand—the culture of testing is bullshit in no uncertain terms, from how it evaluates students’ performances to how it evaluates teachers’ performances. Wendy Bradshaw knows early childhood development and the curriculum and the testing she must subject her students to is anathema to everything she knows about early childhood development.

The children don’t only cry. Some misbehave so that they will be the ‘bad kid’ not the ‘stupid kid’, or because their little bodies just can’t sit quietly anymore, or because they don’t know the social rules of school and there is no time to teach them. My master’s degree work focused on behavior disorders, so I can say with confidence that it is not the children who are disordered. The disorder is in the system which requires them to attempt curriculum and demonstrate behaviors far beyond what is appropriate for their age. The disorder is in the system which bars teachers from differentiating instruction meaningfully, which threatens disciplinary action if they decide their students need a five minute break from a difficult concept, or to extend a lesson which is exceptionally engaging. The disorder is in a system which has decided that students and teachers must be regimented to the minute and punished if they deviate. The disorder is in the system which values the scores on wildly inappropriate assessments more than teaching students in a meaningful and research based manner.

Bradshaw isn’t alone. The Polk, Florida Superintendent is between a rock and a hard place.

“My first reaction was: I understand her frustration and I generally agree,” said Polk Superintendent of Schools Kathryn LeRoy. “The problem is that the accountability system is smothering everybody.”
[…]
“We can’t afford to lose any more good educators,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to our public education system if we can’t recruit or retain good teachers.”

Wendy Bradshaw recently became a mother and being confronted with the reality of her child going into this system in five years brought her “dread.”

Their brains aren’t ready for some of the things they do. And Bradshaw says that with confidence because she has studied and researched early childhood development, with the degrees to prove it.“It makes zero sense,” she said, and is not necessary. “We got to the moon and back without learning how to read in kindergarten.”

The White House announcing a need to cut back on standardized testing mania is a nice thing to say and (hopefully) mean. However, the economic beast that drives this top-down, standardized testing approach must be dismantled.You can read the entire Facebook post below the fold and you can drop her well wishes on her page here.

Today I resigned from the school district. I would like to share with you what I gave them. Feel free to share it if it strikes you as important.To: The School Board of Polk County, Florida
I love teaching. I love seeing my students’ eyes light up when they grasp a new concept and their bodies straighten with pride and satisfaction when they persevere and accomplish a personal goal. I love watching them practice being good citizens by working with their peers to puzzle out problems, negotiate roles, and share their experiences and understandings of the world. I wanted nothing more than to serve the students of this county, my home, by teaching students and preparing new teachers to teach students well. To this end, I obtained my undergraduate, masters, and doctoral degrees in the field of education. I spent countless hours after school and on weekends poring over research so that I would know and be able to implement the most appropriate and effective methods with my students and encourage their learning and positive attitudes towards learning. I spent countless hours in my classroom conferencing with families and other teachers, reviewing data I collected, and reflecting on my practice so that I could design and differentiate instruction that would best meet the needs of my students each year. I not only love teaching, I am excellent at it, even by the flawed metrics used up until this point. Every evaluation I received rated me as highly effective.

Like many other teachers across the nation, I have become more and more disturbed by the misguided reforms taking place which are robbing my students of a developmentally appropriate education. Developmentally appropriate practice is the bedrock upon which early childhood education best practices are based, and has decades of empirical support behind it. However, the new reforms not only disregard this research, they are actively forcing teachers to engage in practices which are not only ineffective but actively harmful to child development and the learning process. I am absolutely willing to back up these statements with literature from the research base, but I doubt it will be asked for. However, I must be honest. This letter is also deeply personal. I just cannot justify making students cry anymore. They cry with frustration as they are asked to attempt tasks well out of their zone of proximal development. They cry as their hands shake trying to use an antiquated computer mouse on a ten year old desktop computer which they have little experience with, as the computer lab is always closed for testing. Their shoulders slump with defeat as they are put in front of poorly written tests that they cannot read, but must attempt. Their eyes fill with tears as they hunt for letters they have only recently learned so that they can type in responses with little hands which are too small to span the keyboard.

The children don’t only cry. Some misbehave so that they will be the ‘bad kid’ not the ‘stupid kid’, or because their little bodies just can’t sit quietly anymore, or because they don’t know the social rules of school and there is no time to teach them. My master’s degree work focused on behavior disorders, so I can say with confidence that it is not the children who are disordered. The disorder is in the system which requires them to attempt curriculum and demonstrate behaviors far beyond what is appropriate for their age. The disorder is in the system which bars teachers from differentiating instruction meaningfully, which threatens disciplinary action if they decide their students need a five minute break from a difficult concept, or to extend a lesson which is exceptionally engaging. The disorder is in a system which has decided that students and teachers must be regimented to the minute and punished if they deviate. The disorder is in the system which values the scores on wildly inappropriate assessments more than teaching students in a meaningful and research based manner.

On June 8, 2015 my life changed when I gave birth to my daughter. I remember cradling her in the hospital bed on our first night together and thinking, “In five years you will be in kindergarten and will go to school with me.” That thought should have brought me joy, but instead it brought dread. I will not subject my child to this disordered system, and I can no longer in good conscience be a part of it myself. Please accept my resignation from Polk County Public Schools.

Best,
Wendy Bradshaw, Ph.D.

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Freshman Senator To His Colleagues: ‘The People Despise Us All’


At Last a Show of Courage! 

Nebraska’s Ben Sasse was elected to the U.S. Senate a year ago this week, one of a dozen Republicans who first won seats that day as their party captured its first majority in the storied chamber in eight years.

And like many of the 5,000 men and women who preceded him in the Senate, he soon came to regard that old sobriquet “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body” with a certain irony — if not bitterness.

“Let me flag the painful, top-line takeaway,” said Sasse on Tuesday. “No one in this body thinks the Senate is laser-focused on the most pressing issues facing the nation. No one. Some of us lament this; some are angered by it; many are resigned to it; some try to dispassionately explain how they think it came to be. But no one disputes it.”

That rather stiff eye-opener came near the start of Sasse’s “maiden speech,” a half-hour confessional he delivered on the Senate floor, witnessed mostly by clerks and C-SPAN watchers at midafternoon on Tuesday. While he spoke in a clear, level voice from the row of desks farthest from the front, the rest of the chamber’s seats were almost entirely unoccupied.

That, of course, is par for the course. Senators rarely sit to listen to each other speak, and first-termers often have trouble adjusting to addressing an empty Cave of Winds.

But those who were around got an earful on this afternoon.

“If I can be brutally honest for a moment: I’m home basically every weekend, and what I hear — and what I’m sure most of you hear — is some version of this: A pox on both parties and all your houses. We don’t believe politicians are even trying to fix this mess.”

Sasse did not spare his own party: “To the Republicans, to those who claim this new majority is leading the way: Few believe that.”

And, in reference to rules changes Democratic leaders made to get President Obama’s judicial nominations done while they still had the majority last year:

“Few believe bare-knuckled politics are a substitute for principled governing. And does anyone doubt that many on both the right and the left now salivate for more of these radical tactics?”

There was, of course, no answer to this rhetorical question.

So in sum, Sasse said: “The people despise us all.”

Sasse is young enough at 43 to see the Senate as a midcareer challenge, not a cap on his career. Even in a Senate where the average age has been dropping noticeably, Sasse’s fresh Midwestern face conveys an eye-catching youthfulness.

He, along with newly christened Speaker Paul Ryan, 45, and Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, both 44, are part of a new generation suddenly taking over in the Grand Old Party.

Of course, they are doing it largely by looking beyond Congress to the White House. Sasse took note of this as well: “To the grandstanders who use this institution as a platform for outside pursuits: Few believe the country’s needs are as important to you as your ambitions.”

Maiden speeches are an old tradition, little noticed in our times, by which newly elected senators introduce themselves — usually well after they have settled in to Senate life. Sasse is the last of the 12 Republicans in his freshman class to perform the ritual.

In another era, such speeches were not considered welcome until a new member had served at least a full year — if not longer. But that was when freshmen were expected to be seen and not heard. A Senate seat was considered either a lifetime sinecure or a life sentence (“few die and none retire”).

Nowadays, a majority of the Senate has been serving for less than a decade. Rubio, Cruz and Rand Paul of Kentucky are all running for president while still in their first Senate term — just as Barack Obama did eight years ago.

Nonetheless, the occasional maiden speech can draw attention. And the one Ben Sasse delivered is surely worthy of consideration.

Sasse referred several times in his remarks to “Socratic speech,” a kind of discourse in which all involved consider not only their own point of view but others’ as well. A good executive always takes account of all the arguments, Sasse said.

“Socrates said it was dishonorable to make the lesser argument appear the greater — or to take someone else’s argument and distort it so that you don’t have to engage their strongest points. Yet here, on this floor, we regularly devolve into bizarre partisan-politician speech. We hear robotic recitations of talking points.”

Sasse said he was amazed to find that the people who act like that on C-SPAN turn out to be quite different in person.

“It’s weird, because one-on-one, when the cameras are off, hardly anyone here really believes that senators from the other party are evilly motivated — or bribed — or stupid. There is actually a great deal of human affection around here — but again, that’s in private, when the cameras aren’t on.

Sasse had an unusual path to the Senate. He got a Harvard undergraduate degree, studied at Oxford and got graduate degrees from St. John’s College and Yale University (history Ph.D.). He worked for a prestigious business consulting firm, taught history and served as president of Midland University, a small Lutheran college in Fremont, Neb.

Prior to last year he had not sought elective office. But on Tuesday, he showed a thorough acquaintance with some pillars of Senate lore, including four-term Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York (1977-2001) and four-term Republican Margaret Chase Smith of Maine (1949-73). Both were known for the strength of their intellects and convictions and also for their commitment to bipartisanship in Senate deliberation.

“Each of us,” Sasse said, “has an obligation to be able to answer our constituents’ question: Why doesn’t the Congress work? And what is your plan for fixing the Senate in particular? And if your only answer is that the other party is fully to blame, then we don’t get it, and the American people understandably think that we are part of the problem, not the solution.”

Sasse also tipped his hat to the longtime Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, who devoted his life to lifting up the Senate as the great fulcrum of American democracy. Byrd served from 1959 until his death in 2010, the longest Senate career in history.

Sasse gave no indication of an ambition to serve as long as these antecedents, nor would the political conventions of our time suggest he would or could. But the attitude he brought to his first formal address on the Senate floor should be heard and heeded — no matter how long his Senate career may be.

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What We Hear


Buzzwords, sound bites and catch phrases are not facts. The current political debates are popularity contests disguised as real information. These aspirants use what they can to excite , arouse and enthuse us with what they believe we want to hear. The reality is –  when the winner  is actually sitting in the Oval office , they will find that the promises, sound bites, buzz words, etc., no longer apply. The reality of the job kicks in like an overdose of caffeine. It will take the first four years to understand the job and act on things that were already in the works. There will be no repealing, revoking or deleting because they will have to be the CIC with military activities occurring in other countries, UN members that need attention aside from their immediate family’s needs. He or she will need to hit the ground running since time stops for no one nor does the country’s business. The question is who do we really want or who do we really need? There are no perfect candidates but we need to dismiss  the debates as  so much fluff or as we would a schoolyard scuffle between second graders. Our job as voters is to determine beyond the debates and oratory of the campaign who feel will do the job if we do not perform this exercise we will not have fulfilled our duty as voters and we can only blame ourselves if we end up with less than the best we can get. There is no such thing as “no matter who I vote for nothing will change”. This is why Illinois has the Governor they currently have and why we have the Congress we have. Remember Congress will be in place after the Presidential elections so who will we blame then?- “Ourselves if we become complacent and place our trust in Politrickers”.

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Rand Paul -has no Clue


Dupublican candidates statements on Vaccines refuted.

Elizabeth Warren takes on Rand Paul’s ‘profound mental disorders’

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) questions U.S. Federal Reserve Vice Chair Janet Yellen (not pictured) during a Senate Banking Committee confirmation hearing on Yellen's nomination to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve, on Capitol Hill in Washingt

attribution: REUTERS

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is not having any of your anti-vaxxer nonsense, or any of Sen. Rand Paul’s anti-vaxxer nonsense either. At a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing on vaccinations, Warren had some questions for the director for the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC:

“Is there any scientific evidence that vaccines cause autism?”“Is there any scientific evidence that vaccines cause ‘profound mental disorders’?”

“Is there any scientific evidence that vaccines have contributed to the rise in allergies or auto-immune disorders among kids?”

“Are there additives or preservatives in vaccines that can be toxic to kids?”

“Is there any scientific evidence that giving kids their vaccines further apart or spacing them differently is healthier for kids?”

“Is there any scientific evidence that kids can develop immunity to these diseases on their own, simply by eating nutritious foods or being active?”

(Answer key: No, no, no, no, no, and no.)Important questions, but one stood out: “Is there any scientific evidence that vaccines cause ‘profound mental disorders’?”

Rand Paul last week: “I have heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines.”

Game, set, and match go to the Massachusetts Democrat refusing to be drafted for president over the Kentucky Republican trying to rig the system to run for president without losing his Senate seat.

Originally posted to Laura Clawson on Wed Feb 11, 2015 at 08:00 AM PST.

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