Year: 2016

Well we did it!

The T-Rose produced blossoms, now the next trick is to get it to live the winter, all the way up in the Zone 2a…

Zone 2a – -43°C to -45°C and or -45 F to -50 F… (Basically the same at that temperature…)

Cold enough to freeze a witches you know what!

WtR

I use to teach this…

“Think outside the box? Indeed. But to add balance to that, one should not in the process forget what the inside of the box looks like as well. Those who are best at thinking outside the box do it not to puff themselves up, but to see how small they really are. As a contented fish in its fish tank appears to have a small, boring existence to us, imagine a larger, more perceptive kingdom (even by scientific taxonomy) to whom our contented existences may appear to be small and boring. This is where true creativity and massive perceptive abilities spawn a sense of intellectual humility; the kind which God adores.” — Author: Criss Jami

The world would be a much better place. We must be at both places and be humbled to see what is wrong in the world. Too many just hide within the box and it is a box they helped create. Prodded and given parts to make that box, but we hide in that box, for safety and comfort….Better yet, tear the box walls down and realize that they are there to limit your expansion…

WtR

Internet stinks today! Our daily rose shot! We have T-Roses…

Enjoy some images…

WtR

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-authorities-charge-owner-most-visited-illegal-file-sharing-website-copyright-infringement

U.S. Authorities Charge Owner of Most-Visited Illegal File-Sharing Website with Copyright Infringement

U.S. authorities have charged the alleged owner of today’s most visited illegal file-sharing website with criminal copyright infringement and have seized domain names associated with the website.

Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Zachary T. Fardon of the Northern District of Illinois, Executive Associate Director Peter T. Edge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and Chief Richard Weber of the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) made the announcement.

Artem Vaulin, 30, of Kharkiv, Ukraine, was arrested today in Poland and is charged by criminal complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago, with one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and two counts of criminal copyright infringement. The United States will seek to extradite Vaulin to the United States.

“Vaulin is charged with running today’s most visited illegal file-sharing website, responsible for unlawfully distributing well over $1 billion of copyrighted materials,” said Assistant Attorney General Caldwell. “In an effort to evade law enforcement, Vaulin allegedly relied on servers located in countries around the world and moved his domains due to repeated seizures and civil lawsuits. His arrest in Poland, however, demonstrates again that cybercriminals can run, but they cannot hide from justice.”

“Copyright infringement exacts a large toll, a very human one, on the artists and businesses whose livelihood hinges on their creative inventions,” said U.S. Attorney Fardon. “Vaulin allegedly used the Internet to cause enormous harm to those artists. Our Cybercrimes Unit at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago will continue to work with our law enforcement partners around the globe to identify, investigate and prosecute those who attempt to illegally profit from the innovation of others.”

“Artem Vaulin was allegedly running a worldwide digital piracy website that stole more than $1 billion in profits from the U.S. entertainment industry,” said Executive Associate Director Edge. “Protecting legitimate commerce is one of HSI’s highest priorities. With the cooperation of our law enforcement partners, we will continue to aggressively bring to justice those who enrich themselves by stealing the creative work of U.S. artists.”

“Investigating cyber-enabled schemes is a top priority for CI,” said Chief Weber. “Websites such as the one seized today brazenly facilitate all kinds of illegal commerce. Criminal Investigation is committed to thoroughly investigating financial crimes, regardless of the medium. We will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to unravel this and other complex financial transactions and money laundering schemes where individuals attempt to conceal the true source of their income and use the Internet to mask their true identity.”

According to the complaint, Vaulin allegedly owns and operates Kickass Torrents or KAT, a commercial website that has enabled users to illegally reproduce and distribute hundreds of millions of copyrighted motion pictures, video games, television programs, musical recordings and other electronic media since 2008. The copyrighted material is collectively valued at well over $1 billion, according to the complaint. The complaint alleges that KAT receives more than 50 million unique visitors per month and is estimated to be the 69th most frequently visited website on the internet.

In addition, a federal court in Chicago ordered the seizure of one bank account and seven domain names associated with the alleged KAT conspiracy.

According to the complaint, KAT has consistently made available for download movies that were still in theaters and displayed advertising throughout its site. KAT’s net worth has been estimated at more than $54 million, with estimated annual advertising revenue in the range of $12.5 million to $22.3 million, according to the complaint. The complaint alleges that the site operates in approximately 28 languages. KAT has moved its domains several times due to numerous seizures and copyright lawsuits, and it has been ordered blocked by courts in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Denmark, Belgium and Malaysia, according to the complaint. KAT has allegedly operated at various times under the domains kickasstorrents.com, kat.ph, kickass.to, kickass.so and kat.cr, and relied on a network of computer servers located around the world, including in Chicago.

Several motion pictures currently available for download and sharing on KAT are still showing in theatres, including “Captain America: Civil War,” “Now You See Me 2,” “Independence Day: Resurgence” and “Finding Dory,” according to the complaint. The complaint alleges that Vaulin, who used the screen name “tirm,” was involved in designing KAT’s original website, oversaw KAT’s operations and, during the latter part of the conspiracy, Vaulin allegedly operated KAT under the auspices of a Ukrainian-based front company called Cryptoneat.

The charges and allegations contained in the complaint are merely accusations. The defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty.

HSI and IRS-CI investigated the case with substantial assistance from the International Organized Crime Intelligence and Operations Center, the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, the Criminal Division’s Office of International Affairs and the Polish Border Guard and National Prosecutor’s Office.

Senior Counsel Ryan K. Dickey of the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section and Assistant U.S. Attorneys William E. Ridgway and Devlin N. Su of the Northern District of Illinois are prosecuting the case. The Criminal Division’s Office of International Affairs also provided significant assistance in this case.

There is no excuse for us to stifle what made even our country great. Before the day, life expanded because of copying what other parts of the world did, does and perfected. Always from expansion of knowledge comes better knowledge and comes a better life. We are creating our own conditions to squelch advancement of our societies…

Bottom line fact is’ If someone had stifled the US, like the US wants to do to the world, then the US would not be the powerhouse as it is today. This includes many other countries doing the same thing. Examples of stolen ideas and utilized by all…

Rockets, Methamphetamine, Cruise missiles, Jet-powered aircraft, Synchropters, Airborne Operations, Radio, Lasers, Steamboat, Telephone, Moving Picture, Intermittent Windshield Wipers, Graphical User Interface, Television, Sewing Machine and Monopoly to name just s very few items or ideas…

So what is our hangup and why are we trying to stifle progress? Why do we not embrace and utilize opportunities that are presented to us?

I know why! Do You?

WtR

Duh! As you have gathered, I love to try (the word is try) to take images of birds, especially the big birds. I have thousands and thousands of images of eagle, but the perfect shot eludes me. I try though…

Had to make a trip to the Big Village, Vova it seems promised a woman friend of his that he would take her to the Big Village to get some paperwork done on her village home. It seems that when he promised her, I was included in that promise and thus, I ended up driving her and him to the Big Village. Five hours later, we got home to the (TRV) Tiny Russian Village!

Don’t-ya just love when you get volunteered? 🙁

Oh and our strawberry patch is really doing good. I lost count after over a hundred new strawberries growing right now and who cares? I ate ten delicious fat juicy strawberries yesterday and that means I get to eat many more. Yummy…

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Ever had the weather beat you into the ground?

Well it is stomping my butt and it is winning!

Going back to bed in a little while, even though I have ten million things to do. Boza is already asleep again and chasing lion, tigers and bears in his sleep!

WtR

This morning as I walked Boza, I saw happiness….No! Not just the coffee I was sipping…

I am positive that in doggy heaven, dogs get to chase kitties all day and all night. There is simply just not anything in the whole world that is more important, than kitty chasing….At least to Boza…

Boza is sleeping soundly right now, but before he went back to bed this morning, he got to chase a cat all over the lower fields and after about an hour of running, jumping, chasing and tracking. Boza wore out, the cat ended up on the roof of a barn and Boza was satisfied that he ran the scourge of the known world off and saved the day. For to Boza kitties are the ultimate dream. Especially cats that run. If they stand and fight, Boza decides life has better things to do. Smart dog…

I sat on my bench in the lower field and let Boza run and watched the cat stay one step ahead of him the whole time. cats are smart and this cat knows Boza, but Boza does not know he is part of the game. Boza just knows that he has to chase this cat and send it away. With that simplistic thought going, Boza is always successful and in the cats eyes, it is always successful…

That is a win win situation and makes the world happy…

I was happy, for if Boza is happy, my world is perfect. Just as if Svetochka is happy, my world is more than perfect…

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Our weather station says sunny and cool. That is happiness…

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A turnip grown in our garden as big as a softball. That is happiness…

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A flowering T-Rose…Is happiness…

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A white tailed eagle….is happiness…

The Heron are scared to death of this eagle. Yes first image is of the huge Heron bird and mamma eagle is a behemoth, for a Heron is one big bird and as you can see in the slightly blurry image, she looks like a crow against a sparrow. This female eagle is one monster and 10 Heron’s had a darn heart attack as she swooped and played with their minds…

White Tailed Eagle: Steller’s sea eagle? 99% sure:

Steller’s sea eagle (Haliaeetus pelagicus)^[2] is a large bird of prey in the family Accipitridae found in coastal northeastern Asia and mainly preys on fish and water birds. On average, it is the heaviest eagle in the world, at about 5 to 9 kg (11 to 20 lb), but may be below the harpy eagle (Harpia harpyja) and Philippine eagle (Pithecophaga jefferyi) in some standard measurements.^[3] This bird is named after the German naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller.^[4]

Simply put, this girl is a scary monster and I have been keeping an eye on it when she is out and about. Lets hope she eats lots of fish… 🙁 – For we all look small next to her… Yes it is a girl! How do I know? She is a mean Russian woman, that is how I know… 😉 And I see she has a mate and he is smaller. And he does irritate her at all. He has a white tail also…

By the way! A mean Russian woman is happiness, I know that too!

This eagle is rare this far North, but we have the lakes to feed her and I am glad. The Heron’s are not glad, but I am…

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That is happiness, for Boza got to chase a kitty and I got to watch the eagles and you get to see our rose blooming…

What more do you want?

WtR

Yesterday, was thunderstorms all day and the internet seemed incapable of working. I finally gave up and did other things. The internet was spotty last night and still is. We also did not have power for about twelve hours and it looks as if some transformers where hit by lightning…

This morning I have at least some internet and the power is working again. But the coffee is always good and milk to put in it is cheap. That is life in the Tiny Russian Village…

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Going to take a trip to the Big Village and resupply. The neighbors are going again and it looks to be as always an interesting trip. Rain, lightning and thunder are the prospects for the day. At least I did not have to water the garden last night… 🙂

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I don’t think people are that divided or that dumb really I think people chose their lot in life. There are a lot of people that look and act dumb, but honestly in their soul I think they know and have sold out. It seems that other people see the issues too, they have just decided to play for the winning team in their eyes…

Human nature being what it is if you’ve sold out, you’ll probably avoid ever actually mentioning this to yourself again. You’ll rationalize it and think you’re spiffy, but there was a choice out there and you made it. You need to live with it. We dance to the tune of what is cool, not what is right. Vote in a woman, because it is so cool. Vote a black man in, because it is so correct politically. Vote wrong even if it means we suffer…

The strangest thing that happens is that people voted for Obama and then lied about who they voted for. The same will happen with Hillary and or Trump. They vote under social and political pressure, then say the opposite of what they did. They know they are voting incorrectly, but they have to be accepted and then when the person shows the true colors, whom they voted for, all you hear is, “I did not vote for them!”

Yes, we know, you vote party line and nothing but party line, come hell or high water….So much easier to mark that ballot…

So we’re not divided at all in terms of knowing what’s up, but there are a lot of capitulators out there is all I am saying…

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Oh really?

The US says it may reconsider its affiliation and support for the Syrian opposition if reports of anti-Assad rebels beheading a Palestinian boy are confirmed. The State Department has vowed “consequences” if the gruesome videos of the death are true.

“If we [the United States] can prove indeed what happened and this group [al-Zenki] was involved in it… it would give us pause about any assistance or frankly any further involvement,” Deputy Spokesperson for the State Department, Mark Toner, told reporters at a daily briefing Tuesday.

I guess the other hundred beheadings were not important and needed reconsidering way back then?

When reality crashes the party.

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China’s Central Military Commission Vice-Chairman is calling out, “Fan Changlong stressed the need to deeply understand the complexity of the grim situation facing the security of China, stepping up preparations for a military struggle of the work to ensure that the order, to be able to win the war.”

And here is the full article as it appeared on the Chinese Ministry of National Defense…

Biggest difference between the east and west in mentality?

China, like Russia does not bluff and China like Russia is getting prepared daily now for WW3. They know it is coming and I live amongst people who admit that war with the west is inevitable. It is now accepted and Russians have continued on with life. They know that before long, unless the Western Empire stops the crap, war will happen. I see stockpiling at a huge rate in Russia and war equipment is being produced 24/7….Just like in China…

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Just some pictures…

The rose is close to fully opening and Ralph the Raven is now a regular walking partner…

Just a normal Tiny Russian Village…

WtR

By John Stanton

Law enforcement officers ambushed and killed in Baton Rouge and Dallas by those using guerilla warfare style tactics. Is this any different that the Sunni “terrorists” who killed U.S. soldiers in Iraq?

How about the Nice, France truck bomber? Was he any different than Timothy McVeigh who parked a truck bomb outside the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City killing 168 and wounding scores more?

Nearly 16000 Americans murdered each year. Are not murderer’s terrorists?

And a country at war with itself, politically polarized and rigidly classed to the point that lyrics in the 1960’s songs like Steppenwolf’s America and the Temptations’ Ball of Confusion speak directly to the developing catastrophe to come.

What’s the Matter?

First Peoples, Latino, Black, Jewish, Asian, White, Transgender, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Catholic, Wiccan, Protestant, Muslim, Heterosexual, Arab, Amish, Persian, lives matter and so do many non-human lives. But there are so many lives-that-matter interest groups, whose members work in every profession in America—legal and not–with so many divergent and cultural agendas, that it is impossible for anyone in any leadership position from gang leader to political leader to placate them all.

And with each passing day they fear the other group’s that “matter”. Blacks fear cops, cops fear for their lives from all the “matter” groups. Muslims deride the Christian and Jewish of “The Book” as infidels.

Some “matter” groups want punitive damages paid to them for sins committed by slavery and racial exclusion for nearly 200 years. Others seek to exterminate Western European and US infidels by beheadings and acts of terror and restore the world as it was 500 years ago. Some “orthodox” matter groups normally called cults, seek isolation from the general population, discourage interaction with it, yet reap the rewards that a relatively stable and secure country provide.

Still others, those gilded stovepipe denizens, who claim to breath air more purified—therefore leading to clearer thinking—believe the “remainder”, say 90 percent of the populace, to be knuckle dragging humans who need to be collared and led to a promised land. They see themselves as a sort of Moses who is the only one allowed to talk to God and lead the tribe.

And there are the “religions that matter” who seek to maintain their churches and cathedrals by coercing the followers to go to those buildings to worship as necessary when scripture maintains it is not.

I apologize here concerning Moses because I don’t know what type of “matter” Moses was besides that he led the Jewish people out of Egypt. Perhaps he was one of the letters of this acronym: LGBT. Maybe he was a feminist aupporter. Maybe he was black.

And I also apologize to Allah and Krishna and to the Christian God and Satan because I don’t really know who is in charge.

I must do penance too because I am white and I’m writing on the white background on MS Word and all the letters and numbers are white too. The clouds floating in the sky are white and the pages of the Bible, Koran, Bhagavad Gita, and Maurice Blanchot’s, The Infinite Conversation, that sit atop my nightstand, are all white too. Of course I am male too and that means I carry inherent bias against women too and anyone else but my demographic.

Scattered Matter

With American society exploding like the Big Bang and spreading apart like the galaxies in universe, there is no centralizing force to bring them closer. So what now?

Can’t we get along? No. Our hands must be forced if the madness is to stop.

What happens when the standing Army, military forces, become more progressive than civilian society? All the “matter” groups are represented in the US national security machinery—even the closet terrorist–yet they are forced; indeed, agree when they become military personnel, to obey orders, get along, or get out. It’s a radical change for the institution and serves as a model on forcing people together with authority.

There is even a Wikkan worship site at the USAF academy. In one form or another, all the “matter” groups are celebrated openly at the Pentagon in Washington, D C, most recently the T in LGBT. Muslims are honored. First Peoples, women, Latino and blacks are praised openly.

Humans are, in the end, a nasty species. We kill each other because we think we “matter” more than the Other. We deceive at every turn in the interests of ourselves, family, friends or belief. We even destroy fellow non-human creatures with impunity. We are undisciplined, disinclined to political discourse and favor the mind-numbing delights of television. Here in America we are armchair citizens active on the World Wide Web, not in communities or the streets.

And we actually do not find it a “guilty pleasure” any longer to watch the killings, beheadings, and suffering on the television. It’s a pleasure, now with the thinking something like this: I can’t wait to kick back in my chair with IPhone, laptop and TV on so I can watch cop shooting whites, blacks, Latino’s, Asians, Arabs; the latest terrorist acts around the globe; video footage of drone strikes; “expert” blatherskites hawking their banalities on the news networks; and then, of course, the latest episode of Naked and Alone.

John Stanton can be reached at jstantonaechangel@gmail.com

I have to say something; Svetochka is about two weeks or less from becoming a “Babushka.” That means grandma in Russian and her mom is going to be a “Pro Babushka” or a great grandma. In Moscow Svetochka and her mother went to see the baby furniture that was bought by Sveta and her mom, for the new baby to come soon. By the end of the month and all looks good to go… 🙂

I think the idea is growing on Svetochka and she is starting to get excited about the new baby coming. I know she wants to come for her birthday to the Tiny Russian Village, but as she reads this. I want her to think about hanging around Moscow until the baby is born. This is an important and very special time in life. Mainly for her son and his wife, but also for the grandmas and great grandmas and yes even the grandpas. I have said before that I stay out of the Russian family business and other than saying to Svetochka that Boza and I miss her. Somethings are more important in life and a new baby is one of those special miracles that needs to be experienced. Especially as a grandma…

WtR