Obama calls on FCC to make ‘strongest possible rules’ to protect net neutrality, but the realities of this move might not be appealing. We’ll look at Net Neutrality from all sides & explain what Title II means.

Plus a high level US Diplomat is accused of Spying, a new study claims extended Cannabis uses causes brain damage, an ISIS update & much more.

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— Show Notes —

News

Hillary Donor Under Investigation in Counterintelligence Probe

A former high-ranking diplomat and Clinton ally at the center of an FBI counterintelligence probe was a registered foreign agent for the Pakistani government up until just days before she was appointed to run the U.S. State Department’s Pakistan aid team.

The Washington Post reported last week that the State Department’s aid coordinator for Pakistan, Robin Raphel, is the subject of a counterintelligence investigation and has had her security clearance revoked.

The FBI has not specified the nature of the probe, although the Post indicated that it could be espionage-related. She was reportedly placed on administrative leave last month, and the State Department said she is no longer employed by the agency.

Raphel previously served as an assistant secretary of state under President Bill Clinton and rejoined the State Department in August 2009 to focus on Pakistan and Afghanistan aid issues. She is also close to Hillary Clinton and contributed $2,000 to her presidential campaign in 2007.

• FBI Investigation Of Robin Raphel – Business Insider

Robin Raphel, the ‘obstacle’ in India-U.S. ties – The Hindu

In 1995, U.S. diplomat Robin Raphel was the toast of the State department. President Bill Clinton appointed her the first Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia (the post later included Central Asia), and she was known to be close to him and Hillary Clinton, as she knew the U.S. President from his time at Oxford.

“Eventually, we have been vindicated by this investigation,” said an official who preferred not to be named, speaking about the just-announced U.S. federal probe against Ms. Raphel, “We repeatedly told the U.S. that Ms. Raphel’s position was anti-India, but it was also not in the U.S.’s interests.” As a diplomat Ms. Raphel was responsible for two other controversial policies: that of suggesting support for the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan in 1996, as a means of securing the U.S. company Unocal consortium’s pipeline plan in the region, as well as advocating dropping parts of the U.S.’s Pressler amendment that put strict oversight over aid to Pakistan. After she retired, Ms. Raphel joined consultancy group Cassidy & Associates and landed a massive $1.2 million contract from the Pakistan government under President Musharraf, to “improve Pakistan’s image” in the U.S. in 2007.

• Pakistan lobbyist Robin Raphel under lens for alleged spying – The Times of India

In Ukraine, Shelling and Convoys of Armed Trucks Threaten Cease-Fire – NYTimes.com

An October report revealed that cluster munitions, which blanket a target area with bomblets filled with deadly shrapnel, have been used by government troops and possibly pro-Russian rebels against civilian population centers during the fighting in eastern Ukraine. Evidence strongly indicates that Ukrainian troops stationed about 30 kilometers, or 19 miles, southwest of the city launched attacks on Donetsk earlier this month, including an attack that killed a Swiss employee of the International Red Cross.

A shaky cease-fire in eastern Ukraine looked ever more tenuous on Sunday as European monitors confirmed reports of unmarked military vehicles driving through rebel-held territory while Donetsk, the region’s biggest city, endured a nightlong artillery battle.

The monitoring group, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said that long columns of unmarked military vehicles, some towing howitzers, were spotted over the weekend. The monitors did not speculate as to the origins of the trucks or the people inside them, but Ukrainian officials said the statements bolstered their claims that Russia was again arming and training separatists.

The O.S.C.E. reported that its observers had driven on Saturday past a column of more than 40 trucks on a highway outside Donetsk. The trucks were covered with tarpaulins and “without markings or number plates — each towing a 122 mm howitzer and containing personnel in dark green uniforms without insignia,” the O.S.C.E. statement said.

On Sunday, after what journalists in Donetsk described as the heaviest night of artillery shelling in and around the city in at least a month, the O.S.C.E. observers saw two more unmarked military columns. The observers noted 17 trucks in each column, some equipped with Grad ground-to-ground rocket launchers and others towing more howitzers.

Net Neutrality

Obama calls on FCC to make ‘strongest possible rules’ to protect net neutrality | Technology | The Guardian

President says ‘open internet is essential to way of life’ and comes out against so-called ‘fast lanes’ for higher-paying web users.

Dear Senator Ted Cruz, I’m going to explain to you how Net Neutrality ACTUALLY works – The Oatmeal

Net neutrality, Obama, FCC, Title II … Your ESSENTIAL guide to WTF is happening • The Register

• Put simply, because rules that were created by the FCC in 2010 in order to deal with the modern reality of the internet — the so-called Open Internet Order — were struck down [PDF] by the US courts following a challenge by Verizon.

That left a potentially huge gap that people are worried that cable companies will exploit. Without new rules, it is possible — in fact, likely — that your cable provider, who is most cases is also your internet provider, will find ways to profit from the video, audio and text sent through its wires to subscribers.

• The very fact that Verizon then went to the trouble of suing the FCC to get the existing rules that prevented it from discriminating on the basis of content overturned is, ironically, what is spurring people on to push the old 1934 law of “common carriers” onto the cable companies, so that they are legally prevented from touching the data and so from imposing a cable business model on the internet.

• The cable companies make the valid point that the legislation that they would be pulled under is ancient, outdated and in many respects goes against the general philosophy of less government regulation that help the internet to thrive in the first place.

• Wheeler added: “I am grateful for the input of the President and look forward to continuing to receive input from all stakeholders, including the public, members of Congress of both parties, including the leadership of the Senate and House committees, and my fellow commissioners.
  “Ten years have passed since the Commission started down the road towards enforceable Open Internet rules. We must take the time to get the job done correctly, once and for all, in order to successfully protect consumers and innovators online.”

• The resulting Telecommunications Act of 1996 did not really address how people gained access to the internet, however, or how companies that make that access to the web possible should be viewed.

There was one very small part — literally one paragraph — in the 128-page text that defined a new term, “advanced telecommunications capability”, as “high-speed, switched, broadband telecommunications capability that enables users to originate and receive high-quality voice, data, graphics, and video telecommunications using any technology.”

This is the Section 706 that is held up as the alternative to Title II for how to fit broadband providers into the law.

• Just how out of date is Title II?

• There are 76 sections to Title II, and those wanting to reclassify broadband under it want to retain just six sections. They are:
  • 201: Services and charges — companies have to charge a reasonable sum for the service
  • 202: Discrimination — you can’t discriminate over the service
  • 208: Complaints — people can complain
  • 222: Privacy — people’s privacy has to be respected
  • 254: Universal service — you have to provide the service across the country
  • 255: Disability access — make it possible for people with disabilities to use it

Put together, these six sections are pretty light on regulation, although parts of them are still horribly outdated.

• There is specific reference in 201 to the law not impacting the ability of common carriers to “furnishing reports of positions of ships at sea to newspapers of general circulation.”

• Section 202 reveals the startling sum of “$6,000 for each such offense and $300 for each and every day of the continuance of such offense.” At those rates, AT&T won’t exactly be trembling in its boots. In today’s currency, the legislation should read $100,000 for each offense and $5,000 per day.

• Am I The Only Techie Against Net Neutrality?

AT&T to “pause” 100-city fiber buildout because of net neutrality rules | Ars Technica

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said today that his company will “pause” investments in fiber networks until the net neutrality debate is over. The statement came two days after President Obama urged the Federal Communications Commission to reclassify broadband as a utility and impose bans on blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization.

“We can’t go out and invest that kind of money deploying fiber to 100 cities not knowing under what rules those investments will be governed,” Stephenson told investors, according to Reuters. “We think it is prudent to just pause and make sure we have line of sight and understanding as to what those rules would look like.” Stephenson was speaking at a Wells Fargo event.

High Note

Regular marijuana habit changes your brain, study says – CNN.com

Researchers found that compared to nonusers, people who smoked marijuana starting as early as age 14 have less brain volume, or gray matter, in the orbitofrontal cortex. That’s the area in the front of your brain that helps you make decisions.

“The younger the individual started using, the more pronounced the changes,” said Dr. Francesca Filbey, the study’s principal investigator and associate professor at the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas. “Adolescence is when the brain starts maturing and making itself more adult-like, so any exposure to toxic substances can set the course for how your brain ends up.”

Unfilter Debunk

..a study that looked at a relatively large group of marijuana users …

The study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used MRI scans to look at the brains of 62 non-marijuana users and 48 regular marijuana users, 27 of whom used marijuana but not other drugs.

• 21 of the 48 pot-smokers reported using other drugs aside from weed.

• Puzzlingly High Correlations in fMRI Studies of Emotion, Personality, and Social Cognition

Major contention surrounding studdies that use MRI methods

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studiesofemotion, personality, and social cognition have drawn much attention
in recent years, with high-profile studies frequently reporting extremely high (e.g., >.8) correlations between brain activation
and personality measures. We show that these correlations are higher than should be expected given the (evidently limited)
reliability of both fMRI and personality measures. The high correlations are all the more puzzling because method sections
rarely contain much detail about how the correlations were obtained. We surveyed authors of 55 articles that reported findings
of this kind to determine a few details on how these correlations were computed. More than half acknowledged using a strategy
that computes separate correlations for individual voxels and reports means of only those voxels exceeding chosen thresholds.
We show how this nonindependent analysis inflates correlations while yielding reassuring-looking scattergrams.

New pot shops on the block not always so popular | Business | Seattle News, Weather, Sports, Breaking News | KOMO News

DENVER (AP) – The booming new marijuana industry has an image problem. Not with government officials and the public – but with other businesses.

From crime fears to smell complaints, new marijuana retailers and growers face suspicion and sometimes open antagonism from their commercial neighbors, especially in Denver, which now has 200 marijuana retailers and dozens of pot growing and manufacturing facilities.

The strife went public last week along a once-forlorn stretch of highway south of downtown Denver now sprinkled with marijuana shops.

About two dozen pot shops along this stretch of Broadway, often dubbed “Broadsterdam,” had a marketing idea for the upcoming holiday shopping season. Why not join forces with neighboring antique shops to market the whole area as “The Green Mile”?

The pot shops called a meeting, expecting an enthusiastic response from neighboring businesses that have seen boarded-up storefronts replaced with bustling pot shops with lines out the door. Instead, the suggestion unleashed a torrent of anger from the antique shops.

“We don’t want to work with you,” said James Neisler, owner of Heidelberg Antiques. “Your customers, they’re the long-haired stinky types. They go around touching everything and they don’t buy anything.”