Archive for the 'Dictatorship' Category
Nicaragua Gives Chinese Firm Contract to Build Alternative to Panama Canal
June 7th, 2013Via: Guardian: Nicaragua has awarded a Chinese company a 100-year concession to build an alternative to the Panama Canal, in a step that looks set to have profound geopolitical ramifications. The president of the country’s national assembly, Rene Nuñez, announced the $40bn (£26bn) project, which will reinforce Beijing’s growing influence on global trade and weaken […]
NSA Building $860 Million Data Center in Maryland
June 7th, 2013Via: Data Center Knowledge: As its current data collection makes headlines, the National Security Agency is continuing to expand its data storage and processing capabilities. The agency recently broke ground on an $860 million data center at Fort Meade, Maryland that will span more than 600,000 square feet, including 70,000 square feet of technical space. […]
NSA Is Wired Into Top Internet Companies’ Servers, Including Google and Facebook
June 7th, 2013*snore* Why is the media losing its mind over this now? Thanks to Mark Klein, we learned way back in 2007 that NSA was getting everything. Update: And Now… Customer Records from the Three Major Phone Networks, Emails, Web searches, and Credit-Card Transactions Via: Wall Street Journal: The National Security Agency’s monitoring of Americans includes […]
Britain: Armed Checkpoints on Local Roads Around Bilderberg, Residents Must Show Passports to Enter Their Own Driveways
June 6th, 2013Via: Telegraph: No such encounters will take place in Watford this week, as the Bilderberg, the annual conference for 140 of the world’s most powerful, meet for four days at The Grove, a £300-a-night golf hotel close to the M25. The entire hotel has been booked out, and a high fence erected around the exclusion […]
Court Documents: NSA Collecting Phone Records of Millions of Americans Daily
June 6th, 2013Via: Guardian: The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America’s largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April. The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an “ongoing, daily basis” to give […]
Afghanistan: Pentagon Has No Idea What 108,000 Contractors Are Doing
June 4th, 2013Via: The Fiscal Times: The number of contractors working in Afghanistan now vastly outnumbers American troops stationed there, according to a Congressional Research Service report. CRS, along with the Government Accountability Office, also determined that the Pentagon is unable to properly document the work these contractors are doing. And the information DOD is receiving is […]
Crowdfunded Stenographer Denied Press Pass To Cover Transcriptless Bradley Manning Trial
June 4th, 2013Via: Techdirt: A large group of established news organizations — including the LA Times, NPR, the New Yorker, Fox News, Newsweek, Bloomberg and NY Magazine — have all asked the military to open up two additional press passes for stenographers (two so that they can overlap while switching shifts). The judge in the case, on […]
Two-Thirds of Uninsured Americans Don’t Know If They Will Buy Insurance Under Obamacare
June 4th, 2013Via: CNBC: There’s no assurance folks will be buying insurance under Obamacare, and that could spell trouble for the Affordable Care Act. Nearly two-thirds of Americans who currently lack health insurance don’t know yet if they will purchase that coverage by the Jan. 1 deadline set by the ACA, a new survey revealed Monday.
Some Obama Top Political Appointees Using Secret U.S. Government Email Accounts
June 4th, 2013Via: AP: Some of President Barack Obama’s political appointees, including the secretary for Health and Human Services, are using secret government email accounts they say are necessary to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages, according to a review by The Associated Press. The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains […]
Dear Leader Dreams of Sushi
June 4th, 2013Via: GQ: The chef’s name, an alias, is Kenji Fujimoto, and for eleven years he was Kim Jong-il’s personal chef, court jester, and sidekick. He had seen the palaces, ridden the white stallions, smoked the Cuban cigars, and watched as, one by one, the people around him disappeared. It was part of Fujimoto’s job to […]
