Archive for the 'Dictatorship' Category
Six Waltons Have More Wealth Than the Bottom 30% of Americans
December 15th, 2011Via: Bloomberg: The brand-new Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in the small northwest Arkansas city of Bentonville is the creation of Alice Walton, the daughter of the late Sam Walton, who founded Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT), the largest retailer in the world. Alice Walton, who is worth about $21 billion, has achieved her dream […]
Half of Americans Poor or Near Poor
December 15th, 2011Via: CBS: Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans — nearly 1 in 2 — have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income. The latest census data depict a middle class that’s shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government’s safety net frays. The […]
American Citizens Can Be Arrested As Terrorists On Home Soil And Held Indefinitely Without Trial
December 15th, 2011Now with even more Hope and Change. Via: Guardian: Barack Obama has abandoned a commitment to veto a new security law that allows the military to indefinitely detain without trial American terrorism suspects arrested on US soil who could then be shipped to Guantánamo Bay. Human rights groups accused the president of deserting his principles […]
F-35 Joint Strike Fighter: Trillion Dollar Boondoggle
December 14th, 2011Via: Wired: The most expensive weapons program in U.S. history is about to get a lot pricier. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, meant to replace nearly every tactical warplane in the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, was already expected to cost $1 trillion dollars for development, production and maintenance over the next 50 years. […]
The Neil Keenan / “Dragon Family” Trillion-Dollar Lawsuit Is Real
December 14th, 2011The full text of the lawsuit (Case 1:11-cv-08500-JFK, Filed 11/23/11, downloaded from pacer.gov) has been posted at the Divine Cosmos website: This is a civil claim arising out of the concerted, knowing, malicious scheme and international conspiracy engaged in by the Defendants for the designed purpose of defrauding plaintiff KEENAN, the designated Agent of his […]
Multimillion Dollar Crowdturfing Industry Growing Exponentially
December 13th, 2011Incredibly, laughably, this piece doesn’t mention things like the U.S. Military’s desire to develop persona management software or Team Themis (HBGary Federal, Palantir and Berico): After having spent several months studying those emails and otherwise investigating the industry depicted therein, I have revealed my summary of a classified US intelligence programme known as Romas/COIN, as […]
FBI Holding Carrier IQ Data for ‘Law Enforcement Purposes’
December 13th, 2011There’s a shocker. Via: The Verge: When we spoke to Carrier IQ at length about the company’s controversial cellular tracking service, there was one question we didn’t include in the transcript. “Would you say no if the government asked Carrier IQ for a wiretap into user databases?” we asked. At the time, we felt the […]
Butter Shortage in Norway: Bids to Roughly $465 Per Pound
December 12th, 2011Via: AFP: An acute butter shortage in Norway, one of the world’s richest countries, has left people worrying how to bake their Christmas goodies with store shelves emptied and prices through the roof. The shortfall, expected to last into January, amounts to between 500 and 1,000 tonnes, said Tine, Norway’s main dairy company, while online […]
Internet Piracy Bill: A Free Speech ‘Kill Switch’
December 12th, 2011Via: The Hill: What began as an attempt to restrain foreign piracy on the Internet has morphed into a domestic “kill switch” on First Amendment freedom in the fastest-growing corner of the marketplace of ideas. Proposed federal legislation purporting to protect online intellectual property would also impose sweeping new government mandates on internet service providers […]
Beyond Guantánamo, a Web of Prisons for Terrorism Inmates
December 12th, 2011Via: New York Times: It is the other Guantánamo, an archipelago of federal prisons that stretches across the country, hidden away on back roads. Today, it houses far more men convicted in terrorism cases than the shrunken population of the prison in Cuba that has generated so much debate. … As of Oct. 1, the […]
