Archive for the 'Elite' Category
How Food and Water Are Driving a 21st-Century African Land Grab
March 7th, 2010Via: Guardian: We turned off the main road to Awassa, talked our way past security guards and drove a mile across empty land before we found what will soon be Ethiopia’s largest greenhouse. Nestling below an escarpment of the Rift Valley, the development is far from finished, but the plastic and steel structure already stretches […]
John Patrick Bedell: Welcome to the Conspiracy Theorist Lone Nut Era
March 5th, 2010Update: Guns in Two Mass Shootings Came from Memphis Police and Court System Via: AP: Two guns used in high-profile shootings this year at the Pentagon and a Las Vegas courthouse both came from the same unlikely place: the police and court system of Memphis, Tenn. Law enforcement officials told The Associated Press that both […]
Microsoft Goon: The Internet is Dangerous – Tax It
March 4th, 2010Oh sure. Via: The Hill: A top Microsoft executive on Tuesday suggested a broad Internet tax to help defray the costs associated with computer security breaches and vast Internet attacks, according to reports. Speaking at a security conference in San Francisco, Microsoft Vice President for Trustworthy Computing Scott Charney pitched the Web usage fee as […]
Greenhouse Gas Taxes to Push Gasoline to $7 a Gallon?
March 3rd, 2010Via: New York Times: To meet the Obama administration’s targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, some researchers say, Americans may have to experience a sobering reality: gas at $7 a gallon. To reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the transportation sector 14 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, the cost of driving must simply increase, according […]
European Court Set to Give Public Figures Chance to Gag Press on Damaging Stories
March 2nd, 2010Via: Independent: It could spell the end of the kiss and tell: public figures might, within 18 months, have the power to stifle bad news stories before they are published, a senior lawyer has warned. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is currently fast-tracking a landmark case, brought by Max Mosley, to tighten UK […]
New ISGP Post: A Closer Look at Child Abuse Networks in the Netherlands and Belgium
March 2nd, 2010Via: ISGP: Although this article can be read on its own, it really is a continuation of previous ISGP articles, most notably Beyond the Dutroux Affair (2007), La Nebuleuse (2008) and as it turns out, also to the short “Beyond Dutroux” ties to the Netherlands (2009). None of these articles are easy to read. Go […]
Half the Members of an “Independent Panel” Appointed to Study the Quadrennial Defense Review Have Financial Ties to Defense Contractors
March 1st, 2010Via: USA Today: More than half of the panel members appointed to review the Pentagon’s latest four-year strategy blueprint have financial ties to defense contractors with a stake in the planning process, a USA TODAY analysis shows. Congress created the 20-member panel in 2006 to analyze the Defense Department’s four-year plan, known as the Quadrennial […]
Bill Gates: Lower World Population with Vaccines
February 28th, 2010During his recent TED talk, Bill Gates said that the world population is headed to 9 billion people. Then he said, “Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services—we could lower that perhaps ten or fifteen percent.” I’m not sure what the nothing-to-see-here explanation is for Bill […]
Officials Puzzle Over Millions of Dollars Leaving Afghanistan by Plane for Dubai
February 26th, 2010Via: Washington Post: A blizzard of bank notes is flying out of Afghanistan — often in full view of customs officers at the Kabul airport — as part of a cash exodus that is confounding U.S. officials and raising concerns about the money’s origin. The cash, estimated to total well over $1 billion a year, […]
IBM Researchers Develop Energy Efficient Method to Analyze the Quality of Data at Record Speeds
February 26th, 2010Via: IBM Press Release: Research today unveiled a breakthrough method based on a mathematical algorithm that reduces the computational complexity, costs, and energy usage for analyzing the quality of massive amounts of data by two orders of magnitude. This new method will greatly help enterprises extract and use the data more quickly and efficiently to […]
