AIG Chief Sees Retirement Age as High as 80 After Crisis
June 4th, 2012You keep working, and we’ll keep getting bailouts and bonuses. Mmmkay?
Via: Bloomberg:
American International Group Inc. (AIG) Chief Executive Officer Robert Benmosche said Europe’s debt crisis shows governments worldwide must accept that people will have to work more years as life expectancies increase.
“Retirement ages will have to move to 70, 80 years old,” Benmosche, who turned 68 last week, said during a weekend interview at his seaside villa in Dubrovnik, Croatia. “That would make pensions, medical services more affordable. They will keep people working longer and will take that burden off of the youth.”
School Districts Taking More Corporate Advertising
June 4th, 2012This USA Today piece contains easily the most ridiculous lie I’ve read in a long time.
“The public isn’t paying for public education anymore.”
Oh really?
This infographic is from USC: U.S. Education Spending and Performance vs. The World:
Via: MAT@USC | Master’s of Arts in Teaching
Americans are paying more money for public education per child than everywhere else except Switzerland, and getting results near the bottom of the barrel as a result.
But throw some Brawndo ads at it.
Goes great with breakfast sticks.
Via: USA Today:
Financially struggling schools nationwide are increasing the volume of advertising that children see in the halls, at football games and even on their report cards.
School administrators say that with a public unwilling to adequately fund K-12 education, they’re obligated to find new ways to keep teachers in classrooms.
“We know that we can’t continue to only look at ways to cut, we also need to be innovative about the assets we have and learn how to bring in more revenue,” says Trinette Marquis, a spokeswoman for the 28,000-student Twin Rivers Unified School District in McClellan, Calif.
Twin Rivers this spring signed a deal with the Colorado-based Education Funding Partners (EFP), a for-profit corporation, with a goal of bringing $100 million to major public school districts by 2015, company President Mickey Freeman says.
“There’s a way to marry large companies and large districts without having to sacrifice morality,” he says. “The public isn’t paying for public education anymore.”
Advertising in schools is not a new concept and has been part of athletic facilities and school buses for years. But Dax Gonzalez, communications manager for the Texas Association of School Boards, says more schools are turning to advertising.
Increasing Use of Robots in China’s Factories
June 4th, 2012Via: Reuters:
The giant orange robotic arms that swiftly weld together car frames at the Great Wall Motors factory in Baoding might seem like the perfect answer to China’s fast-rising labor costs – they don’t ask for a raise, get injured or go on strike.
For Great Wall, a private sector Chinese car maker that employs 50,000 workers, the Swiss robots and other machinery that line its bright factory floor produce more than cost savings. The company hopes they will help it build cars good enough to compete with the global auto makers.
“You don’t have to be an expert see the (quality) gap between Chinese cars and those made by companies like Audi and Volkswagen,” said Li Shaohui, who oversees automatic control engineering for the company. “To beat those competitors we have no choice but to use a higher level of equipment and technology.”
From car plants to microchip foundries, China’s industrial sector increasingly runs by machine.
Israel Fitting Nuclear Arms on German-Supplied Submarines
June 4th, 2012Via: AFP:
Israel is arming submarines supplied and largely financed by Germany with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, influential German news weekly Der Spiegel reports in its issue to be published on Monday.
The magazine said in a cover story that Berlin had until now denied any knowledge that German submarines were being used as part of an Israeli atomic arsenal.
But former high-ranking officials of the German defence ministry told Der Spiegel that the government always assumed Israel was putting nuclear warheads on the Dolphin-class vessels.
The article, based on a months-long probe, cited files from the foreign ministry in Berlin indicating the West German state was aware of the practice as early as 1961.
In Israel, foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said only: “I can confirm that we have German submarines. It’s no secret.
“As for the rest, I am not in a position to talk about their capacity,” he told AFP.
White House Website Petition to Obama: Please Create ‘Do Not Kill’ List
June 3rd, 2012Via: Daily Caller:
When President Barack Obama‘s online gurus created an interactive Web forum for receiving and evaluating citizen petitions, this is probably not what they had in mind.
“We the People,” the Obama White House’s answer to the office suggestion box, got a bit more interesting on Wednesday with the launch of a petition asking the administration to “create a Do Not Kill list.”
“The New York Times reports that President Obama has created an official ‘kill list’ that he uses to personally order the assassination of American citizens,” the petition’s author wrote.
“Considering that the government already has a ‘Do Not Call’ list and a ‘No Fly’ list, we hereby request that the White House create a ‘Do Not Kill’ list in which American citizens can sign up to avoid being put on the president’s ‘kill list’ and therefore avoid being executed without indictment, judge, jury, trial or due process of law.”
The May 29 Times story described a January 2010 meeting during which Obama studied the faces of terror suspects and weighed giving the order to have them killed.
“The mug shots and brief biographies resembled a high school yearbook layout,” reporters Jo Becker and Scott Shane wrote. ”Several were Americans.”
The Times editorialized the following day that no politician, not even a U.S. president, “should be able to unilaterally order the killing of American citizens or foreigners located far from a battlefield — depriving Americans of their due-process rights — without the consent of someone outside his political inner circle.”
Even if the “Do Not Kill list” petition’s authors can’t count any New York Times editorial writers among their signers, as of this writing 3,984 people have agreed.
Research Credit: noguru
Flame ‘Could only have been written by a large team of highly skilled software engineers’
June 2nd, 2012Via: Ars Technica:
At least 20 modules available for the malware bring a menu of highly advanced spying capabilities to the unknown people who control it. One plugin turns on the internal microphone of infected machines so Skype conversations can be secretly monitored in real time. A separate module scans nearby Bluetooth-enabled devices for names and phone numbers stored in contact lists. A third monitors machine activity by taking screenshots every 15 to 60 seconds, depending on whether Outlook or another targeted application is in use, and uses SSL-protected connections to send the images to the attackers. Flame can also sniff traffic passing over local networks to siphon user names, passwords, password hashes, and other sensitive data that attackers can use to further monitor their targets.
Banks Pressured to Buy Government Debt
June 1st, 2012Remember this?
In 2011, the Federal Reserve Purchased a Stunning 61% of U.S. Debt:
The recently released Federal Reserve Flow of Funds report for all of 2011 reveals that Federal Reserve purchases of Treasury debt mask reduced demand for U.S. sovereign obligations. Last year the Fed purchased a stunning 61% of the total net Treasury issuance, up from negligible amounts prior to the 2008 financial crisis. This not only creates the false appearance of limitless demand for U.S. debt but also blunts any sense of urgency to reduce supersized budget deficits.
Via: CNBC:
US and European regulators are essentially forcing banks to buy up their own government’s debt—a move that could end up making the debt crisis even worse, a Citigroup analysis says.
Regulators are allowing banks to escape counting their country’s debt against capital requirements and loosening other rules to create a steady market for government bonds, the study says.
While that helps governments issue more and more debt, the strategy could ultimately explode if the governments are unable to make the bond payments, leaving the banks with billions of toxic debt, says Citigroup strategist Hans Lorenzen.
“Captive bank demand can buy time and can help keep domestic yields low,” Lorenzen wrote in an analysis for clients. “However, the distortions that build up over time can sow the seeds of an even bigger crisis, if the time bought isn’t used very prudently.”
U.S. and Israel Created Stuxnet, Lost Control of It
June 1st, 2012Via: Ars Technica:
In 2011, the US government rolled out its “International Strategy for Cyberspace,” which reminded us that “interconnected networks link nations more closely, so an attack on one nation’s networks may have impact far beyond its borders.” An in-depth report today from the New York Times confirms the truth of that statement as it finally lays bare the history and development of the Stuxnet virus—and how it accidentally escaped from the Iranian nuclear facility that was its target.
The article is adapted from journalist David Sanger’s forthcoming book, Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power, and it confirms that both the US and Israeli governments developed and deployed Stuxnet. The goal of the worm was to break Iranian nuclear centrifuge equipment by issuing specific commands to the industrial control hardware responsible for their spin rate. By doing so, both governments hoped to set back the Iranian research program—and the US hoped to keep Israel from launching a pre-emptive military attack.
The code was only supposed to work within Iran’s Natanz refining facility, which was air-gapped from outside networks and thus difficult to penetrate. But computers and memory cards could be carried between the public Internet and the private Natanz network, and a preliminary bit of “beacon” code was used to map out all the network connections within the plant and report them back to the NSA.
That program, first authorized by George W. Bush, worked well enough to provide a digital map of Natanz and its industrial control hardware. Soon, US national labs were testing different bits of the plan to sabotage Natanz (apparently without knowing what the work was for) using similar centrifuges that had come from Libya’s Qadaffi regime. When the coders found the right sets of commands to literally shake the centrifuges apart, they knew that Stuxnet could work.
Research Credit: keti
50,000 Pages of JFK Assassination–Related Documents Still Classified
June 1st, 2012Via: Salon:
Next year will be a half-century since the death of JFK. And the Obama Administration thinks we need to keep secret the records on the matter … a little longer yet.
Believe it or not, more than 50,000 pages of JFK assassination–related documents are being withheld in full. And an untold number of documents have been partially withheld or released with everything interesting blacked out. But why?
Since the government and the big media keep telling us there was no conspiracy and that it was all Lee Harvey Oswald acting on his own, why continue to keep the wraps on?
…
For some perspective, meet Sheryl Shenberger. She’s the head of the Archives’ National Declassification Center. What would you guess Sheryl’s professional background would be? Library of Congress? Academic research? Nope. Before NDC, Sheryl worked for … the Central Intelligence Agency.
The most logical and reasonable explanation for this is that the Obama administration placed an ex-spook in charge of declassification because this would induce her old colleagues in Langley to cooperate. (Which of course raises the question of whether, in a real democracy, you would want to have a bunch of people secretly deciding to do whatever they wanted with 50-year-old documents pertaining to a supposed loony loner who whacked a president.)
Frustrated by the administration’s foot-dragging on JFK, AARC sent a letter urging the government to get off its duff. One signer was G. Robert Blakey, who served as a Chief Counsel to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (which in its 1978 final report said that, um … it looks like an organized conspiracy was responsible for JFK’s death.)
ARRC’s letter was dated January 20, 2012. According to Lesar, there has still been no reply — though NARA says it is working on it.
Release of the remaining documents, under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, can be postponed until October 26, 2017. Not so bad, you say? Actually, the Act further states that even in 2017, the president may decide to drag this on further, by withholding records indefinitely.
Maryland: Accused Murderer Ate Portions of Victim’s Heart and Brain
May 31st, 2012[???]
Via: CBS News:
A Morgan State University student who lived in the same home as a missing Joppatowne man now feared dead was charged with first-degree murder after parts of a human body were found inside the house and in a nearby dumpster. Now the suspect has admitted to eating portions of the man’s body parts, including his heart and brain.
Alexander Kinyua, 21, is being held on no bail.
Similar: Florida: Naked Man Killed by Police Near MacArthur Causeway Was ‘Eating’ Face Off Victim
Texas Woman Dismembers Infant Son, Eats His Brain [noguru]
