Money Flies Out of Spain
May 31st, 2012Via: Reuters:
Spaniards alarmed by the dire state of their banks are squirreling money abroad at the fastest rate since records began, figures showed on Thursday, and the credit ratings of eight regions were cut.
Spain is the next country in the firing line of the euro zone’s debt crisis, with spendthrift regions and shaky banks threatening to blow a hole in state finances and pushing funding costs towards levels that signal the need for a bailout.
The European Commission gave new help on Wednesday, offering direct aid from a euro zone rescue fund to recapitalize Spanish banks and more time for Madrid to reduce its budget deficit.
That helped lower the risk premium investors demand to hold Spanish 10-year debt rather than the German benchmark on Thursday, but it remained close to the euro-era record, at 520 basis points.
Bank of Spain data showed a net 66.2 billion euros ($82.0 billion) was sent abroad last month, the most since records began in 1990. The figure compares to a 5.4 billion net entry of funds during the same month one year ago.
Torture: The Memo Bush Tried to Destroy
May 31st, 2012Via: Salon:
In February of 2006, Philip Zelikow, counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, authored a memo opposing the Bush administration’s torture practices (though he employed the infamous obfuscation of “enhanced interrogation techniques”). The White House tried to collect and destroy all copies of the memo, but one survived in the State Department’s bowels and was declassified yesterday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the National Security Archive.
The memo argues that the Convention Against Torture, and the Constitution’s prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment, do indeed apply to the CIA’s use of “waterboard[ing], walling, dousing, stress positions, and cramped confinement.” Zelikow further wrote in the memo that “we are unaware of any precedent in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, or any subsequent conflict for authorized, systematic interrogation practices similar to those in question here, even when the prisoners were presumed to be unlawful combatants.” According to the memo, the techniques are legally prohibited, even if there is a compelling state interest to justify them, since they should be considered cruel and unusual punishment and “shock the conscience.”
Research Credit: GB
‘The Last Days of Cash’
May 31st, 2012Anti-Censorship Tool Used in Syria and Iran Compromised; Logs Keystrokes, Phones Home to Server in U.S.
May 31st, 2012Via: Security Week:
Simurgh, a privacy tool used in Iran and Syria to bypass Internet censorship and governmental monitoring, is being circulated with a backdoor. The compromised version has been offered on P2P networks and via web searches. Research conducted by CitizenLab.org has shown that malicious version isn’t available form the original software source, only through third-party access, so it appears that Simurgh has been repackaged.
Paleo Diet Blogger vs. North Carolina
May 31st, 2012Via: Institute for Justice:
Can the government throw you in jail for offering advice on the Internet about what food people should buy at the grocery store?
That is exactly the claim made by the North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition. In December 2011, diabetic blogger Steve Cooksey started a Dear Abby-style advice column on his popular blog (www.diabetes-warrior.net) to answer reader questions. One month later, the State Board informed Steve that he could not give readers advice on diet, whether for free or for compensation, because doing so constituted the unlicensed, and thus criminal, practice of dietetics. The State Board also told Steve that his private emails and telephone calls with readers and friends were illegal, as was his paid life-coaching service. The State Board went through Steve’s writings with a red pen, indicating what he may and may not say without a government-issued license.
But the First Amendment does not allow the government to ban people from sharing ordinary advice about diet, or scrub the Internet—from blogs to Facebook to Twitter—of speech the government does not like. North Carolina can no more force Steve to become a licensed dietitian than it could require Dear Abby to become a licensed psychologist.
That is why on May 30, 2012, Steve Cooksey joined the Institute for Justice in filing a major free speech lawsuit against the State Board in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, Charlotte Division. This lawsuit seeks to answer one of the most important unresolved questions in First Amendment law: When does the government’s power to license occupations trump free speech?
Related: North Carolina: State Threatens to Shut Down Nutrition Blogger
Research Credit: anchoviesmegma
Alabama: More Than 20,000 People Applied for 877 Job Openings at Automobile Factory
May 31st, 2012Via: CNBC:
It should not come as a surprise with unemployment over 8% that good paying jobs in manufacturing are harder than ever to land.
At the Hyundai plant in Montgomery, Alabama more than 20,000 people have applied for one of the 877 job openings.
Depleted Uranium: Kids of ‘The Iraqi Hiroshima’
May 31st, 2012Update: Pentagon Shills Don’t Want You To See This Post
Thanks for letting me know that this hits a nerve.
I’ll make sure that everyone sees it. Again.
—End Update—
Via: Vice:
I had been to Fallujah before, but I didn’t have any access to the hospital then. The last time I went, I did. Fallujah is particularly interesting because it is being called “the Iraqi Hiroshima” – the town was obliterated in 2004, in the Battle of Fallujah.
Spain’s Former Prime Minister: ‘We’re In a Situation of Total Emergency’
May 31st, 2012Via: Telegraph:
Spain is in a state of ‘total emergency’, the country’s former prime minister has warned, with Madrid facing punitive borrowing costs and the prospect of needing a Greek-style bail-out.
Felipe González, the country’s elder statesman, said: “We’re in a situation of total emergency, the worst crisis we have ever lived through.”
Global financial markets lurched yesterday at the spectre of the eurozone’s fourth biggest economy being locked out of international capital markets and being unable to fund itself.
Spanish borrowing costs soared, while the Madrid stock market fell 2.6 per cent, the euro sank to a 22-month low against the dollar and the price of Brent crude dropped 2 per cent.
Volvo’s Self-Drive ‘Convoy’ Hits the Spanish Motorway
May 30th, 2012What could possibly go wrong?
Avi Rubin – All Your Devices Can Be Hacked:
Via: BBC:
A convoy of self-driven cars has completed a 200km (125-mile) journey on a Spanish motorway, in the first public test of such vehicles.
The cars were wirelessly linked to each other and “mimicked” a lead vehicle, driven by a professional driver.
The so-called road train has been developed by Volvo. The firm is confident that they will be widely available in future.
The project aims to herald a new age of relaxed driving.
According to Volvo, drivers “can now work on their laptops, read a book or sit back and enjoy a relaxed lunch” while driving.
Military to Avoid Embarrassing Pictures by Banning Photography
May 30th, 2012Via: Anti War:
It sounds like the punchline of a bad joke, but after years of dealing with photographs of troops torturing prisoners, desecrating corpses and generally behaving badly, commanders in southwestern Afghanistan have announced that they are going to solve the problem by banning photography.
The command, which covers some 36,000 troops including 15,800 US Marines, announced that troops will only be allowed to take photographs for “official purposes,” and will no longer be taking “happy snaps,” apparently the official name for pictures like those showing US Marines urinating on corpses in the nation.
Research Credit: anchoviesmegma
