India is currently implementing some of the scariest surveillance schemes in the world. This lecture will shed light on India’s surveillance industry, its UID scheme which aims at the collection of all biometric data and on various controversial surveillance schemes, such as the Central Monitoring System (CMS).
I will not buy any more music or see any more movies if they have anything to do with any of these entertainment conglomerates. I will shortly be cancelling my Comcast home internet and replacing it with DSL. I am going to tell them the reason why is because of their support for SOPA.
I will not be watching any more major league baseball, basketball, or football games. It's going to be harder not to support organizations such as 3M and Underwriters Laboratories, but for consumer goods like shoe makers and entertainment industry content providers, the choice is easy to live by.
Hit them where it hurts: the almighty dollar.
1-800 Contacts, Inc. 1-800-PetMeds 3M Company ABRO Industries, Inc. Acushnet Company Adidas America Advanced Medical Technology Association Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers American Association of Independent Music American Federation of Musicians Americans for Tax Reform Association of American Publishers Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association Beam Global Spirits &Wine Blue Sky Studios, Inc. Bose Corporation Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) Burberry CBS Corporation Comcast Concerned Women for America Council of State Governments Deluxe Entertainment Services Group Inc., Directors Guild of America Dow Chemical Electronic Components Industry Association Eli Lilly and Company Entertainment Software Association Estee Lauder Companies Ford Motor Company Greeting Card Association HarperCollins Publishers Independent Film & Television Alliance International Association of Fire Fighters International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers International Brotherhood of Teamsters International Trademark Association Johnson & Johnson Kekepana International Services Let Freedom Ring LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton Major League Baseball Merck Motion Picture Association of America National Association of Manufacturers National Association of Theatre Owners National Basketball Association National Cable & Telecommunications Association National Confectioners Association National Criminal Justice Association National District Attorneys Association National Electrical Manufacturers Association National Football League National Music Publishers' Association National Retail Federation NBC Universal News Corporation Nike, Inc. Nintendo Outdoor Industry Association Pfizer Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America Philip Morris International Recording Industry Association of America Retail Industry Leaders Association Screen Actors Guild Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council Society of Plastics Industry Software & Information Industry Association Sony Music Entertainment Sony Pictures Entertainment Specialty Equipment Market Association Sporting Goods Manufacturer's Association Taylor Made Golf Company, Inc. The Walt Disney Company Tiffany & Co. Timberland Company Time Warner U. S. Chamber of Commerce Underwriters Laboratories Inc. Universal Music Group Inc. Viacom Walmart Walt Disney Company Warner Music Group Xerox Corporation
All the time, we hear new horror stories of night raids gone bad, where women, children get hurt, and dogs, get shot. The best example being a raid in Columbia, Missouri just a few weeks ago. Alyona discusses these cases with police militarization expert, Reason Magazine's Radley Balko.
Treasury officials now face a trifecta of headaches: a mountain of new debt, a balloon of short-term borrowings that come due in the months ahead, and interest rates that are sure to climb back to normal as soon as the Federal Reserve decides that the emergency has passed.
Even as Treasury officials are racing to lock in today’s low rates by exchanging short-term borrowings for long-term bonds, the government faces a payment shock similar to those that sent legions of overstretched homeowners into default on their mortgages.
With the national debt now topping $12 trillion, the White House estimates that the government’s tab for servicing the debt will exceed $700 billion a year in 2019, up from $202 billion this year, even if annual budget deficits shrink drastically. Other forecasters say the figure could be much higher...
The United States will not be the only government competing to refinance huge debt. Japan, Germany, Britain and other industrialized countries have even higher government debt loads, measured as a share of their gross domestic product, and they too borrowed heavily to combat the financial crisis and economic downturn...
The White House estimates that the government will have to borrow about $3.5 trillion more over the next three years. On top of that, the Treasury has to refinance, or roll over, a huge amount of short-term debt that was issued during the financial crisis. Treasury officials estimate that about 36 percent of the government’s marketable debt — about $1.6 trillion — is coming due in the months ahead...
RE: Gunman, guard shot at Holocaust museum - Crime & courts- msnbc.com
Topic: Current Events
9:44 pm EDT, Jun 11, 2009
Mike the Usurper wrote:
Law enforcement officials identified the suspect as James Wenneker von Brunn, born in 1920, from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, NBC News reported. NBC said he may have had connections to hate groups or anti-government groups.
For those who started something when the terror book came out about right wing groups, this and the Tiller murder are the sort of thing it was talking about. How many lefty attacks have there been? Oh that's right, none.
Reality does have a liberal bias, and it's because of people like these guys.
Goodbye Dubai | Smashing Telly - A hand picked TV channel
Topic: Current Events
11:05 pm EST, Feb 17, 2009
Short of opening a Radio Shack in an Amish town, Dubai is the world’s worst business idea, and there isn’t even any oil. Imagine proposing to build Vegas in a place where sex and drugs and rock and roll are an anathema. This is effectively the proposition that created Dubai - it was a stupid idea before the crash, and now it is dangerous.
Dubai threatens to become an instant ruin, an emblematic hybrid of the worst of both the West and the Middle-East and a dangerous totem for those who would mistakenly interpret this as the de facto product of a secular driven culture.
...
But if there is one problem with the shallow and the fickle, its that they are shallow and fickle, they won’t put down deep roots and they won’t remain loyal to Dubai. The people who appear in People magazine need to be told what is cool by Wallpaper magazine who in turn will discover something after the hipsters have moved on. The problem is that Dubai was never hipster-cool and is no longer Wallpaper-cool. This realization will have the same impact as suburbanite bachelorette party in a Wallpaper-cool nightclub. It will spread like the sighting of a floating turd in a public pool, flushing people to the exits with silent panic, unacknowledged for fear of embarrassment.
As people scramble for the exits in Dubai, there is no ‘key mail’, like in America, where people can often mail back their house keys and walk away from a mortgage without the immediate threat of jail. People are literally fleeing this place, to date leaving 3000 cars stranded at the airport with keys still in the ignition. And the reason for this is that if you default on your Dubai mortgage, you can end up in a debtors prison. Perhaps Dubai will at least create a new Dickens?
Climate Debate Daily - A new way to understand disputes about global warming
Topic: Current Events
2:54 pm EST, Feb 5, 2009
Calls to Action:
Essays and research supporting the idea that global warming poses a clear threat to humanity, that it is largely caused by human activity, and that solutions to the problems of climate change lie within human reach.
Dissenting Voices:
Essays and research challenging the view that the world warming that began around 1880 is caused by human activity, that it poses a serious threat, or that the vagaries of earth’s climate are within human control.
This is where I've been getting my fix for the past few weeks. Pro's and Con's site, simple to navigate, and current. Can't beat that.
REYKJAVIK, Iceland -- This volcanic island near the Arctic Circle is on the brink of becoming the first "national bankruptcy" of the global financial meltdown.
Home to just 320,000 people on a territory the size of Kentucky, Iceland has formidable international reach because of an outsized banking sector that set out with Viking confidence to conquer swaths of the British economy _ from fashion retailers to top soccer teams.
The strategy gave Icelanders one of the world's highest per capita incomes. But now they are watching helplessly as their economy implodes _ their currency losing almost half its value, and their heavily exposed banks collapsing under the weight of debts incurred by lending in the boom times.
"Everything is closed. We couldn't sell our stock or take money from the bank," said Johann Sigurdsson as he left a branch of Landsbanki in downtown Reykjavik.
The government had earlier announced it had nationalized the bank under emergency laws enacted to deal with the crisis.
"We have been forced to take decisive action to save the country," Prime Minister Geir H. Haarde said of those sweeping new powers that allow the government to take over companies, limit the authority of boards, and call shareholder meetings.
A full-blown collapse of Iceland's financial system would send shock waves across Europe, given the heavy investment by Icelandic banks and companies across the continent.
One of Iceland's biggest companies, retailing investment group Baugur, owns or has stakes in dozens of major European retailers _ including enough to make it the largest private company in Britain, where it owns a handful of stores such as the famous toy store Hamley's.
Kaupthing, Iceland's largest bank and one of those whose share trading was suspended last week to stop a huge sell-off, has also invested in European retail groups.
Watching Dean Baker on CSPAN at the moment, visited his think tank's site, lots of interesting talking point memos.
With much of this equity now eliminated by the collapse of the bubble, many families can no longer sustain their levels of consumption. The main reason that banks won't lend to these families is that they no longer have home equity to serve as collateral. It wouldn't matter how much money the banks had, they are not going to make mortgage loans to people who have no equity.
And house prices are not going to come back. This is like Pets.com. We are not going to get the price of $200,000 homes in central California back up to $500,000.
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How do we go about getting the banks in order? Almost every economist I know rejects the Paulson approach and argues instead for directly injecting capital into the banks. The taxpayers give them the money and then we own some, or all, of the bank. (That's what Warren Buffet did with Goldman Sachs.)
This isn't about begging for a sliver of equity as a concession for a $700 billion bailout, this is about constructing a bank rescue the way that business people would do it. We have an interest in a well-operating financial system. There is zero public interest in giving away taxpayer dollars to the Wall Street banks and their executives.
