08.29.11
Gemini version available ♊︎Links – Cisco and L’American Censorship, Edelman Spam, and China Syndrome
Reader’s Picks
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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NYT Stories On ‘Hard To Imagine,’ ‘Extra Hot And Extra Early’ Drought And ‘Scorching Temperatures’ Ignore Global Warming [2]
Sounds like corporate media ignoring Microsoft when it comes to widespread botnets and all the spam, DoS, espionage and other crime so enabled.
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China Syndrome – WikiLeaks cables reveal fears over China’s nuclear safety [and highlight US lobbying]
In August, 2008, the embassy noted that China was in the process of building 50 to 60 new nuclear plants by 2020. This target – which has since increased – was a huge business opportunity [and pushed Westinghouse design]. … The biggest potential bottleneck is human resources – coming up with enough trained personnel to build and operate all of these new plants, as well as regulate the industry.
They can have competent people but it won’t matter if none of them can blow the whistle.
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Finance
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Corporate greed and unemployment set the stage for cooperative business as skilled but underemployed or underpaid people get together.
the good news is, while any big, social or economic grassroots movement is a “marathon”, so to speak, we are witnessing big change over the last couple of years.
Organic farming and food preparation are good matches but all sorts of small businesses can take advantage of all the good people on the market.
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Death and Taxes in Texas. Rick Perry tried to set up “dead peasant ” life insurance policies for State teachers.
It was Gramm who could make the plan a financial reality … a new package of complex assets for speculators to gamble on. Corporations had been using mass purchases of life insurance policies on their employees for years as part of an elaborate tax avoidance scheme (the government doesn’t tax insurance premiums or death benefits). The employees themselves … received no benefit. Only the companies who bought the policies would receive payouts when these “peasants” died. … a gruesome combination of what are now regarded as two of the most infamous Wall Street scams on record.
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Anti-Trust
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Ben Edelman wrote another diatribe against Google for his Microsoft taskmasters, this time advocating pharmacy price gouging of US citizens and the censorship required to enforce it.
US law appropriately limits what ads may be shown to US consumers.
He also “>tells us how wonderful Bing and Windows are.
Much of my work for Microsoft does indeed speak to advertising fraud. Microsoft must make sure Bing doesn’t show ads for scams, that fraudsters don’t use the Microsoft DRIVEpm ad network, that Windows Defender properly detects spyware/adware, etc. I’ve worked with Microsoft on these kinds of matters.
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Censorship
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An Argentine government commission ordered all ISPs to block access to a site that has published leaked government emails.
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The CIA is censoring a book by a critic, banning him from stating things that are already public knowledge, just to hamper criticism.
Ali Soufan is a long-time FBI agent and interrogator who was at the center of the U.S. government’s counter-terrorism activities … the CIA is barring the publication of vast amounts of information in his book including, as Scott Shane details in The New York Times today, many facts that are not remotely secret and others that have been publicly available for years, including ones featured in the 9/11 Report and even in Soufan’s own public Congressional testimony.
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EFF: China threatens dissidents to protect Cisco collaborators.
We believe all of the plaintiffs in the cases against Cisco Systems are taking great risks through their involvement in the lawsuits. Recently, Du Daobin’s attorney published a blog noting that his client had been detained and interrogated at length by senior officials from China’s Ministry of Public Security about his role in Du v. Cisco. Mr. Du and the other plaintiffs are currently at risk of further torture, imprisonment, or even “disappearance.”
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Tell Cisco to ask China to stop persecuting activists who are suing Cisco.
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Privacy
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Civil Rights
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Hamas harasses Palestinian Activists.
Self torture of this sort only adds to the misery.
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Copyrights
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France refuses to sign a UN declaration on human rights and the Internet because Sarkozy insists that copyright is just as important as human rights. The article confusingly refers to copyright as “intellectual property”, a term that spreads confusion whenever it is used.
Did You Say “Intellectual Property”? It’s a Seductive Mirage
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