Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Rick Santelli's Chicago Tea Party

Rick Santelli's Chicago Tea Party

Egypt’s Top ‘Facebook Revolutionary’ Now Advising Occupy Wall Street

Posted: 19 Oct 2011 02:00 AM PDT

By Spencer Ackerman, Wired

One of the key activists behind Egypt's "Facebook Revolution" is now giving advice to a new group of protesters: the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The protesters in New York's Zuccotti Park — and their offshoots around the country — often cite the mass demonstrations earlier this year in Cairo's Tahrir Square as their inspiration. So maybe it shouldn't be much of a surprise that Ahmed Maher, one of the leading figures in those Egyptian protests, has been corresponding for weeks with the Occupy Wall Streeters, whom he calls "our brothers."

Maher is one of the founders of the April 6 Youth, which used Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to galvanize Egyptians against President Hosni Mubarak. Recently, however, his attention has turned toward America, where he's been chatting online with Occupy activists. Those conversations center around practical advice from a successful Egyptian revolutionary. Usually, they occur through Facebook. On Tuesday, for the first time, they happened face to face.

"We talk on the internet about what happened in Egypt, about our structure, about our organization, how to organize a flash mob, how to organize a sit-in," Maher tells Danger Room, and "how to be non-violent with police."

That's the message he brings to D.C.'s McPherson Square, home of the local Occupy offshoot, for an impromptu Tuesday afternoon visit. The denizens of the downtown park flock to an excited Maher when they learn an Egyptian revolutionary is there to support them. "We kept peaceful, because we wanted to attract people to us," Maher explains. "If we used nonviolence, without killing any soldiers, then the people would help us."

To read more, visit:  http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/egypt-occupy-wall-street

Priority List

Posted: 18 Oct 2011 10:16 AM PDT

Government Front Group Vows to Abolish Critical Thinking

Posted: 18 Oct 2011 08:13 AM PDT

By: Paul Joseph Watson, Infowars.com

Government front group Demos, an integral part of the British establishment which was founded by Marxists, is terrified that children are using the Internet to question what they are taught in school, and has vowed to abolish any such critical thinking to reinforce the education system's role as a tool of indoctrination.

A BBC News report reflects Demos' panic at "conspiracy theories" (ie any critical thought that questions the official consensus) being brought into the classroom.

It's a delicious irony that we've highlighted many times before and it underpins the entire education system. While complaining that children are not engaging in "critical thinking," Demos, a government front group, is abolishing any notion of critical thinking by telling students that they should only believe what the government and the mainstream media tells them is true – the same establishment that has been caught proliferating lies time and time again.

In reality, it is the very fact that students are increasingly engaging in "critical thinking," ie questioning the official version of events, that has the likes of Demos so petrified.

Having been caught lying and covering-up all manner of scandals, from the WMD farce, to Climategate, to the death of Dr. David Kelly, the British establishment and its sycophantic media cheerleaders like the BBC are losing credibility fast, that's why young people are turning to alternative sources of information to try and get the truth, something deemed intolerable by the system.

While young people are being intimidated out of critical thinking, they are simultaneously being bombarded with the likes of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, which was sent by the government to British schools in 2007, a documentary found by a British high court judge to contain nine significant errors while making claims in "the context of alarmism and exaggeration."

To read more, visit:  http://www.infowars.com/government-front-group-vows-to-abolish-critical-thinking/

Obama opposes repeal of healthcare program suspended last week

Posted: 18 Oct 2011 08:09 AM PDT

By Julian Pecquet, TheHill.com

President Obama is against repealing the health law’s long-term-care CLASS Act and might veto Republican efforts to do so, an administration official tells The Hill, despite the government’s announcement Friday that the program was dead in the water.

“We do not support repeal,” the official said Monday. “Repealing the CLASS Act isn’t necessary or productive. What we should be doing is working together to address the long-term care challenges we face in this country.”

Over the weekend, The Hill has learned, an administration official called advocates of the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act to reassure them that Obama is still committed to making the program work. That official also told advocates that widespread media reports on the program’s demise were wrong, leaving advocates scratching their heads.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced Friday in a blog post on the liberal Huffington Post website that the administration did not see a way to make the program sustainable. Sebelius indicated her agency hadn’t been able to figure out a way to ensure the program providing long-term care paid for itself as required by law.
Later in a call with reporters on Friday, an HHS official said work on the program was being suspended.

“We won’t be working further to implement the CLASS Act. … We don’t see a path forward to be able to do that,” Assistant Secretary for Aging Kathy Greenlee told reporters on Friday.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, meanwhile, said Monday that repealing the program would not add to the deficit, making Republican repeal efforts that much easier.

To read more, visit:  http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/187949-white-house-opposes-formal-class-act-repeal

Google’s $3b tax haven loophole probed

Posted: 18 Oct 2011 08:05 AM PDT

By: Jesse Drucker, The Sydney Morning Herald

The US Internal Revenue Service is auditing how Google avoided federal income taxes by shifting profit into offshore subsidiaries, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

The agency is bringing more than typical scrutiny to how the company valued software rights and other intellectual property it licensed abroad, said the person, who requested anonymity because the audit isn’t public. The IRS has requested information from Google about its offshore deals after three acquisitions, including its $US1.65 billion purchase of YouTube, the person said. The transfer overseas of these kinds of rights rights has enabled Google to attribute earnings to foreign units that pay lower taxes, Bloomberg News reported a year ago.

Last year Bloomberg said Google had cut its taxes by $US3.1 billion ($3 billion) in the three years prior using a technique that moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda.

While Google’s potential liability isn’t clear, similar deals between companies and offshore arms are often the subject of disputes over hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes, said Daniel Frisch, an economist at Horst Frisch, which advises businesses on transfer pricing – the allocation of income between units in different countries. In 2006, the IRS settled a case with drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline for $US3.4 billion.

"The very biggest transfer-pricing tax disputes are over transfers of intangibles to offshore subsidiaries," said Frisch, whose firm is based in Washington.

Google, owner of the world’s most popular search engine, has cut its worldwide tax bill by about $US1 billion a year using a pair of strategies called the "Double Irish" and "Dutch Sandwich", which move profits through units in Ireland, the Netherlands and Bermuda. Google reported an effective tax rate of 18.8 per cent in the second quarter, less than half the average combined US and state statutory rate of 39.2 per cent.

To read more, visit:  http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/googles-3b-tax-haven-loophole-probed-20111018-1lu0v.html

U.S. Debated Cyberwarfare in Attack Plan on Libya

Posted: 18 Oct 2011 07:46 AM PDT

By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER, NYTimes.com

WASHINGTON — Just before the American-led strikes against Libya in March, the Obama administration intensely debated whether to open the mission with a new kind of warfare: a cyberoffensive to disrupt and even disable the Qaddafi government's air-defense system, which threatened allied warplanes.

While the exact techniques under consideration remain classified, the goal would have been to break through the firewalls of the Libyan government's computer networks to sever military communications links and prevent the early-warning radars from gathering information and relaying it to missile batteries aiming at NATO warplanes.

But administration officials and even some military officers balked, fearing that it might set a precedent for other nations, in particular Russia or China, to carry out such offensives of their own, and questioning whether the attack could be mounted on such short notice. They were also unable to resolve whether the president had the power to proceed with such an attack without informing Congress.

In the end, American officials rejected cyberwarfare and used conventional aircraft, cruise missiles and drones to strike the Libyan air-defense missiles and radars used by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's government.

This previously undisclosed debate among a small circle of advisers demonstrates that cyberoffensives are a growing form of warfare. The question the United States faces is whether and when to cross the threshold into overt cyberattacks.

To read more, visit:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/world/africa/cyber-warfare-against-libya-was-debated-by-us.html?_r=3&hp
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)