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Bitcoin hoard worth $27m seized from online black market


The Guardian
Sat, 18 Jan 2014 05:24 UTC
  • Digital currency worth $27m seized from online black market
  • Much larger sum still in dispute with website's alleged founder
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© Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Image
The value of the digital currency bitcoin has fluctuated wildly based on the value of online transactions.
US prosecutors in Manhattan are sitting on a multimillion-dollar bitcoin gold mine. And it could get much bigger.

Federal authorities hauled in 29,655 units of the digital currency - worth $27m or £16.5m at current exchange rates - through an official forfeiture by Bitcoin this week. The bitcoins had belonged to Silk Road, an anonymous online black market that authorities say was a conduit for purchases of drugs and computer hacking services - even a place where assassins may have advertised. It was shuttered after an FBI raid in September, when agents took control of its server and arrested the man they say was its founder in San Francisco.

No one stepped forward to claim these bitcoins, which were found in electronic "wallets" used to store the digital currency. An additional 144,336 bitcoins, worth more than $128m today, were also discovered but the government's claim on them is being disputed by Ross William Ulbricht, 29, who US authorities say was the founder and main operator of Silk Road. They had been stashed on his laptop.
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Treasure Chest

U.S. tech firms attempt to halt corporate tax avoidance reforms

Simon Bowers
The Guardian
Sun, 19 Jan 2014 05:40 UTC
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© Richard Gardner/Rex Features
Margaret Hodge, who chairs the public accounts committee, has been strongly critical of Google’s stance on tax.
Lobbyists representing leading US technology companies urge thinktank advising G20 not to close international tax loopholes

Silicon Valley has launched a last-ditch attempt to derail plans devised by the G20 group of countries to close down international loopholes that are exploited by the likes of Google, Amazon and Apple to pay less tax in the UK and elsewhere.

The Digital Economy Group, a lobbying group dominated by the leading US digital firms, has written to the OECD, the Paris-based thinktank tasked by G20 leaders with drawing up reforms, saying it is not true that communications advances have allowed multinational groups to game national tax systems.

Suggesting that any leakage of tax revenues flowing from the complex corporate structures of digital groups is merely coincidental, the Digital Economy Group says: "Enterprises that employ digital communications models do not organise their business operations differently as a legal or tax matter."

Their denial of tax engineering follows a string of tax scandals in Europe and the US in the past two years. In the UK, Google bore the brunt of criticism from Margaret Hodge, who chairs the public accounts committee, after it emerged that Google - which the Guardian understands is a member of the DEG - had been allowed to pay £3.4m in tax to HMRC in 2012 despite UK revenues of £3.2bn.
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Vader

U.S. Special Forces now operate in 134 countries - 70% of the planet's inhabited surface

Nick Turse
Press TV
Mon, 20 Jan 2014 08:08 UTC
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American murderers-for-hire freely roam most of the planet, carrying out hits for their corporate paymasters.
They operate in the green glow of night vision in Southwest Asia and stalk through the jungles of South America. They snatch men from their homes in the Maghreb and shoot it out with heavily armed militants in the Horn of Africa. They feel the salty spray while skimming over the tops of waves from the turquoise Caribbean to the deep blue Pacific. They conduct missions in the oppressive heat of Middle Eastern deserts and the deep freeze of Scandinavia. All over the planet, the Obama administration is waging a secret war whose full extent has never been fully revealed -- until now.

Since September 11, 2001, U.S. Special Operations forces have grown in every conceivable way, from their numbers to their budget. Most telling, however, has been the exponential rise in special ops deployments globally. This presence -- now in nearly 70% of the world's nations -- provides new evidence of the size and scope of a secret war being waged from Latin America to the backlands of Afghanistan, from training missions with African allies to information operations launched in cyberspace.

In the waning days of the Bush presidency, Special Operations forces were reportedly deployed in about 60 countries around the world. By 2010, that number had swelled to 75, according to Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post. In 2011, Special Operations Command (SOCOM) spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told TomDispatch that the total would reach 120. Today, that figure has risen higher still.
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Snakes in Suits

Do as we say, not as we do! Countries pushing the man-made global warming propaganda are all 'outsourcing' their CO2 emissions to China

Suzanne Goldenberg
The Guardian
Sun, 19 Jan 2014 06:26 UTC
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© How Hwee Young/EPA
Jinhuarun chemical plant in Zekou Town, Qianjiang City of Hubei Province, China. A draft UN report says the west is increasingly outsourcing its carbon pollution to China and other rising economies
Greenhouse gas output of China and elsewhere is increased by making goods that are then used in the US and Europe

The world's richest countries are increasingly outsourcing their carbon pollution to China and other rising economies, according to a draft UN report.

Outsourcing of emissions comes in the form of electronic devices such as smartphones, cheap clothes and other goods manufactured in China and other rising economies but consumed in the US and Europe.

A draft of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, obtained by the Guardian, says emissions of carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases warming the planet grew twice as fast in the first decade of the 21st century as they did during the previous three decades.

Much of that rise was due to the burning of coal, the report says. And much of that coal was used to power factories in China and other rising economies that produce goods for US and European consumers, the draft adds.

Since 2000, annual carbon dioxide emissions for China and the other rising economies have more than doubled to nearly 14 gigatonnes a year, according to the draft report. But about 2 GT a year of that was produced making goods for export.

The picture is similar for other rising economies producing goods for export, the report finds.
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Snakes in Suits

Oligarchs vs. masses: 85 richest people on Earth as wealthy as half world's population

Graeme Wearden
The Guardian
Mon, 20 Jan 2014 06:11 UTC
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© Arnd Wiegmann/REUTERS
The InterContinental Davos luxury hotel in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos. Oxfam report found people in countries around the world believe that the rich have too much influence over the direction their country is heading
As World Economic Forum starts in Davos, development charity claims that growing inequality has been driven by a 'power grab' by wealthy elites

The world's wealthiest people aren't known for travelling by bus, but if they fancied a change of scene then the richest 85 people on the globe - who between them control as much wealth as the poorest half of the global population put together - could squeeze onto a single double-decker.

The extent to which so much global wealth has become corralled by a virtual handful of the so-called 'global elite' is exposed in a new report from Oxfam on Monday. It warned that those richest 85 people across the globe share a combined wealth of £1tn, as much as the poorest 3.5 billion of the world's population.
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Target

Why are dozens of high ranking officers being purged from the U.S. military?

Michael Snyder
End Of The American Dream
Thu, 16 Jan 2014 20:06 UTC
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© Mariordo Camila Ferreira and Mario Duran
Aerial view of The Pentagon
Since Barack Obama has been in the White House, high ranking military officers have been removed from their positions at a rate that is absolutely unprecedented. Things have gotten so bad that a number of retired generals are publicly speaking out about the "purge" of the U.S. military that they believe is taking place. As you will see below, dozens of highly decorated military leaders have been dismissed from their positions over the past few years. So why is this happening? When I was growing up, my father was an officer in the U.S. Navy. And what is going on right now is absolutely crazy - especially during a time of peace. Is there a deliberate attempt to "reshape" the military and remove those that don't adhere to the proper "viewpoints"? Does someone out there feel a need to get officers that won't "cooperate" out of the way? Throughout world history, whatever comes next after a "military purge" is never good. If this continues, what is the U.S. military going to look like in a few years?
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Light Sabers

Do as we say, not as we do! While U.S. preaches neo-liberal 'free trade', China condemns its protectionist measures

Ben Blanchard & Norihiko Shirouzu
Reuters
Sun, 19 Jan 2014 19:54 UTC
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© Reuters/Kevin Lamarque
U.S. President Barack Obama signs the ''omnibus'' spending bill in Washington January 17, 2014.

China's Commerce Ministry has condemned a $1.1-trillion spending bill passed by the U.S. Congress last week over clauses that limit technological purchases from the Asian giant, saying they clash with the principles of fair trade.

The bill, signed by President Barack Obama on Friday, included a cyber-espionage review process for federal purchases of technology from China, a measure incorporated last year amid growing U.S. concern over Chinese cyber attacks.

In a weekend statement, China's Commerce Ministry said the move "went against the principles of fair trade" as it sought to curb purchases of Chinese technology and export of satellites and parts to China.

"China is resolutely opposed," the ministry said in comments attributed to an unnamed official in its U.S. trade division.
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Light Sabers

U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers thinks Edward Snowden was helped by Russian intelligence


Fox News
Sun, 19 Jan 2014 18:23 UTC
Image
© AP
June 9, 2013: This photo provided by The Guardian newspaper in London shows Edward Snowden.
The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee on Sunday questioned whether Edward Snowden acted alone in leaking details of the National Security Agency's surveillance programs to U.S. and British newspapers last year.

Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said on NBC's 'Meet the Press' that the former NSA contractor was "a thief whom we believe had some help."

"Let me just say this," Rogers said. "I believe there's a reason he ended up in the hands, the loving arms, of an FSB agent in Moscow. I don't think that's a coincidence."

Comment: It's always easier to blame your enemies, but maybe there's some truth to what the Congressman is saying? Maybe Snowden was helped by high-level insiders, though not necessarily Russian ones?

PRISM for your Mind: NSA, WikiLeaks and Israel

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Control Panel

Pat Buchanan: Why Congress is held in contempt

Pat Buchanan
Creators.com
Thu, 16 Jan 2014 00:00 UTC
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© Fakingnews
"I've got a pen," said President Obama early this week.

"I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions ... that move the ball forward."

"When I can act on my own without Congress, I'm going to do so," the president added Wednesday at North Carolina State.

Thus did Obama signal that he will bypass Congress and use his executive powers to advance his agenda of national transformation.

This dismissal of Congress has gone almost unprotested. In an earlier age it might have evoked talk of impeachment. But not now.

For though Congress may be the first branch of government in the Constitution, with the longest list of enumerated powers in Article 1, its eclipse has been extraordinary.

Congressional powers have eroded or been surrendered. The esteem in which Congress is now held calls to mind Emily Dickinson: "It dropped so low in my regard/I heard it hit the ground."

Congress boasts a 13 percent approval, a surge from its all-time low of 9 percent last fall before the budget deal.

While ex-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates expressed disappointment in Obama and Hillary Clinton in his book "Duty," and was dismissive of Joe Biden, his view of Congress dripped with venom:

"Uncivil, incompetent in fulfilling basic constitutional responsibilities (such as timely appropriations), micromanagerial, parochial, hypocritical, egotistical, thin-skinned, often putting self (and reelection) before country - this was my view of the majority of the United States Congress."
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Eye 2

Dave Lee Travis groped breasts of BBC trainee live on Radio 4, jury told

Josh Halliday
BBC
Wed, 15 Jan 2014 23:46 UTC
Image
© Andrew Winning/Reuters
Dave Lee Travis arrives at Southwark crown court in London.
Woman was left terrified by alleged assault and was too frightened to report it to her managers, court hears

A former BBC trainee feared she would have a black mark against her name if she complained to her bosses when Dave Lee Travis groped her breasts live on Radio 4, a jury has heard.

The woman, who was 26 at the time of the incident, told jurors she was frightened by the alleged assault and was too scared to report it to her managers.

"I was on probation [as a trainee newsreader], there was no way I was going to start telling off this big star of Radio 1," said the woman, giving evidence from behind a white curtain in the witness box of Southwark crown court in London on Wednesday.

"If I had gone to the management I imagine it would have been: 'So what? You're a big girl, deal with it.' I think I would have had a black mark against my name on my file - 'this woman can't take a joke she has no sense of humour'."
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