Puppet MastersS


Dollar Gold

Top German regulator: Precious metal and currency manipulation are worse than Libor

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© Business Insider
The New Largest Financial Scandal In History ...

The Libor interest rate scandal was the biggest financial scandal in history:
  • Even though RBS and a handful of other banks have been fined for interest rate manipulation, Libor is still being manipulated. No wonder ... the fines are pocket change - the cost of doing business - for the big banks
But the head German financial regulator said today that manipulation in gold, silver and currencies is worse than the Libor scandal:
Germany's top financial regulator said possible manipulation of currency rates and prices for precious metals is worse than the Libor-rigging scandal, which has already led to fines of about $6 billion.
While this is the first time a regulator has said this, several financial writers - including Thomas Pascoe - have previously said the same thing.

Yup, Currency Markets Are Rigged

Indeed, currency markets are massively rigged. And see this and this.

Laptop

Say goodbye to the Internet we've known: U.S. court decision to affect net neutrality

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© Trickscentral.com
If you like how cable television works, you're going to love how a court decision this week could change the Internet.

Thanks to the ruling, broadband providers can now exert a lot more control over what sites you visit on the Internet and what services you can access. The decision would allow Comcast, for example, to bar its Internet subscribers from seeing videos from Netflix or from using Vonage's Internet phone service.

Made by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the decision Tuesday overturned rules put in place by the Federal Communications Commission in 2010 that barred wired Internet providers from blocking access to particular sites or services, and generally required them to treat all Internet traffic equally.

While the court's ruling will worry and anger advocates of an open Internet, it's federal regulators, not the judges, who are to blame. Their subservience to the big telecommunications companies and timidity in writing the rules governing Internet traffic led directly to the court's decision.

One thing that has made the Internet distinct from pay television services is the role of the service provider. With pay TV, the cable or satellite company determines what channels you can watch, which often depends on what kind of financial deals the providers can strike with the channel operators. As subscribers have seen, disputes over who should pay what can lead to channels or programs going off the air.

Stormtrooper

Political prisoner released in north of Ireland after 4 years in capitivity based on 'secret charges'

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Martin Corey
After almost four years in jail without charge, Irish prisoner of conscience Martin Corey was released from custody on Wednesday -- but only on condition that he stay away from the media and his home town or face being returned to jail.

Mr Corey was hidden from members of the press who had gathered outside the Maghaberry jail on Wednesday night. He was taken out in a blacked-out prison van directly to a train station where he was released to his lawyer.

A British official said: "The Parole Commissioners have decided to release Martin Corey on a licence that is subject to conditions which are designed to manage the risk they assess him to pose."

Two of those conditions are that Mr Corey is forbidden to give media interviews and also that he must not live in or near his home in Lurgan, County Armagh.

The 63-year-old has been in prison since he was ordered to be interned by the then British Direct Ruler Shaun Woodward, in April 2010, on the basis of "closed material".

Blackbox

The end of ownership: Why you need to fight America's copyright laws

Copyright Week
© dodo4466/Getty
Just the other day, I got a card in the mail for my 30th birthday. When I opened it up, the card started singing "Happy Birthday." And that little thing - pealing out at the top of its automated lungs - made me laugh. What a strange thing to computerize.

But it suddenly occurred to me that this silly card was the perfect example of what I call The Law of Electronic Eventuality: If something can have a computer in it, eventually it will have a computer in it. Our physical objects aren't just physical anymore. Code runs unseen through phones, watches, smoke alarms, birthday cards, and more like connective tissue. As with muscle, it's that connective tissue that makes a thing work.

Without code, without software, our Things become inert. Dead.

While this ushers in a whole new world of possibilities, it's also redefining ownership. Because when you purchase a physical object, you don't actually buy the software in it - that code belongs to someone else. If you do something the manufacturer doesn't like - repair it, hack it, unlock it - you could lose the right to use "their" software in "your" thing. And as these lines between physical and digital blur, it pits copyright and physical ownership rights against each other.

Welcome to the brave new world of copyright. If you want to truly own what you buy, you'll have to fight for those rights - because they are disappearing.

Chess

Putin: We must show no fear to terrorists

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he will 'show no fear to terrorists' as he outlined security measures ahead of the Winter Olympics in Sochi.

He said security would be neither "intrusive nor too visible."

MIB

US spy program penetrated Russian military networks - reports

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© RIA Novosti. Vitali BelousovUS Spy Program Penetrated Russian Military Networks – Report
The United States has infiltrated Russian military networks under a program that uses radio frequencies to spy on computers not connected to the Internet, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

The penetration was carried under a US National Security Agency (NSA) program, code-named Quantum, that has been used primarily against the Chinese Army but also against Mexican drug cartels, European trade institutions and targets in Pakistan, India and Saudi Arabia, the newspaper reported on its website, citing NSA documents, US officials and computer security experts.

The report, based in part on documents disclosed by fugitive US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, did not provide further details about the infiltration of Russian military computers.

Top Secret

Why is billionaire co-founder of eBay Pierre Omidyar funding Glenn Greenwald's NSA-Snowden leaks to the tune of $250 million?

secret keepers

Despite what Time Magazine would have us believe, there is no doubt that the most influential newsmaker of the year has been Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee and NSA subcontractor who at the age of 29 became the unlikely center of global attention with his release of documents allegedly detailing the inner workings of various NSA spying programs.

Of the many intriguing aspects of this story, by far one of the most frustrating is that, other than a few interviews and press conferences, almost everything we know about Snowden, his motivations, and the documents themselves come from intermediaries who have found themselves in the position of spokespeople on the case. Even such basic questions as how many documents Snowden leaked is still unclear, with various sources listing anything from 10,000 to 1.7 million documents. If details as basic as these vary so widely between sources, how much more opaque are the more difficult questions of Snowden's motivations and intentions, let alone the specifics of any deals he may have made with journalists about how this data was to be disseminated?


Comment: While we wait for the release of the rest of the Snowden files, read the following related articles:

Snowden's leaks become company assets?
Wolf in sheep's clothing? Billionaire neoliberal Pierre Omidyar
Extraordinary promise of the new Greenwald-Omidyar venture?


Arrow Down

Best of the Web: 53 years to the day that Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex, Obama will further its cause

Eisenhower
© ChicoTown.com
Fifty three years ago today, President Dwight Eisenhower gave his famous speech warning of the military-industrial complex. It's quite a speech, and well worth reading, listening to or watching. But, the famous lines are the ones that still rings true today:
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
The White House claims that it's a mere coincidence that President Obama has chosen the anniversary of that speech to give his speech, outlining what are expected to be merely cosmetic reforms to the NSA's surveillance efforts, still convinced that even if the programs are incredibly broad and powerful, that it's okay since he won't abuse them.

Snakes in Suits

Pope Benedict XVI defrocked nearly 400 priests for child abuse

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Vatican's UN ambassador Silvano Tomasi in Geneva, prior to the start of a questioning over clerical sexual abuse of children.
- Priests were defrocked in two years
- UN ambassador faces questioning in Geneva

A document obtained by the Associated Press shows that Pope Benedict XVI defrocked nearly 400 priests in just two years, for molesting children.

The statistics for 2011-12 represent the first time that the Vatican has provided details on the number of priests who have been defrocked. Prior to that, it had only revealed the number of alleged cases of sexual abuse it had received.

The document was prepared from data the Vatican had been collecting to help the Holy See defend itself before a UN committee this week in Geneva.

Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican's UN ambassador in Geneva, referred to just one of the statistics in the course of eight hours of often pointed criticism and questioning from the UN human rights committee. The AP obtained the document on Friday.

Source: AP

Telephone

Liar, Liar! Obama calls for restrictions on NSA


President Obama called Friday for significant changes to the way the National Security Agency collects and uses telephone records of U.S. citizens, moving to transition away from government control of the information and immediately require authorities to obtain a court order to access it.

After more than six months of controversy over U.S. surveillance policies, Obama said that - barring a specific threat - he has ordered an end to eavesdropping on dozens of foreign leaders and governments who are friends or allies, a move the White Hope hopes will restore trust in the intelligence community and in the government's ability to balance national security and privacy interests.

Obama also said he is taking steps to protect the privacy of foreigners by extending to them some of the protections currently given to Americans.