Archive for the ‘World’ Category

The more things change…

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

blackwater

From the AP article:

Erik Prince, the founder of the beleaguered Blackwater security company, announced Monday he has stepped aside as the company’s chief executive officer.

Prince said he has appointed a new president and a new CEO. The management shake up, he said, was part of the company’s “continued reorganization and self-improvement.”

For those of you who don’t know, Blackwater USA/International/Xe is a private security contractor that was heavily used by the Bush administration in Iraq and other unconstitutional actions like “policing” American citizens during the aftermath of Katrina. They have been embroiled in controversy after allegedly slaughtering dozens of civilians in Iraq and have since had their license to operate revoked by the Iraqi government.

What happens when your “brand” is ruined? Just rename yourself. Blackwater is now known as Xe (pronounced as “z”). So the next time you hear of a mass of civilians from a third world country getting massacred by a group of mercenaries from a “new” group named Xe, then just know that its Blackwater.

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Posted in Government, Tyranny, War, World |

Wikileaks cracks Pentagon’s encryption key for Afghanistan operations

Friday, February 27th, 2009

map-of-afghanistan-af

In a recent events, the controversial site Wikileaks.org, has managed to crack the encryption key to multiple documents related to the U.S. led war in Afghanistan. The documents dated October 6th, detail the “official” story that NATO members are to tell the press when asked about operations in the Afghan region.

In response, the Pentagon has taken the website offline completely. The password is progress and among several revelations, it mentioned the country of Jordan, still being a member of the coalition even though it officially pulled out of the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) in 2001.

Check out the wikileak post to read on the other minor tidbits of information. Although, not a big deal in the whole scope of things, still an interesting read if your into the geopolitical goings on in the world, not to mention its fun to poke at the government a bit…

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Posted in Government, War, World |

He called it over 100 years ago!?!?

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

marx12

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Posted in Finance, Government, Literature, Society, World |

DIY eye glasses could help millions see better

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

silver

Josh Silver, a retired physics professor from Oxford University, has a quest to allow all the poor people in the world to see. In one of the most ingenious inventions ever devised, he created a pair of glasses that the wearer could “tune” to allow themselves to see without the aid of an optometrist. From the article:

Silver has devised a pair of glasses which rely on the principle that the fatter a lens the more powerful it becomes. Inside the device’s tough plastic lenses are two clear circular sacs filled with fluid, each of which is connected to a small syringe attached to either arm of the spectacles.

The wearer adjusts a dial on the syringe to add or reduce amount of fluid in the membrane, thus changing the power of the lens. When the wearer is happy with the strength of each lens the membrane is sealed by twisting a small screw, and the syringes removed. The principle is so simple, the team has discovered, that with very little guidance people are perfectly capable of creating glasses to their own prescription.

The glasses cost $1 USD to manufacture. The goal is to produce 1 million pairs to distribute throughout the third world every year. What a simple and elegant solution to a widespread condition throughout the world. This has the potential to be a world changing invention much like the automobile or airplane. Read the full article HERE.

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Posted in Health, Science, World |

List of “W’s” failures

Sunday, January 11th, 2009

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Publicintegrity.org was kind enough to compile the mostly complete list of failures of the Bush Administration during these last 8 miserable years. Of course some of the “failures” can be disputed but most of them are verified and abject failures in policy and outright inaction. See whe whole list here.

Of course listed here are mostly policy failures, this isn’t taking into account the other statistics like the skyrocketing deficit, the fact that “W” has taken more vacation than any other president in history and the fact that under Bush’s watch, over 200 years of representative democracy has been transformed into to a quasi facist state that no longer follows free market principals.

You’re doing a hella of a job W! Good riddance!

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Posted in Government, Law, Liberty, Politics, Tyranny, War, World |

Lego concentration camp set

Tuesday, November 25th, 2008

From the WTF files. This is an old story but its the first time I’ve seen it. A series of 7 LEGO kits were designed by Polish artist Zbigniew Libera in the late 1990s.

From the Harper’s article:

Each box contains the blocks necessary to build the figures and structures on its lid. When Libera requested the LEGOs from the company’s Warsaw representative, he planned to create sets for a prison and a hospital, but the project evolved into a concentration camp. According to a press release issued by the LEGO Group, “If the had described his ultimate project to us in advance, he naturally would not have received a single LEGO element from us!”.

I don’t believe these sets ever hit the retail shelves (although it is rumored that these sets were fetching over $7,000 in private auctions). Some of the box shots are really creepy.

(more…)

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Posted in Art, Bizarre, Society, World |

Russia is attempting to form an ‘Anti U.S. alliance’

Thursday, October 9th, 2008

The president of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev has called on the powers of Europe to form a new alliance that is not based on the United States as the fulcrum of western politics and finance. From the Telegraph:

In a speech delivered to European leaders at a conference hosted by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France to discuss the international financial crisis, Mr Medvedev sought to show that the United States was at the root of all the world’s problems.

He blamed Washington’s “economic egotism” for the world’s financial woes and then accused the Bush administration of taking Europe to the brink of a new cold war by pursuing a deliberately divisive foreign policy. He also maintained that the United States was once again trying to return to a policy of containing Russia.

Are we escalating to a new cold war with Russia? We are stretched on as many fronts as we can go currently, it may not be in America’s best interest to continue to make enemies when we are on the verge of bankrupting our nation due to many factors, one of them being the backbreaking cost of defense and occupation of several parts of the world.

Personally, I don’t see this really accomplishing anything on behalf of Russia. This seems to be a series of political postures on Medvedev’s part but nevertheless, it looks as though the “smaller fish” are starting to pick and jab at the “big fish” of the pond.

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Posted in Government, Politics, World |

The U.S. dollar is being abandoned?

Thursday, October 9th, 2008

In the latest catastrophic economic news (most of this is not even being touched by the mainstream media in the U.S.), Brazil and Argentina is now abandoning the US dollar as the preferred trading currency From Presstv.ir.

Brazil and Argentina have launched a new payment system in their bilateral trade, doing away with the US dollar as a medium of exchange.

With OPEC nations possibly following suit, this could be the death knell for the burgeoning U.S. currency. From the Telegraph:

The Saudi central bank said today that it would take “appropriate measures” to halt huge capital inflows into the country, but analysts say this policy is unsustainable and will inevitably lead to the collapse of the dollar peg.

As a close ally of the US, Riyadh has so far tried to stick to the peg, but the link is now destabilising its own economy.

The Fed’s dramatic half point cut to 4.75pc yesterday has already caused a plunge in the world dollar index to a fifteen year low, touching with weakest level ever against the mighty euro at just under $1.40.

There is now a growing danger that global investors will start to shun the US bond markets. The latest US government data on foreign holdings released this week show a collapse in purchases of US bonds from $97bn to just $19bn in July, with outright net sales of US Treasuries.

The danger is that this could now accelerate as the yield gap between the United States and the rest of the world narrows rapidly, leaving America starved of foreign capital flows needed to cover its current account deficit – expected to reach $850bn this year, or 6.5pc of GDP.

This could be crack that breaks the dam wide open and plunges the dollar to almost worthless levels. Lets hope that things improve soon. I don’t look forward to the idea of hauling a wheelbarrow of cash to the grocery store to buy a loaf of bread…

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Posted in Business, Finance, Government, World |

Microsoft Code contest is hacked and may end up a disaster

Tuesday, October 7th, 2008
Here I come Vegas!

Here I come Vegas!

From ITwire:

Microsoft Australia issued a week long coding challenge called “DevSta” looking fo the next generation of star developers. The grand prize includes airfare to Las Vegas, accommodation at the Venetian and tickets to the MIX09 Developer Conference in March next year, along with Visual Studio 2008, an Xbox 360 Elite console pack and a Samsung Omnia mobile phone. Runners up win various combinations of Visual Studio, Xbox 360 Elite packs and Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000 keyboard and mouse combos.

Even with the lure of Microsoft riches it looks like the turn out is abysmal at best. In addition to lukewarm submissions, the contest was hacked by several members of a Turkish hacking group (from the article).

Even though the identities of Lamerdir and Ov3rlord aren’t clear, one thing is certain: Microsoft won’t be forgetting the embarrassment caused to their DevSta challenge. And unless the volume of submissions increase dramatically within the next 19 hours someone may be awarded an Xbox for doing nothing more than rewriting the Windows calculator as a .NET app.

.Read the whole article and view the screenshots here.

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Posted in Technology, web, World |

I love top 25 lists!

Monday, September 22nd, 2008

Today’s top 25 brought to you by projectcensored.org. The top 25 big stories that the corporate controlled media have failed to inform the American people of. Such unimportant minutiae such as “over 1 million Iraqi citizens killed during the U.S. occupation” and “the seizing of assets of war protesters”. Check out the full list here.

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Posted in Conspiracy, Media, Politics, Society, Tyranny, War, web, World |
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