You may have heard people talking/blogging/twittering about SOPA — the Stop Online Piracy Act. The recent SOPA-related boycott of GoDaddy was all over the news, with many people expressing their outrage over the possibilities of SOPA, but when I ask people about SOPA and its sister bill in the Senate, PIPA (Protect IP Act), many don’t really know what the bills propose, or what we stand to lose. If you are not freaked out by SOPA/PIPA, please: for the next four minutes, instead of checking Facebook statuses, seeing who mentioned you on Twitter, or watching the latest episode of Sherlock*, watch this video (by Fight for the Future).

Some thoughts:

• In the U.S. our legal system maintains that the burden of proof is on the accuser, and that people are innocent until proven guilty. This tenet seems to be on the chopping block when it comes to the web if these bills pass, as companies could shut down sites based on accusation alone.
• Laws are not like lines of PHP; they are not easily reverted if someone wakes up and realizes there is a better way to do things. We should not be so quick to codify something this far-reaching.
• The people writing these laws are not the people writing the independent web, and they are not out to protect it. We have to stand up for it ourselves.

 

http://wikileaks.ch/mirrors.html

support wikileaks.

Wikileaks acted as a distributor of information they have been supplied with, and following true journalistic principles, have protected their source. If there is a crime, it has not been carried out by wikileaks. You can argue about whether they should be more discriminating about what they have released but that is not illegal.

The released cables have been created, stored and inadequately protected by the American government. The fault lies with them for allowing them to be accessed and released. Indeed it may yet prove to  be an ‘inside job’.

The australian government’s behaviour so far in this shameful episode has been grubby and cowardly – sucking up to American popular opinion. Grow some balls, Australia, and defend a citizen who has done nothing but reveal the shabby truth about what is actually going on in global politics.

Possibly the ideal method for urban driving at least:

11:  The number of people killed in accident on oil-rig leased by BP.

15,000+: The number of people killed in accident at Bhopal plant owned by American company Union Carbide.

4: The number of presidential vists (so far) to sites affected by accident at BP.

0: the number of presidential visits to site of Union Carbide accident.

$1.6bn: Spent so far on BP clean-up operations.

Bhopal: No clean-up.

$20bn: Compensation fund established within 2 months by BP.

$470m: Compensation paid since Bhopal accident 20 years ago.

$45m: Compensation paid out by oil firm Trafigura to 30,000 victims of dumped toxic waste in Ivory Coast after a 4 year legal battle.

$7bn: Compensation paid out to families of 9/11 victims.

$2.6bn: Dividend from BP, cancelled through political and public pressure.

$1bn: Dividend paid out by Transocean, owners and operators of the ‘BP’ rig, approved one  month after the accident.

 Hmmm….

The information in this post was sourced, extracted and reproduced in good faith from Private Eye issue: 1265

The principal sources of these precursor chemicals are believed to be Mexico, China, Europe, Central Asia and India. Traffickers hide the sources of their chemicals by repackaging or false labelling. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, markets and processing facilities are clustered in border areas of Iran, Pakistan and Tajikistan.

Acetic anhydride (AA) is the most commonly used chemical agent in heroin processing. According to the DEA, Mexico is the major source of AA and authorities in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan routinely seize ton-quantity shipments of acetic anhydride.

A July 2008 report, carried by the Boston Globe, quotes Christina Oguz, country representative for the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, saying that just 1% of these precursor chemicals are ever seized – even though these chemicals are all imported by the tanker-load, and have no ‘dual-use’ justification

It follows that there are many players with a much larger financial stake in the Afghan drug traffic than local Afghan drug lords, al-Qaeda, and the Taliban. Sibel Edmonds has charged that Pakistani and Turkish intelligence, working together, utilise the resources of the international networks trafficking Afghan heroin.

Others have written about the ties between U.S. intelligence and the Turkish narco-intelligence connection. A former top-level DEA agent in the Middle East, has corroborated the CIA interest in that region’s drug connection, apparently stating that ”In my 30-year history in the Drug Enforcement Administration and related agencies, the major targets of my investigations almost invariably turned out to be working for the CIA”.

The UNODC Executive Director, Antonio Maria Costa, has reported that “money made in illicit drug trade has been used to keep banks afloat in the global financial crisis.”

This video, and many others like it can be used as a starting point to explore these allegations.

Corexit is a solvent primarily used as a dispersant for breaking up oil slicks. It is produced by Nalco Holding Company which is associated with various major oil companies. Corexit 9500, four times more toxic than crude oil, is one of the most poisonous dispersants ever developed, and is up to 20 times more toxic than other dispersants, and only half as effective.

Corexit EC9500A and EC9527A are neither the least toxic, nor the most effective, among the Environmental Protection Agency approved dispersants. They are also banned from use on oil spills in the United Kingdom. Twelve other products received better toxicity and effectiveness ratings, but BP says it chose to use Corexit because it was available the week of the rig explosion. Critics contend that the major oil companies stockpile Corexit because of their close business relationship with its manufacturer Nalco.

When Corexit 9500, with its 2.61 ppm toxicity level, is combined with the warm waters of the Gulf much of it will transition into a gaseous state that will be absorbed into clouds, to be released as toxic rain upon all of the Eastern United States.

We suggest you use this as a starting point for your own research.

Buy and Bail consists of  acquiring a new house before the buyer’s credit rating is ruined by walking away an existing mortgage loan because it is “underwater” – i.e. worth less than the mortgage. It’s an attempt to escape payments on a home whose value may never recover while securing a new property, often at a lower price with a more affordable loan (and almost always with a different lender).

After falls in house values since 2006, something like 20% of home loans in the U.S. are “underwater”, meaning the house is worth less than the loan. As a result, more people are looking at ways to walk away from loans and approx. 12% of mortgage defaults are ‘strategic’ (deliberate), according to the report.

There is still a long way down yet, it would seem.

Read the full article here: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-10/-buy-and-bail-homeowners-get-past-mortgage-hurdles-from-fannie-freddie.html