Yearly Archives: 2013

David Galland: Chains of Convention

"It behooves us all to periodically stop and examine our life path. What's missing in your life? What seemingly never gets fixed, and unfixed, makes your unhappy or unfulfilled? On examination, you may find that the problem is that you are adhering to convention, and doing so at great personal cost. Nancy did something that probably not one in a half a million people in her circumstances would have done – break the chains of convention and set out to enjoy the remaining years of what is likely to be a much longer life as a free and independent woman." Continue reading →

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Read more about the article What Happened When One Man Pinged the Whole Internet

What Happened When One Man Pinged the Whole Internet

"You probably haven’t heard of HD Moore, but up to a few weeks ago every Internet device in the world, perhaps including some in your own home, was contacted roughly three times a day by a stack of computers that sit overheating his spare room. In February last year he decided to carry out a personal census of every device on the Internet as a hobby. '[It] drew quite a lot of complaints, hate mail, and calls from law enforcement,' he says. But the data collected has revealed some serious security problems, and exposed some vulnerable business and industrial systems of a kind used to control everything from traffic lights to power infrastructure."

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Preposterous Waste, Pentagon Style

"There are some absurd examples of waste at the Pentagon, including 'green' jet fuel that costs 15 times as much as regular fuel. This is even worse than the bizarre $600,000 frog statue than the Defense Department selected to adorn a new $700 million office building. I realize that the $700 million office building should be the bigger issue, but I can’t help but be irked by the thought that taxpayers are being raped and pillaged for the frog. In any event, the $700 million for the office building is pocket change compared to the amount of money we misallocate to subsidize Western Europe to protect against a Warsaw Pact military alliance that no longer exists!" Continue reading →

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Former Bush official: Syria chemical weapons could be ‘Israeli false flag operation’

"Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell under President George W. Bush, on Thursday warned that the chemical weapons that were reportedly used in Syria could be a 'Israeli false flag operation' because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was running an 'inept regime.' Wilkerson explained that he had been told by his sources in the intelligence community that evidence that Syria had used chemical weapons was 'really flaky' and that President Barack Obama should think twice before intervening. 'This could have been an Israeli false flag operation,' he said." Continue reading →

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Shock: Federal Reserve Official Calls for End of Fed, Competing Currencies

"This is a fairly shocking video in the sense that the gentleman being interviewed is a former Fed official. He calls for a free-market gold and silver standard along with competing currencies – just what we've been suggesting. What is just as interesting is the focus on the Fed as a central bank. Stossel points out that central planning has been discredited the world over, so why does the world have central planning for money? This is a big issue and one that will not go away. After a century of central banking the world is in a bad state and getting worse not better." Continue reading →

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Doug Casey on Internationalizing Your Cash

"I'm quite serious about what I said about 'the grim reality of impending currency controls.' As the global economy continues to deteriorate, governments will have to appear to be 'doing something.' It's going to become very fashionable to institute some sort of foreign exchange control. Why might that be? Because obviously, people who are taking their money out of the country are unpatriotic…" Continue reading →

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Bill Bonner: American grifters

"Here on the pampas, on the other hand, the Argentinians know better. Their brains have been sharpened by adversity and enlarged by necessity. They know they’re getting ripped off by the government. They find ways to protect themselves. 'There are invoices, and there are invoices. You can get an invoice at the official rate, or one at the unofficial rate. Or one that is not at any rate at all. A, B, or C. The government rigs the system to cheat us; we rig it right back. You just have to make sure you have the right invoice for the right transaction. At the end of the year, people buy and sell invoices. Everybody’s got a trick or two. You have to. Otherwise, you’re a sap.'" Continue reading →

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‘The Single Most Valuable Document In The History Of The World Wide Web’

"Twenty years ago this week, researchers renounced the right to patent the World Wide Web. Officials at CERN, the European research center where the Web was invented, wrote: 'CERN relinquishes all intellectual property to this code, both source and binary form and permission is granted for anyone to use, duplicate, modify and redistribute it.' It's a dull sentence from a dull document. But that document marks the moment when the World Wide Web entered the public domain — a moment that was central to creating the Web as we know it today. Could the Web have been patented? And how would the world have been different if it had?" Continue reading →

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Authors, composers want 3.4% of every Belgian’s Internet bill

"Content owners in nearly every country have tried various strategies to get compensation for losses due to piracy. But copyright owners in Belgium have a bold new tactic: go after Internet service providers in court, demanding 3.4 percent of the fees their customers pay for Internet service. The lawsuit has been brought by the Belgian Society of Authors, Composers, and Publishers, known as Sabam. The group's claim is similar to the blank-media levy that exists in Canada. It seems to be based on the assumption that a particular medium is used to break copyright law, and therefore all the users of that media should rightly be required to pay a tax." Continue reading →

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IRS Data Web Snares Mostly Low- and Middle-Income Taxpayers

"The IRS's next phase in high-tech tax collection will be to create a 'real-time' check of tax returns to 'match them to third party information.' Starting this year, the IRS tools will be able to track all credit card transactions. The agency has also instructed agents on using social media and e-commerce sites including eBay, as well as the rich data generated by mobile devices. Its computers are capable of scanning multiple networks at the same time to collect 'matching' comprehensive profiles for every taxpayer in America. Such profiles include shopping records, travel, social interactions, health records and files from other government investigators." Continue reading →

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