Network Archives

Ex-BlackRock MD: US raid on Bitcoin exchange is ‘hysterical’ reaction

"Warwick Business School’s professor Jon Rushman, a former BlackRock managing director, says: 'It is a little bit of a hysterical reaction from the US authorities. There are concerns of Bitcoin being used in illegal ways, but unless there is more substantial evidence of this I don’t think there is any reason to shut down the main Bitcoin exchange. US dollars, Russian rubles and euros have all been used by criminals, but nobody is suggesting their central banks should be closed down and their governors imprisoned.' Rushman calls for more 'intelligent debate about Bitcoin and its future'." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingEx-BlackRock MD: US raid on Bitcoin exchange is ‘hysterical’ reaction

From the IRS to the EPA?

"Government agencies like the EPA typically waive so-called Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request fees for groups disseminating information for public benefit, but it's up to the agency to decide whether a fee-waiver is justified. At the EPA, fees were waived for liberal environmental groups like Greenpeace and EarthJustice almost always. Meanwhile, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank, 'had its requests denied 93 percent of the time. Most were denied because the agency said CEI 'failed to demonstrate that the release of the information requested significantly increases the public understanding of government operations or activities.'" Continue reading →

Continue ReadingFrom the IRS to the EPA?

Benghazi: Who Cares?

"In Libya, the media has gotten side tracked on a potentially sensational Obama administration cover up—no matter how minor—instead of asking the more important questions: 'Would U.S. diplomats have been killed if the United States had not overthrown Muammar Gaddafi and destabilized Libya?' or 'Did the U.S. military intervention destabilize the entire region by unleashing Gaddafi’s huge weapon stocks and fighters into places like Mali?' Bloodthirsty Republicans, such as John McCain and Lindsay Graham, don’t want to ask these questions, because it would undermine the rationale for their zealous advocacy of an ill-advised American intervention in Libya." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingBenghazi: Who Cares?

Top Constitutional Experts: Obama Is Worse than Nixon

"Daniel Ellsberg notes that Obama’s claimed power to indefinitely detain people without charges or access to a lawyer or the courts is a power that even King George didn’t claim. Former judge and adjunct professor of constitutional law Andrew Napolitano points out that Obama’s claim that he can indefinitely detain prisoners even after they are acquitted of their crimes is a power that even Hitler and Stalin didn’t claim. Indeed, Obama has turned America into the most spied upon nation in world history, and has rolled back liberties to the time of the enactment of the Magna Carta in 1215." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingTop Constitutional Experts: Obama Is Worse than Nixon

IRS Official in Charge During Tea Party Targeting Now Runs IRS Obamacare Office

"The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation, ABC News reports. Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingIRS Official in Charge During Tea Party Targeting Now Runs IRS Obamacare Office

Director of IRS Tax-Exempt Determinations Office Is Obama Donor

"The director of the Office of Rulings and Agreements, which oversees the determinations of tax-exempt organizations, is a donor to Barack Obama. Holly Paz donated $2,000 to Obama’s 2008 campaign, according to Open Secrets, which maintains a database of individual political donations. An inspector general’s report released yesterday concluded that the IRS improperly targeted Tea Party and other conservative groups for undue scrutiny, and Paz heads the office in which the wrongdoing is said to have occurred. Paz’s donations are consistent with broader trends at the IRS, where agency employees donated overwhelming to President Obama in both 2012 and 2008." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingDirector of IRS Tax-Exempt Determinations Office Is Obama Donor

Obama rejects calls for independent probe of IRS scandal

"President Obama brushed off calls for a special independent investigator into the IRS scandal that has engulfed his administration during a press conference this afternoon, saying the internal audit and criminal investigation headed by Attorney General Eric Holder are 'sufficient.' The press conference comes after Obama scrambled last night to fend off growing concerns about his administration following the news that the IRS targeted conservative groups. He also has been battling other controversies, including questions about the deadly attacks in Benghazi and the Department of Justice secretly obtaining Associated Press phone records." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingObama rejects calls for independent probe of IRS scandal

Cuba’s Past Could Be Your Future

"If the reader lives in a country where laws are being written to limit his ability to expatriate a portion of his wealth, or, worse, to repatriate it if it has already been internationalised, he would do well to examine which of his freedoms will be the next to be lost. There is little discussion at present over whether it may soon be necessary in some counties that are part of what was once called the 'free' world, to apply for an exit visa in order to travel outside that country.Yet, historically, declining countries commonly impose such restrictions to assure that their citizens do not seek greener pastures." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingCuba’s Past Could Be Your Future

Anger over East German medical ‘human guinea pigs’

"Germany is confronting another chapter from its past — allegations that Western drug companies used more than 50,000 people in the former communist East as 'human guinea pigs' in 1980s medical trials. Several people were known to have died during trials, and some tests involved infants and delirious alcoholics, said the report on the agreements with the police state that collapsed with the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. Calls have grown for full transparency into the agreements overseen by the State Security (Stasi) secret police to earn the communist state tens of millions in hard-currency Deutschmarks." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingAnger over East German medical ‘human guinea pigs’

Merkel Admits She Was “Responsible for Brainwashing in the Favour of Marxism”

"A new book is out that claims current German Chancellor Angela Merkel, while living in the 1980's in then East Germany, was a physicist and also member of the communist youth organisation 'Freie Deutsche Jugend' at the Academy of Sciences in Eastern Berlin and was in charge of 'agitation and propaganda', the journalists Ralf Georg Reuth and Günther Lachmann claim in their book. 'I never concealed anything', she said at a Berlin cinema on Sunday night. Ms Merkel admitted that she was not only a member of the FDJ but also of the workers’ union and the German-Soviet friendship society, both organisations with strong ties to the ruling Communist party." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingMerkel Admits She Was “Responsible for Brainwashing in the Favour of Marxism”