"Twenty-four hours after the alleged incident – with the United Nations still refusing to say whether there had been a gas attack, or, if so, who is responsible – the President of the United States does a complete turnaround, ditches a campaign promise, and takes us to the brink of a greatly expanded war in Syria." Continue reading →
"Four privacy-minded lawmakers have introduced legislation requiring law enforcement officials to obtain a warrant before searching phones belonging to US citizens, and prohibiting them from barring entry to Americans who decline to share their passwords at the border. 'Americans’ Constitutional rights shouldn’t disappear at the border,' Senator Ron Wyden said in statement to BuzzFeed News." Continue reading →
"Common red flags for passengers are 'traveling to or from a known source city for drug trafficking, purchasing a ticket within 24 hours of travel, purchasing a ticket for a long flight with an immediate return, purchasing a one-way ticket, and traveling without checked luggage.' DEA agents then detain and question travelers with large amounts of cash, and, if they determine the money is linked to drug activity, seize it, even if there is no hard evidence that it is connected to illegal activity. As the Inspector General notes, these agents 'rely on their immediate, on-the-spot judgment.' The passenger is then released, bereft of money but otherwise free to go." Continue reading →
"The full scope of the cash seizures—and the overwhelming amount of cases involving innocent people—have not been revealed until now. The inspector general found money seized and forfeited by the IRS was legally obtained in 91 percent of a sample of 278 structuring investigations it reviewed occurring between fiscal years 2012 and 2014. Altogether, those funds totalled $17.1 million and involved 231 cases." Continue reading →
"While the cancer is in remission, Charf is still struggling with the deadly disease – and is now being pursued by an equally deadly and persistent stalker, the Internal Revenue Service. A few weeks ago, the IRS sent Charf – who is now a mother – a notice claiming that the donations that had paid for her treatment were considered income, and demanding more than $15,000 in back taxes and more than $3,500 in penalties." Continue reading →
"The YPG is not your typical ethnic or sectarian faction. Its fighters are loyal to an imprisoned guerrilla leader who was once a communist but now espouses the same kind of secular, feminist, anarcho-libertarianism as Noam Chomsky or the activists of Occupy Wall Street. The Kurds are implementing these ideals in Rojava, and that has attracted a ragtag legion of leftist internationals, like Belden, who have come from nearly every continent to help the YPG beat ISIS and establish an anarchist collective amid the rubble of the war – a 'stateless democracy' equally opposed to Islamic fundamentalism and capitalist modernity. They call it the Rojava Revolution, and they want you." Continue reading →
"Findings from the report reveal that consumers would entrust the running of the country to robots. 66 percent of UK citizens expect that robots will be working within the government by 2037, with 16 percent believing this could happen in the next one to two years. A further finding which may cause concern for Number 10 is that one in four think robots will make better decisions that elected government representatives, mainly in regards to the economy." Continue reading →
"Congress as a whole has been more intent on protecting the government from insider leaks than protecting the public from government surveillance. The tension between privacy and government surveillance is one that runs central to the ongoing debate over the CIA and NSA’s data collection tactics, as well as the potential Homeland Security policy that aims to refocus efforts to target 'insider threats.'" Continue reading →
"The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) warned that suspending visa-free travel would have a 'large negative impact,' including an additional 10 million annual visa applications to process. Additionally, the GBTA warned that if the United States retaliates with its own suspension of visa-free travel, it could mean approximately €2.5 billion in costs to EU citizens as roughly 8 million travelers would need to pay the $160 visa fee and other application costs. The GBTA also cited an Oxford Economics study that projected a 23 percent decline in travel revenue for the U.S. and Canada as a result of a suspension, as well as a projected 140,000 jobs lost in Europe and 73,000 jobs lost in the United States." Continue reading →
"Pay attention to how few workers are visible in any stage of production. There is no way that these techniques will not be adopted all over the world. Nobody is going to give China this kind of competitive edge. These techniques are going to be imitated. It means the end of today’s technology. Today’s technology is labor-intensive. This will not be true by 2030. The next step will be the adoption of these techniques for housing developments. The construction industry will work out the bugs in high-level projects. Then these techniques will be adopted by housing developers as the price of the tools continues to drop." Continue reading →