economic Trends

‘Hell to pay:’ Residents angry as RCMP seize guns from High River homes

"RCMP revealed Thursday that officers have seized a 'substantial amount' of firearms from homes in evacuated High River. 'We just want to make sure that all of those things are in a spot that we control, simply because of what they are,' said Sgt. Brian Topham. 'People have a significant amount of money invested in firearms ... so we put them in a place that we control and that they’re safe.' About 30 RCMP officers set up a blockade, preventing 50 residents from walking into the town. Dozens more police cars, lights on, could be seen lining streets in the town on standby. Officers laid down a spike belt to stop anyone from attempting to drive past the blockade." Continue reading →

Continue Reading‘Hell to pay:’ Residents angry as RCMP seize guns from High River homes

How Bad Is The Surveillance State?

"Even more baffling to me is the reaction of some 'conservatives' who deny the scope of spying activities and, at once, minimizing the civil-liberties threat and justifying the activities as absolutely necessary and vital for the protection of the country. The truth is that the network television show 'Person of Interest' is much closer to reality than most people think – except for the fact that no one is actually using the mining of data to protect the lives of innocent American citizens caught in the crossfire. Let’s look at some of the hard, cold facts of today’s surveillance state." Continue reading →

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No Rose Can Mask the Stench of Obama’s Tyranny

"Mr. Obama considers government's power to be illimitable, and individual freedom to be a revocable gift conferred by those who presume to rule the rest of us. This was made abundantly – and redundantly – clear in a recent interview Obama gave to the repellently sycophantic PBS host Charlie Rose regarding the totalitarian NSA surveillance program. Speaking about what he called 'tradeoffs' between freedom and security, Obama said: 'I don’t think anybody says we’re no longer free because we have checkpoints at airports.' There are dozens of imaginable variations on the official lie Obama decanted on the Charlie Rose program." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingNo Rose Can Mask the Stench of Obama’s Tyranny

Do Americans love Big Brother?

"Now we know the NSA and the FBI are vacuuming up Americans’ telephone calls, emails, Google searches, parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases and all sorts of digital 'pocket litter.' Vast quantities of the world’s communications are being stored in Utah, available for government inspection. Now we know the NSA and the FBI have consistently misled Congress and the public with half-truths about supposed oversight. Now we know the sudden flood of leaks is not damaging our security. So is it just that Americans love Big Brother because they haven’t been told the truth in the past? If so, the latest revelations may cause a shift in public opinion." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingDo Americans love Big Brother?

6 Insidious Ways Surveillance Changes the Way We Think and Act

"When I moved to a Czech village in 1994 to teach English, I was fascinated by the cultural difference between Americans like me and my new community. At that time, the oppressive memory of the dreaded Communist secret police, the StB, was still fresh. As a brash young ex-pat, born after the era of McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover, I understood little of what it felt like to live under constant surveillance. The Czechs knew better. Several decades under the watchful eyes of the StB (and before that, the spies of the Habsburg Empire) had molded their attitudes and behavior in ways that were both subtle and profound." Continue reading →

Continue Reading6 Insidious Ways Surveillance Changes the Way We Think and Act

Mass State Surveillance Not About Privacy

"The way we’re encouraged to cope with this is to make it about privacy: to turn inwards, take stock of our personal inner domain, and decide just how much of our lives can be offered up to the state. Large scale, bureaucratic intrusion into our personal lives is a given, but we can fill out a customer response card if we have any comments about the degree of the intrusion. If this is about privacy, the onus is on us to define its limits, to guide our servant institutions to the right policies that will protect our newly cordoned-off personal space. And so they invent a clever distraction about what the limits of privacy should be." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingMass State Surveillance Not About Privacy

China now home to the world’s fastest supercomputer

"A Chinese supercomputer is the fastest in the world, according to survey results announced Monday, comfortably overtaking a US machine which now ranks second. Tianhe-2, a supercomputer developed by China’s National University of Defense Technology, achieved processing speeds of 33.86 petaflops (1000 trillion calculations) per second on a benchmarking test, earning it the number one spot in the Top 500 survey of supercomputers. The tests show the machine is by far the fastest computer ever constructed. Its main rival, the US-designed Titan, had achieved a performance of 17.59 petaflops per second, the survey’s website said." Continue reading →

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New Zealand becomes home to global tech industry

"The Google foray into New Zealand, dubbed Project Loon, is perhaps the most ambitious high-tech test carried out in the country, aiming to bring Internet to the two-thirds of the global population currently without web access. It involved sending 30 helium-filled balloons to the edge of space above the South Island last Saturday, each carrying transmitters capable of beaming wi-fi Internet access down to antennae on properties below. The first person to access the web under the scheme was dairy farmer Charles Nimmo, who said he appreciated the chance to work with one of the world’s largest companies to push the frontiers of technology." Continue reading →

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Satellites to bring cheap, multi-gigabit Internet speeds to 3 billion people

"The first four of 12 satellites in a new constellation to provide affordable, high-speed Internet to people in nearly 180 'under-connected' countries, were shot into space. The orbiters, part of a project dubbed O3b for the 'other 3 billion' people with restricted Internet access, will be lifted by a Russian Soyuz rocket from Kourou in French Guiana. The project was born from the frustrations of Internet pioneer Greg Wyler with the inadequacy of Rwanda’s telecommunications network, while travelling there in 2007. The system would cover the entire African continent, most of Latin America, the Middle East, southeast Asia, Australia and the Pacific Islands." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingSatellites to bring cheap, multi-gigabit Internet speeds to 3 billion people

Obama steps into China’s African shadow

"Obama's trip comes a little over two months after Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Africa. Chinese investments in Africa have grown steadily over the years that the United States has been engaged in Asia and the Middle East. Several private Chinese firms have also invested heavily in Africa. For example, Huawei, a leading global telecom services provider, has invested US$1.5 billion and employs 4,000 workers in Africa alone. The past decade's trade figures also attest to China's growing ties with Africa, having grown from just $9 billion in 2000 to $200 billion in 2012. That is more than double the US trade for last year, which stood at $95 billion." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingObama steps into China’s African shadow