Stephen E. Arnold: Google in Three-Front War

Commerce, Corruption, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Impotency
Stephen E. Arnold
Stephen E. Arnold

Google: Three Elephants Preparing to Fight Among Themselves

I love the Google. I found two unrelated articles interesting for one simple reason: Google is getting ready for its own version of Wrestlemania. Read more.

Phi Beta Iota: Google, like Microsoft and Standard Oil, needs to die. It is only corruption that keep subsidies for fossil fuel and tolerance for the information-era equivalents of fossil fuel, alive.

Antechinus: TPP Legal Attrocity — Parallel Legal System Joins Existing 1% versus 99% “Divide” to Further Screw the Public

01 Poverty, 02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government
Antechinus
Antechinus

TPP Leak Reveals Extraordinary New Powers for Thousands of Foreign Firms to Challenge U.S. Policies and Demand Taxpayer Compensation

Unveiling of Parallel Legal System for Foreign Corporations Will Fuel TPP Controversy, Further Complicate Obama’s Push for Fast Track

The Trans-Pacific Partnership’s (TPP) Investment Chapter, leaked today, reveals how the pact would make it easier for U.S. firms to offshore American jobs to low-wage countries while newly empowering thousands of foreign firms to seek cash compensation from U.S. taxpayers by challenging U.S. government actions, laws and court rulings before unaccountable foreign tribunals. After five years of secretive TPP negotiations, the text – leaked by WikiLeaks –proves that growing concerns about the controversial “investor-state dispute settlement” (ISDS) system that the TPP would extend are well justified.

Continue reading “Antechinus: TPP Legal Attrocity — Parallel Legal System Joins Existing 1% versus 99% “Divide” to Further Screw the Public”

SchwartzReport: Peter Thiel on the Death of American Democracy – Where He Is Right — And Wrong

Access, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government
Stephan A. Schwartz
Stephan A. Schwartz

This is about as clear a statement of the noncarbon generation high tech mogul perspective as I have read.  The article also gives an accurate, I believe, critique as to where he is in error. Most fundamentally I think Thiel has confused process and specific circumstances. I think democratic government can work very well. It certainly does so in many other countries. There is a reason why Danes are happy, and Americans are not. It is not working well here because of corruption, unlimited money in politics, and the Republican gridlock that has produced, and the compromised nature of our regulatory agencies. There is nothing wrong with the Founders' vision, and everything wrong with its execution. American politics is to the Founders' democratic republic as Fundamentalist Pre-millennial Dispensationlist Christianity is to Jesus' teachings.

Why PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel thinks American democracy is dead

Sepp Hasslberger: Jailing Bankers

Commerce, Corruption, Ethics, Government
Sepp Hasslberger
Sepp Hasslberger

Bankers can (and should) be jailed for fraud… Iceland shows the way.

Iceland Jails Four Top Bankers for Fraud in Landmark Case

Iceland has jailed four bankers for market manipulation in a landmark case which sets a precedent for the rest of the world. The verdict relates to corruption at the Kaupthing bank, which collapsed after the financial crisis in 2008 due to fraud at the highest levels.

Proving to the world that even bankers aren't above the law

 

SchwartzReport: Economic Inequality Far Worse Than Most Realize – Could Riots Ensue If Knowledge Catches Up?

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, IO Impotency, Officers Call
Stephan A. Schwartz
Stephan A. Schwartz

Part of our social stability, I think, depends on the ignorance most people share about the true measure of economic inequality in the U.S.  A definition of the one per cent: “they have median annual household income of $750,000, median assets of $7.5 million, and there are 1.2 million of them across the country.”  That's a lot of money, but at that level you are still living in a universe that can be recognized by the 99 per cent. When you get above that by perhaps three times you to move into another realm. And when you are a hundred times that, as are the uber-rich, you may occupy tangential geography, but you live in another world. Why wouldn't you want to avoid all the unpleasant inconvenience of modern air travel for instance if you could move through the world more effortlessly than the 99 per cent move through neighborhoods. It changes the scale of your thought, but it also blurs perception of what life is really like for most people.

Economic Inequality: It’s Far Worse Than You Think

The great divide between our beliefs, our ideals, and reality

SchwartzReport: GMO = Genetic Damage

01 Agriculture, 03 Environmental Degradation, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, Commerce, Corruption, Government
Stephan A. Schwartz
Stephan A. Schwartz

Here is the latest peer-reviewed research on GMOs and their effects on humans, in this case children.This is a nasty business driven by one imperative: Greed.

Children in GM soy-growing area of Argentina have genetic damage

Media article in Spanish     .     Study in English

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