Category: Government

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DefDog: Egypt Sentences Terry Jones to Death — Stanley Inc. CEO Next? What About CIA’s Covert Action Staff? CIA to the World Court Again?

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement
DefDog

Egypt sentences Terry Jones to death for Koran burning

(AGI) – Cairo, Nov 28 – The Egyptian High Court for National Security has condemned American pastor Terry Jones to death.

Jones provoked a wave of outrage in the Islamic world for have burned several copies of the Koran. The Egyptian state media reported that the same court also gave death sentences – again in absentia – to seven persons, including directors, actors and producers of the film about the prophet Mohammed “Innocence of Muslims”.

The latter individuals are all Copts residing in the US. The sentences, Judge Saif Al-Nasr Soliman stated, were inflicted “for having insulted the Islamic religion by taking part in the production of a film which offends Islam and its prophet.” (AGI) .

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Marcus Aurelius: Petraeus, The Comeback General [with Assist from “The Clinton Rule”

Ethics, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude
Marcus Aurelius

Hope article below turns out to be true.  If President Clinton gets a pass on Affair Lewinsky, conducted in Oval Office, then GEN Petraeus certainly deserves a restart after Affair Broadwell.  While no basis for a major decoration, I see that mistake as principally a matter between GEN Petraeus and his family and not necessarily something justifying LTG Clapper's call for his resignation as Director of the CIA.  Once publicly acknowledged, not sure matter generated vulnerability to hostile exploitation, which is principal national security concern with sexual misbehavior.)

Petraeus, The Comeback General

He may benefit from the Bill Clinton rule: Adultery is no longer a political disqualifier.

By Doyle McManus

Los Angeles Times, November 25, 2012

Gen. David H. Petraeus, long the most famous overachiever in the U.S. Army, is already on his way to a new career distinction: breaking the land speed record for rehabilitation from a scandal.

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Chuck Spinney: Palestinians Win Gaza Scuffle – Time On Their Side

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Ethics, Government, IO Deeds of Peace, IO Deeds of War, Military
Chuck Spinney

As we proved in Vietnam, and are about to prove again in Afghanistan, you can win most battles in a tactical sense but still lose a war at the far more decisive strategic and grand-strategic levels of conflict.  (Grand strategy is explained here.)  Israel's grand strategy is to establish a Greater Israeli Apartheid State (by annexing Area C of the West Bank and Gazifying Areas A and B) by (1) keeping the US firmly in its camp so (2) it can ignore the growing disgust in the rest of the world.  That grand strategy has worked in the short term, most recently by hyping the Iranian threat and now the Gaza mini war to distract attention from the growing encroachment of illegal Israeli settlers in Area C.*  But that strategy is turning the world against it (see Israel is all but alone in the Middle East).  While recent pronouncements by President Obama and Secretary Clinton suggest Israel's influence in US domestic politics remains as strong as ever, the political sands in the US may be slowly insensibly shifting toward ambivalence, if not outrage, in the United States as well — and, as a practical, the US has enormous problems elsewhere (in Afghanistan) as well as home that may well evolved to take precedence over the US blank check to Israel.  So, is Israel on the slippery grand-strategic slope of winning its battles while losing war?

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Edgar Feige: Automated Payment Transaction Tax Update

03 Economy, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, Government
Dr. Edgar Feige

I can at best “guesstimate” that  for the US the transaction tax base is roughly 50 times GDP = $775 Trillion. If the US would adopt an APT tax of 10 basis points, .1% (not 1%) (hopefully in negotiations with UK and EU and best with G20) that would reduce the taxable base by perhaps 30% by eliminating short term trades that would no longer be profitable. That would reduce the tax base to $420 trillion and raise very roughly..an estimated $400 billion in added revenue.  With luck, one could  eliminate most tax expenditures yielding roughly $ 1 trillion which will be reduced to at most $500 Billion  by rate reductions for corporate and personal incomes to get acceptance of the APT tax. So my best guess….is that we could raise roughly 1 trillion per year in added revenue.

Received via Email 20 November 2012

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Penguin: Trans-Pacific Partnership – Evil Incarnate?

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, Commerce, Corruption, Government
Who, Me?

In three parts, this is the first part.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership: This is What Corporate Governance Looks Like

By: Andrew Gavin Marshall

The following is the first installment of a three-part exclusive for Occupy.com on the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Originally published at Occupy.com

In 2008, the United States Trade Representative Susan Schwab announced the U.S. entry into the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks as “a pathway to broader Asia-Pacific regional economic integration.” Originating in 2005 as a “Strategic Economic Partnership” between a few select Pacific countries, the TPP has, as of October 2012, expanded to include 11 nations in total: the United States, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Chile, New Zealand, Australia, Brunei, Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia, with the possibility of several more joining in the future.

What makes the TPP unique is not simply the fact that it may be the largest “free trade agreement” ever negotiated, nor even the fact that only two of its roughly 26 articles actually deal with “trade,” but that it is also the most secretive trade negotiations in history, with no public oversight, input, or consultations.

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Rickard Falkvinge: Brasil Kills Internet Bill, Loses Way

Access, Corruption, Government, IO Impotency
Rickard Falkvinge

Brazil Squanders Chance At Geopolitical Influence; Kills Internet Rights Bill In Political Fiasco

Infopolicy: Yesterday, the Brazilian parliament effectively killed the much-heralded Internet Bill of Rights, the Marco Civil, that had been praised by entrepreneurs and free-speech activists worldwide. This follows a ridiculous watering-down and dumbing-down of the bill, at the request of obsolete industry lobbies. Having been permanently shelved, this means that Brazil has practically killed its chance of leapfrogging other nations’ economies – BRICS is now just RICS.

The Internet Rights bill in Brazil, the Marco Civil, was a marvel. It would have enabled Brazil to leapfrog most other economies today, skipping a whole generation of industries.

The Marco Civil would have established that;

  • Internet access is a precondition for exercising citizenship;
  • As such, nobody may be cut off from the Internet for any other reason than failure to pay the connection fees;
  • The messenger immunity was almost absolute – nobody had any kind of accountability for carrying messages for a third party unless explicitly told so by a judge on a case-by-case basis;
  • Net neutrality was written into law;
  • All Internet regulation had to be based on preserving openness, participatory culture, and the open entrepreneurship that the Net brings;
  • Privacy applies online and must not be violated;
  • and much more.

Really, it was that good. Read it for yourself (in English).

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