What particularly stood out for me in this report was that the last time I looked at this it was 300 individuals had as much wealth as 42 per cent of the rest of the world population. Now it is 85 and 50 per cent. As history has shown repeatedly when inequality gets to a certain point social violence and disruption occurs. How close do you think we are?
SOURCE: Working for the Few – Oxfam report Source: F. Alvaredo, A. B. Atkinson, T. Piketty and E. Saez, (2013) ‘The World Top Incomes Database’, Only includes countries with data in 1980 and later than 2008.
Chinese firm China Precision Machinery Export-Import Corp. (CPMIEC) has made its first public statement on Turkey’s $3.4 billion long-range air and missile defense system, claiming that the finalization of the tender “is almost done.”
Wu Yang, the coordinator of the project, spoke at DIMDEX 2014 International Maritime Defence Exhibition in Doha, saying: “It’s almost done. We are also approaching the end in the evaluation of Turkey’s requests.”
In September 2013, NATO member Turkey chose CPMIEC, a firm that has been sanctioned by Washington, to co-produce the system, rejecting rival bids from Russian, United States, French and Italian firms.
BANGKOK – It is by no mere coincidence, when telltale evidence of a Mossad role in the MH370 hijack was starting to snowball, that Israel's embassies and consulates were suddenly shut down due to a “strike by diplomatic staff”. This fork-tongued alibi was obviously meant to prevent law enforcement agencies across Asia and the Western world from questioning Israeli intelligence agents and military attaches about the whereabouts and fate of the hundreds of passengers.
The Jewish state's diplomatic corps has retreated further into a tortoise shell, perhaps because of the hammer blow from investigative journalist Christopher Bollyn, who previously exposed Israel's hand behind the 911 attacks. Based on eyewitness reports from a network of plane watchers in Europe and in Israel, Bollyn reports that an identical production model of the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 is being kept out of regular service inside a hangar at Tel Aviv Airport.
Seattle-based Boeing assembles aircraft in pairs as its standard practice, but the question is how one jet was leased by Malaysia's national carrier while the matching plane was secretly turned over to the Israeli government without a purchase order from state-run El Al airlines.
Bollyn uncovered the fact that the two jets were delivered to a third-party company, whose top manager has a longtime connection with the George Soros. From the timeline of events, it is obvious that the plane transfers and subsequent electronic hijacking were part of a larger strategy, which was aimed at:
A high school student from Pittsburgh has discovered a simple but innovative method that could save the US government approximately $370 million (£222m) a year in printing ink costs: Change the typeface it uses.
Fourteen-year-old Suvir Mirchandani began his investigation into which typefaces used the least amount of printerink as a science fair project at Dorseyville Middle School when he learnt of the large amounts of money his school was spending on printer ink.
“Ink is two times more expensive than French perfume by volume,” Mirchandani told CNN.
Using a sample of the most popular typefaces he received in class handouts from his teachers, Mirchandani set about measuring how much ink was used in the the most commonly used characters (e, t, a, o and r).
Facebook looks to drones, lasers and satellites for Internet access
(CNN) — Two thirds of the world population does not have Internet access. Facebook already has more than a billion users on its service, but before it can sign up the rest of world it needs to get them online.
The social media company announced a new step in its ambitious plan to bring affordable, basic Internet access to “every person in the world.” Facebook's new Connectivity Lab will research and test experimental technology including drones, satellites and lasers to spread the reach of the Internet to isolated locations that currently do not have Internet.
“We've been working on ways to beam Internet to people from the sky,” said CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a post announcing the new effort.
Last year, Facebook announced Internet.org, a coalition of major tech companies working together to lower barriers to Internet access using more traditional methods, such as making it cheaper to get Internet on cell phones. Those efforts have been responsible for getting 3 million more people online, according to Zuckerberg.
Cost: $300; $250 if you've taken a Rheingold U course before; $500 if your company reimburses you.
In addition to the monetary cost, a commitment to participate is required. The real magic is in learning the meta-skill of forming a learning community with strangers around the world in just a few weeks. To get the most out of this experience, you will need to devote 2-3 hours a week to reading, writing, mindmapping. It's the equivalent of a graduate-level seminar.
Phi Beta Iota has learned that the publisher of The Google Trilogy has gone out of business and their website is no longer offering The Google Trilogy, one of the most important — and still one of the most relevant — intellectual exploration into Google, the 900 lb gorilla in Internet Stage 1 (Connecting People and Things — Stage 2 is the Autonomous Internet and Stage 3 is the World Brain).
Below are new links for new online sources for each of the three references.
