10 Transnational Crime – Page 157 – Public Intelligence Blog

2014/09/08

Owl: Religion is Not to Blame for “Terrorism”

01 Poverty, 02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime

Atheists have It Wrong on Religious Causes of Terrorism and Suicide Bombing

This article dispels all illusions based on the belief that terrorism done by Muslim extremists is to be blamed on their religion, a view much favored by well-known atheist critics of religion such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris.

One of the implied back stories to this insightful article is that big-time atheist writers such as Harris and Christopher Hitchens (who is not mentioned), in blaming religion on terrorism perpetuated by Muslims and others, also happen to favor policies that perpetuate mass killing by larger western governments of large number of civilians in countries where Muslims live. That observation alone is worthy of an article all by itself.

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2014/08/102014/08/09

SchwartzReport: Monsanto “Owns” USDA

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government

It is my view that there exist profoundly immoral and malevolent — the formal definition of evil — corporations. Their corporate vision creates profit by doing something that reduces wellness. Halliburton is one, Monsanto is another. One of the skills these corporations focus on is maintaining high level government connections, and to get your executives in senior positions. So great is the corruption of our government as a result that, as this report de! scribes, the regulatory agencies created to oversee these corporations are tailored to the corporation's wishes.

Monsanto Has Taken Over the USDA
DAVID SWANSON – Nation of Change

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been taken over by an outside organization. RootsAction has launched a campaign demanding a Congressional investigation.

The organization is called Monsanto.

2014/07/302014/07/28

Mini-Me: DoD IG Finds 70% Waste in Afghanistan

10 Transnational Crime, Corruption, Military, Officers Call

Huh?

War on waste: Pentagon auditor spotlights US billions blown in Afghanistan

EXTRACT:

It’s not clear how much of the reconstruction aid is considered to have been wasted, but SIGAR officials say that during 2012, Sopko’s first year on the job, the general inspected projects, programs, and general issues that totaled $10.6 billion in funding and found nearly $7 billion was potentially wasted.

Read full article.

2014/06/242014/06/24

SchwartzReport: It’s the 1% of the 1% …

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, Law Enforcement

Here is what I think is a correct assessment of the new global aristocracy that owns a growing percentage of the world's wealth, and wants more. We think of peasants as agricultural workers. But that is the past. In the present day it is increasingly ordinary workers — both blue and white collar. The wealth differential now is even greater than it was in the 14th century. Click through to see the very useful graphs.

How You, I, and Everyone Got the Top 1 Percent All Wrong
DEREK THOMPSON – The Atlantic

For years, I've been making the same embarrassing mistake about U.S. economic inequality. Sorry.

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2014/06/062014/06/04

Eagle: Half of Americans Cannot Afford Rent or Mortgage

03 Economy, 06 Family, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society

300 Million Talons... — 300 Million Talons…

Half of Americans can’t afford their house

Over half of Americans (52%) have had to make at least one major sacrifice in order to cover their rent or mortgage over the last three years, according to the “How Housing Matters Survey,” which was commissioned by the nonprofit John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and carried out by Hart Research Associates. These sacrifices include getting a second job, deferring saving for retirement, cutting back on health care, running up credit card debt, or even moving to a less safe neighborhood or one with worse schools.

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2014/06/032014/06/02

SchwartzReport: NSA Collects Millions of Facial Images — and Images of Human Interactions — Each Day

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Corruption, Idiocy, Military

And the surveillance state just keeps oozing out across our lives like a toxic smog. It will soon be possible to track any person, almost anywhere. There is already no problem turning on your phone's camera, or microphone. Moving through any public space will result in multiple images, which are keyed to every electronic interaction you have.

Report: NSA Collects Millions of Facial Images Per Day
DANA FORD – CNN

The National Security Agency is reportedly capturing millions of images per day to feed facial recognition programs. Citing top-secret documents obtained by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the New York Times reported the agency ‘s reliance on such technology has grown in recent years.

New software allows the NSA to “exploit the flood of images included in emails, text messages, social media, videoconferences and other communications,” the newspaper said. “The agency intercepts ‘millions of images per day' – including about 55,000 ‘facial recognition quality images' – which translate into ‘tremendous untapped potential,'” the newspaper reported, citing documents from 2011.

2014/06/012014/05/31

Matt Taibi: The Divide – American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap — Legal Immunity for the 1%, Criminalization of Everything for the 99%

01 Poverty, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement

A scathing portrait of an urgent new American crisis

Over the last two decades, America has been falling deeper and deeper into a statistical mystery:

Poverty goes up. Crime goes down. The prison population doubles.

Fraud by the rich wipes out 40 percent of the world’s wealth. The rich get massively richer. No one goes to jail.

In search of a solution, journalist Matt Taibbi discovered the Divide, the seam in American life where our two most troubling trends—growing wealth inequality and mass incarceration—come together, driven by a dramatic shift in American citizenship: Our basic rights are now determined by our wealth or poverty. The Divide is what allows massively destructive fraud by the hyperwealthy to go unpunished, while turning poverty itself into a crime—but it’s impossible to see until you look at these two alarming trends side by side.

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