Archive for June, 2013
Recovery: 76% of Americans Are Living Paycheck-to-Paycheck
June 24th, 2013Via: CNN: Roughly three-quarters of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck, with little to no emergency savings, according to a survey released by Bankrate.com Monday. Fewer than one in four Americans have enough money in their savings account to cover at least six months of expenses, enough to help cushion the blow of a job loss, medical […]
The Insider Threat Program
June 23rd, 2013Via: McClatchy: Even before a former U.S. intelligence contractor exposed the secret collection of Americans’ phone records, the Obama administration was pressing a government-wide crackdown on security threats that requires federal employees to keep closer tabs on their co-workers and exhorts managers to punish those who fail to report their suspicions. President Barack Obama’s unprecedented […]
Nuclear Waste May Be Leaking Into Soil from Hanford Site
June 23rd, 2013Via: AP: An underground tank holding some of the worst radioactive waste at the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site might be leaking into the soil. The U.S. Energy Department said workers at Washington state’s Hanford Nuclear Reservation detected higher radioactivity levels under tank AY-102 during a routine inspection Thursday. Spokeswoman Lori Gamache said the department […]
Snowden Leaves Hong Kong on Commercial Flight to Moscow, Seeking Political Asylum in Ecuador
June 23rd, 2013Operation Snowden Has Become the NSA Story Via: Washington Post: We can surmise that the information was leaking anyway, and so the government needed a distraction. Something connected to the NSA, so covering it would still feel like covering the NSA story, but that would divert much of the press from covering the actual programs. […]
Captain Obvious: GCHQ Taps Fiber Optic Cables
June 22nd, 2013Via: Guardian: Britain’s spy agency GCHQ has secretly gained access to the network of cables which carry the world’s phone calls and internet traffic and has started to process vast streams of sensitive personal information which it is sharing with its American partner, the National Security Agency (NSA). The sheer scale of the agency’s ambition […]
Beijing Pollution So Bad That International Schools Build Filtered Air Domes for Children
June 22nd, 2013How about if all the shit-for-brains politicians in New Zealand, who gladly bend over for China, send their kids over there to play in the domes? Hmm? John Key? How does that grab ya? Via: Los Angeles Times: After nearly two decades in Beijing, David Wolf knew it was time for a change when his […]
U.S. CIA and Special Forces Training “The Terrorists” in Syria
June 22nd, 2013Now that Uncle $cam is shredding million dollar MRAPs for scrap in Afghanistan, it’s time to get the party started all over again. Via: Los Angeles Times: CIA and U.S. military operatives have been secretly teaching Syrian rebels how to use anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns, the Los Angeles Times has learned. The White House refuses […]
Brazil: Biggest Protests in Two Decades
June 22nd, 2013I read something back in the 1990s in one of the International Relations journals (apologies for not being able to recall the source) that put forth the theory that most people in the world would be living in situations resembling a Brazilian favela in the century ahead, and states needed to figure out how to […]
Singapore Smog Disaster
June 21st, 2013Via: Independent: Singapore has been hit by the worst air pollution crisis in its history, while government agencies try to induce rain in an attempt to stop forest fires spreading a smoky haze across three south-east Asian countries. The average Pollution Standard Index (PSI) – the measurement for air pollution – hit 401 at midday […]
Russ Tice on Boiling Frogs Podcast
June 21st, 2013What we have here is essentially a computer age, orders-of-magnitude-worse extension of what Curt Gentry laid out in J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets. Tice said that NSA has turned into a rogue organization, “That’s there to protect its own interests.” That’s nothing new, if you look at bureaucratic politics—all government organizations do […]
