18 Aug 2013

Latest Greek Corruption Scandal Costs New Privatization Agency Head His Job

Tyler Durden's picture For the past five years Greece, stuck in its worst depression in history with two-thirds of work eligible youths unemployed, has been actively blaming all of its problems on "(f)auxterity" even as we said all along that the Greek problems have nothing to do with how much money its government spends and everything to do with corrupt, complicit and frequently criminal politicians. Today we got the latest confirmation that we were correct after the Greek finance minister Stournaras asked for the resignation of the Greek privatisation agency chief, Stavridis, following a newspaper report that he traveled on the private plane of a businessman who just bought a state company with Stavridis' blessings.

Scientific Study Proves TV Making Kids Dumber

AJ: Using a large population-based sample, this study aims to verify whether televiewing at 29 mo, a common early childhood pastime, is prospectively associated with school readiness at 65 months.

Dear Ryjin Vander Hoek! What a tangled web we weave...

Mister Infamies: Ryjin Vander Hoek has enlightened the world with his incoherent babble. How about another walk through Beaver Hill.

Stupid people are dumb

sean bedlam: As awash with retards as the net is, I wonder how all this dumbness affects me mind? (If representatives from the Retarded Community could comment, that would be great.)

Diana's Death: Police Handed New Information

SKY: New information that alleges Princess Diana was murdered has been passed to Scotland Yard through military sources, it has emerged.
The information, thought to include the allegation that the Princess of Wales, Dodi al Fayed and their driver were killed by a member of the British military, will be assessed by officers from the Specialist Crime and Operations Command.
According to Sky sources it was given to the police by the former parents-in-law of a former soldier.
The deaths of Princess Diana and Mr al Fayed in Paris in 1997 were investigated and examined during a 90-day inquest led by Lord Justice Scott Baker at the Royal Court of Justice in 2007.
On April 7, 2008, the jury concluded their verdict as "unlawful killing, grossly negligent driving of the following vehicles and of the Mercedes".
pg3 Dodi Al Fayed CCTV ritz princess diana

Fixing Greece and Cyprus

Bill Still: There is only one way to fix Greece's and Cyprus's economic situation -- and that's not with austerity. Bill Still, "Fixing Greece"

"Let them eat credit"

The financial world is riddled with analysis that is either extremely bullish, moderately bullish, or extremely bearish. I am not the mainstream media, and I am not ZeroHedge. I will simply attempt to present the world as it is. Warning: The world as it is includes profanity.
Over the last thirty some odd years, the world has seen an unprecedented level of economic growth and prosperity. That much is certain. However, things are not as they appear when the bullish rose-tinted glasses that most view the world through are removed.

And the issue is debt.

Rajan was right. It isn't just the U.S. housing market. It's the world. China's people are currently being sated by an endless funnel of credit and liquidity. Well, not endless. As a bubble gets larger and larger, the amount of debt eventually becomes too much to bear. China is no exception, as is the world.

Why did the world grow at such a frenetic pace over this period of time? Was it innovation or the piles and piles of sovereign debt that built up in the world financial system? That is what I will attempt to flesh out.

interview with the Independent newspaper reporter Sarah Morrison - BBC Sucks O Cocks News

The Artist Taxi Driver

Letter From A Bedouin At This Time

Morris: The development of civilizations can be measured not only by material and industrial achievements
But also measured by the morality of the people and how well established are their social values and moral principles
Now all the human societies are different in their behavioral and social characteristics

No one in US Congress was told about NSA privacy violations, had to learn about it via leaks

By Madison Ruppert: Members of Congress were not briefed on the many thousands of National Security Agency (NSA) privacy violations and breaches of the law that have occurred every year since 2008, according to Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.).
Instead, they were forced to learn about it through leaked documents published by The Washington Post, according to Gowdy.
The leaks have led to a significant erosion of trust in government, something which was severely endangered before the latest documents were leaked.
“I wonder how many of my colleagues in Congress were briefed that there were thousands of errors made with respect to this program, because I have a sneaking suspicion the number is zero,” Gowdy said on Fox News.
“That’s how many of my colleagues were told ahead of time before we had to learn from a leaker to a newspaper that there were thousands of violations,” Gowdy said.
Others, including Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), have also said that they were not made aware of the findings of the audit until recently, according to The Hill.
In the case of Feinstein, it is especially troubling since she is tasked with overseeing the NSA.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) responded to the Post report by calling for a hearing after Congress returns, in which they will demand “honest and forthright answers from the intelligence community.”

How To Opt-Out of Prism

wearechangewearechange: With all the recent revelations about the NSA and all the companies that are working with them to give away our information, it seems impossible to have any kind of privacy on the internet. In actuality, while there might not be a way to 100% protect yourself all of the time, there are many other options out there that we can take to start to opt-out of Prism and put security barriers in between our personal information and the spying eyes of the government.

Radioactive Water Leaking From Fukushima: Why Millions Of Lives Are At Stake

In lieu of the Japanese government doing the right thing and finally coming clean about the epic environmental catastrophe that is Fukushima, which it hopes to simply dig under the rug even as the inconvenient reality gets worse and thousands of tons of radioactive water make their way into the ocean, one is forced to rely on third-party sources for information on this tragedy. We present a useful primer from Scientific American on Fukushima "water retention" problem and "what you need to know about the radioactive water leaking from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean."

Radioactive Water Leaks from Fukushima: What We Know
Scientists on both sides of the Pacific have measured changing levels of radioactivity in fish and other ocean life since the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami triggered a nuclear meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. On Aug. 2, 2013, when Japan’s Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) gave its first estimate of how much radioactive water from the nuclear plant has flowed into the ocean since the disaster, the company was finally facing up to what scientists have recognized for years.
"As an oceanographer looking at the reactor, we've known this since 2011," said Ken Buesseler, a marine chemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Woods Hole, Mass. "The news is TEPCO is finally admitting this."
TEPCO estimated that between 20 trillion and 40 trillion becquerels (units of radioactivity representing decay per second) of radioactive tritium have leaked into the ocean since the disaster,