Saudi Arabia Plans $2 Trillion Megafund for Post-Oil Era
April 1st, 2016Via: Bloomberg:
Saudi Arabia is getting ready for the twilight of the oil age by creating the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund for the kingdom’s most prized assets.
Over a five-hour conversation, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman laid out his vision for the Public Investment Fund, which will eventually control more than $2 trillion and help wean the kingdom off oil. As part of that strategy, the prince said Saudi will sell shares in Aramco’s parent company and transform the oil giant into an industrial conglomerate. The initial public offering could happen as soon as next year, with the country currently planning to sell less than 5 percent.
Japan: Cervarix and Gardsil Victims to Sue Government and Drug Makers
March 31st, 2016Via: Japan Times:
Victims suffering side effects from cervical cancer vaccines that were once recommended by the government announced Wednesday they will file a lawsuit against the state and drugmakers.
“Many victims are still suffering from side effects of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines Cervarix and Gardsil, which include overall pain and disorders of perception, movement and memory,” lawyer Masumi Minaguchi, a representative from the planned lawsuit’s defense team told a news conference in Tokyo.
Minaguchi said the victims will file the suit sometime after June against the central government, GlaxoSmithKlien PLC, the maker of Cervarix, and Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., the maker of Gardsil, at four district courts in Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka and Fukuoka.
Long Lasting Camp Fires
March 30th, 2016—
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Far North Bushcraft And Survival:
How Associated Press Cooperated with the Nazis
March 30th, 2016Via: The Guardian:
The Associated Press news agency entered a formal cooperation with the Hitler regime in the 1930s, supplying American newspapers with material directly produced and selected by the Nazi propaganda ministry, archive material unearthed by a German historian has revealed.
When the Nazi party seized power in Germany in 1933, one of its first objectives was to bring into line not just the national press, but international media too. The Guardian was banned within a year, and by 1935 even bigger British-American agencies such as Keystone and Wide World Photos were forced to close their bureaus after coming under attack for employing Jewish journalists.
Associated Press, which has described itself as the “marine corps of journalism” (“always the first in and the last out”) was the only western news agency able to stay open in Hitler’s Germany, continuing to operate until the US entered the war in 1941. It thus found itself in the presumably profitable situation of being the prime channel for news reports and pictures out of the totalitarian state.
In an article published in academic journal Studies in Contemporary History , historian Harriet Scharnberg shows that AP was only able to retain its access by entering into a mutually beneficial two-way cooperation with the Nazi regime.
The New York-based agency ceded control of its output by signing up to the so-called Schriftleitergesetz (editor’s law), promising not to publish any material “calculated to weaken the strength of the Reich abroad or at home”.
California Delays BPA Warning Rules, Fearing They Could Scare Away Shoppers
March 30th, 2016Via: AP:
California plans to delay state-required warnings on metal cans lined with the chemical BPA, arguing too-specific warnings could scare stores and shoppers in poor neighborhoods away from some of the only fruits and vegetables available — canned ones, officials said Thursday.
Instead, the state on May 11 will require stores to post general warnings at checkout counters about the dangers of BPA and note that some canned and bottled products being sold have liners with the toxic chemical.
The decision and rationale of the California Environmental Protection Agency are angering some community and public-health groups.
It’s “ridiculous. It’s paternalistic,” said Martha Dina Arguello, executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles. “I just can’t imagine that it’s a better idea not to let us know what’s in our food.”
Paul Le Roux, International Criminal… Creator of TrueCrypt
March 29th, 2016TrueCrypt is actually just a tiny pimple on the larger story of Paul Le Roux.
But if you thought the situation surrounding the genesis of such a program would be weird, you have no idea:
“The Mastermind” is a story about a new kind of internet-enabled cartel and its machinations, from murder in the Philippines, to gold smuggling in Africa, to drug shipments from South America, to money laundering in Hong Kong. But it’s also an examination of the power of the D.E.A., and the strange ways that justice becomes muddied in the momentum of a criminal prosecution. It contains characters that at first sound unreal: a man found dead at the helm of a capsized yacht containing $100 million worth of cocaine; another imprisoned for 18 months because authorities cannot determine his name or country; ex-special forces soldiers guarding bags of gold in Hong Kong; a fugitive animal behaviorist who once trained the whale in Free Willy. Looming above them all is Paul Le Roux, a criminal figure who could only exist in the networked world of the 21st century, now returned in the flesh.
Get comfortable, there are several parts.
Via: Atavist:
He was a brilliant programmer and a vicious cartel boss, who became a prized U.S. government asset. The Atavist Magazine presents a story of an elusive criminal kingpin, told in weekly installments.
Feds to Cops: Keep Robbing People
March 29th, 2016I wonder if the Feds will prosecute themselves under their own RICO laws…
Via: Washington Post:
The Justice Department has announced that it is resuming a controversial practice that allows local police departments to funnel a large portion of assets seized from citizens into their own coffers under federal law.
The “Equitable Sharing Program” gives police the option of prosecuting some asset forfeiture cases under federal instead of state law, particularly in instances where local law enforcement officers have a relationship with federal authorities as part of a joint task force. Federal forfeiture policies are more permissive than many state policies, allowing police to keep up to 80 percent of assets they seize.
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Asset forfeiture is a contentious practice that lets police seize and keep cash and property from people who are never convicted of wrongdoing — and in many cases, never charged. Studies have found that use of the practice has exploded in recent years, prompting concern that, in some cases, police are motivated more by profit and less by justice.
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Asset forfeiture is fast growing — in 2014, for instance, federal authorities seized more than $5 billion in assets. That’s more than the value of assets lost in every single burglary that year.
Boeing’s Underwater Robot Can Wander the Ocean for 6 Months
March 29th, 2016Via: Wired:
The Echo Voyager can spend six months at a time exploring the deep sea, with a 7,500-mile range, no ship needed. Structurally, the 51-foot Voyager’s not too different from its little brothers, the 32-foot Seeker and 18-foot Ranger. The big difference is the introduction of the hybrid rechargeable power system.
Like Boeing’s other UUVs, the 50-ton Voyager runs on lithium-ion or silver zinc batteries that power it for a few days at a time. But instead of scooting over to a ship any time it’s running low on power, the Voyager just fires up a diesel generator that recharges the batteries. (It only turns on the generator at the surface, so the exhaust can be piped into the air). The Voyager works like a Chevy Volt, if the Volt carried a thousand gallons of fuel and could drive from San Francisco to Hong Kong without hitting a gas station. (The Volt is more fuel efficient, though—battling water resistance, the Voyager goes just 7.5 miles per gallon.)
Vaxxed From Cover Up to Catastrophe
March 29th, 2016Via: Vaxxed:
In 2013, biologist Dr. Brian Hooker received a call from a Senior Scientist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) who led the agency’s 2004 study on the Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine and its link to autism. The scientist, Dr. William Thompson, confessed that the CDC had omitted crucial data in their final report that revealed a causal relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism.
Over several months, Dr. Hooker records the phone calls made to him by Dr. Thompson who provides the confidential data destroyed by his colleagues at the CDC. Dr. Hooker enlists the help of Dr. Andrew Wakefield, the British gastroenterologist falsely accused of starting the anti-vax movement when he first reported in 1998 that the MMR vaccine may cause autism. In his ongoing effort to advocate for children’s health, Wakefield directs this documentary examining the evidence behind an appalling cover-up committed by the government agency charged with protecting the health of American citizens. Interviews with pharmaceutical insiders, doctors, politicians, and parents of vaccine-injured children reveal an alarming deception that has contributed to the skyrocketing increase of autism and potentially the most catastrophic epidemic of our lifetime.
More:
In Syria, Militias Armed by the Pentagon Fight Those Armed by the CIA
March 29th, 2016Via: Los Angeles Times:
Syrian militias armed by different parts of the U.S. war machine have begun to fight each other on the plains between the besieged city of Aleppo and the Turkish border, highlighting how little control U.S. intelligence officers and military planners have over the groups they have financed and trained in the bitter five-year-old civil war.
The fighting has intensified over the last two months, as CIA-armed units and Pentagon-armed ones have repeatedly shot at each other while maneuvering through contested territory on the northern outskirts of Aleppo, U.S. officials and rebel leaders have confirmed.
In mid-February, a CIA-armed militia called Fursan al Haq, or Knights of Righteousness, was run out of the town of Marea, about 20 miles north of Aleppo, by Pentagon-backed Syrian Democratic Forces moving in from Kurdish-controlled areas to the east.
