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Tony Blair’s secret oil links to Middle East

Posted on March 22nd, 2010 at 17:50 by Paul Jay in category: News

[Quote:]

Tony Blair‘s secret links to Gulf oil giants were revealed as fresh details emerged of his “carte blanche” support for George Bush‘s Iraq war.


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Comments:

  1. spaceman spiff on March 22nd, 2010 at 19:28:

    Just another politician on the take. Why should he be any different from all the rest of the lot?

  2. Paul Jay on March 22nd, 2010 at 20:48:

    ‘I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.’
    Charles De Gaulle (1890 – 1970)

Google Is Hiring Bond Traders

Posted on March 22nd, 2010 at 17:46 by Paul Jay in category: News

[Quote:]

Google is hiring traders for its new bond trading platform, according to published advertisements on its job site.

What’s next. Google Money?


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Comments:

  1. Maarten on March 22nd, 2010 at 17:59:

    Nah, this is normal for corporations that sit on a lot of cash.

  2. Steffen on March 22nd, 2010 at 20:38:

    Yep. Siemens is also called a “Bank with attached electronics shop”, since a long time.

    It seems to me that we reached a point where investing in the real economy doesn’t bring any revenue anymore. Competition is so fierce, and the global supply of products and services is so overwhelming that most of “investing” is now taking place in the virtual space of the financial markets. There is just no point in building new factories, providing new services etc.

    I found today this shocking graph with article, which might interest the readers here. This strongly suggests that the USA crossed a historic border last year; in former times one new dollar of debt caused at least some increase in GDP; albeit the GDP increase/debt increase ratio fell steadily. It was projected that the critical point where more debt would cause no GDP increase anymore should be reached in 2015. But it was already reached in the crisis of last year. From 2008 on, every new dollar of debt is now *decreasing* GDP. That means that the state has lost completely its fiscal power. To whom have they lost it? … The banks, of course, who now own de facto the monetary system.

    http://www.swarmusa.com/vb4/content.php/282-THE-Most-Important-Chart-of-the-CENTURY

UK Anti-Piracy Lawyers Threaten File-Sharing Forum

Posted on March 22nd, 2010 at 15:18 by John Sinteur in category: Intellectual Property

[Quote:]

ACS:Law have been making news headlines damaging to their reputation ever since they started sending out thousands of threatening letters to alleged file-sharers in the UK. Now they are threatening to sue Slyck.com, one of the Internet’s oldest file-sharing forums, because they don’t like what members have written about them.

[..]

In Slyck’s ‘UK Filesharing Allegations/Lawsuit Discussion’ section are multiple thousands of posts from those affected by these ‘pay up or else’ schemes. It is from these forums that people have worked together to support each other and work out ways of fighting back against intimidation. Many forum posters, with the help received on Slyck and these threads, have refused to pay up and have still not done so. The value of these threads to letter recipients cannot be understated.

Herein lies the problem. This forum has dramatically undermined the business model of both Davenport Lyons and ACS:Law because, quite simply, it enables people to stand strong and cut off the revenue source to these lawyers’ clients.

And now ACS:Law have moved to do something about it through the legal system, claiming that some forum posts by Slyck members are harming their business, citing grounds of defamation.

[..]

Needless to say, Slyck aren’t going to be bullied by ACS:Law and have refused to take down the posts.

You can read the whole sorry episode in Thomas Mennecke’s article “Wank Plan Goes Wrong: ACS:Law Threatens Slyck.com With a Lawsuit” over on Slyck.

TorrentFreak has also been informed that a torrent of all the discussions is being prepared and will soon be seeded on every major BitTorrent tracker. If ACS:Law haven’t yet heard of the Streisand Effect, maybe they should look it up.


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Cartoon

Posted on March 22nd, 2010 at 10:13 by John Sinteur in category: Cartoon


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The Deciding Vote

Posted on March 22nd, 2010 at 9:06 by John Sinteur in category: News

Final tally was 219 votes in favor, but number 216 was the one everybody was waiting for…

Lots of reactions here.

For a very mediocre bill, this is a lot of noise. But perhaps it will be improved bit by bit over the coming years and get to a point where it can be compared to other first world countries.


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Comments:

  1. Jan-Mark on March 22nd, 2010 at 10:33:

    Maybe a mediocre bill, but like any first step in the right direction, it is a small step for a bill, but a giant leap for the USA.

  2. Mykolas on March 22nd, 2010 at 14:09:

    Don’t count chickens, the bill still needs to go to the senate and I expect fireworks there.