Category: Politics

Shadow system to secretly move trillions of dollars—a system that can be exploited by tax evaders, drug runners and even terrorists.: Clearstream has a double system of accounting, with secret, non-published accounts that banks and big corporations use to make transfers they don’t want listed on the official books…. Clearstream carried an account for a notoriously criminal Russian bank for several years after the bank had officially “collapsed,” and clearinghouse accounts camouflaged the destinations of transfers to Colombian banks.

Link: Salon.com Technology | Santa’s sweatshop. Unlike the United States, the European Union has a 48-hour work-week limit, with some loopholes and exceptions. In Canada, after 48 hours, all overtime is voluntary and can’t be imposed by an employer. But in the United States, the strongest law limiting overtime is in Maine, where employees can be required to work only 80 hours of overtime in any given two-week period. That law came about in 2000, after a lineman working to get the power back on after a storm toiled more than 90 hours with few breaks before he accidentally electrocuted…

“What they’ve realized now is that cultural warfare not only works but it triumphs — that stigmatizing, demonizing not only is a device, it is the device,” Gabler said. “It is the way to govern the country.””The Republicans ran directly and very successfully against the arts here,” said Alan Woods, a longtime professor of theater and cultural history at Ohio State University.

What does Karl Rove know that we don’t know?

Imagine not even having to send soldiers in to destroy towns. Or even to hire mercenaries. Remote control war. George Lucas of all people, prescient. George Orwell’s visions not dark enough. Patriot acts. Automated voting.