http://www.scoopit.co.nz Submit and vote on the news you care about Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:01:24 NZDT en http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/9077586/Germanys-Carthaginian-terms-for-Greece.html The US, Canada, Britain, France, Greece, and other signatories at the London Debt Agreement of 1953 granted Chancellor Konrad Adenauer a 50pc haircut on all German debt, worth 70pc in relief with stretched maturities. There was a five-year moratorium on interest payments.
The express purpose was to give Germany enough oxygen to rebuild its economy, and to help hold the line against Soviet overreach. This sweeping debt forgiveness caused heartburn for the British - then in dire financial straits, themselves forced to go cap in hand to Washington for loans. The Greeks had to forgo some war reparations.
Yet statesmanship prevailed. The finance ministers of the day agreed to overlook the moral origins of that debt, and the moral hazard of “rewarding” a country that had so disturbed the European order.
The Wirtschaftswunder whittled down the burden of German debts to modest levels within a decade. Germany emerged as a vibrant democracy and a pillar of the western security system.
Greece has less strategic relevance, and must comply with tougher terms. ]]> Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:01:24 NZDT kaituhi Business 4 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=germanys-carthaginian-terms-for-greece http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=GLO20120214&articleId=29288
We explain that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and a host of other social networking platforms are increasingly viewed by intelligence agencies as invaluable channels of information acquisition. We base our findings on three recent case studies, which we believe highlight the intelligence function of social networking. (Joseph Fitsanakis, Research: Spies increasingly using Facebook, Twitter to gather data, intelNews.org, February 13, 2012)


]]> Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:01:11 NZDT Kaarearea Commentary 6 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=social-media-tactical-intelligence-collection-1 http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/02/climate-desk-michael-mann/all/1
But now comes the unauthorized release of documents showing how a libertarian thinktank, the Heartland Institute, which has in the past been supported by Exxon, spent millions on lavish conferences attacking scientists and concocting projects to counter science teaching for kindergarteners.

.... ]]> Tue, 21 Feb 2012 09:30:29 NZDT bite.the.bullet Sci-Tech 5 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=inside-story-climate-scientists-under-siege http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/02/darpa-sci-fi/
According the agency, “the Avatar program will develop interfaces and algorithms to enable a soldier to effectively partner with a semi-autonomous bi-pedal machine and allow it to act as the soldier’s surrogate.”

These robots should be smart and agile enough to do the dirty work of war, Darpa notes. That includes the “room clearing, sentry control [and] combat casualty recovery.” And all at the bidding of their human partner. ]]> Tue, 21 Feb 2012 09:30:28 NZDT Roger_X Sci-Tech 5 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=pentagon%E2%80%99s-project-%E2%80%98avatar%E2%80%99-with-robots http://www.thenation.com/blogs/robert-dreyfuss
In 2012, Dennis Ross may have done the same thing. His op-ed in the New York Times today all but closes the door on the idea of war against Iran in 2012 by either the United States or Israel.

It’s a surprise from Ross, a hawkish, neoconservative-leaning Middle East expert who served for three years as President Obama’s top adviser on the region. Though not a neocon himself, Ross is affiliated with the neoconservative-dominated Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a pro-Israel think tank founded by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in the 1980s. Off and on, since then, Ross has been part of WINEP. But he’s also a liberal Democrat who makes no effort to hide his overtly pro-Israel sympathies. That’s why, coming from him, his Times op-ed is important.

Titled “Iran Is Ready to Talk,” Ross argues that there’s no need to consider bombing Iran since economic sanctions appear to be working. As a result, he says, Iran is ready for diplomacy. ]]> Tue, 21 Feb 2012 09:30:25 NZDT kaituhi World 4 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=dennis-ross-shoots-down-war-with-iran http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/02/google-safari-browser-cookie/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29 ...snip...
I would expect a new round of calls for hearings and perhaps even a fine from the FTC, which has already imposed *mandatory privacy audits on Google for 20 years*. And my new shorthand for how companies should deal with privacy – Don’t be a secretive jerk – applies here as well. Google may or may not have been a jerk in this case – that depends on your perspective, but it’s clear it was sneaky and secretive. ]]> Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:52:16 NZDT manufactured.tradition Commentary 5 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=google-busted-with-hand-in-safari-cookie-jar http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NB16Ak02.html
The prime target was South Vietnam. The aggression later spread to the North, then to the remote peasant society of northern Laos, and finally to rural Cambodia, which was bombed at the stunning level of all allied air operations in the Pacific region during World War II, including the two atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In this, Henry Kissinger's orders were being carried out - "anything that flies on anything that moves" - a call for genocide that is rare in the historical record. Little of this is remembered. Most was scarcely known beyond narrow circles of activists.
]]> Mon, 20 Feb 2012 06:05:37 NZDT CommonGood Commentary 5 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=chomsky-us-losing-the-world-part-1- http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/198086/report-unflattering-nz-social-policy
The report covered five social policy areas, children's wellbeing, crime and punishment, work and income, social hazards and housing, and provided a "report card" for each.

In the area of children, it said while the rates of teenage pregnancy and youth offending had fallen, and gaps in educational achievement continued to close, there had been no progress in reducing rates of child poverty, and it appeared more children were being abused or neglected.

As many as 10% of New Zealand children may face violence and material hardship in their daily lives.

"We appear to lack the wit and insight to appreciate the links between the social environments we create and the social outcomes we reap. Until we grasp the association, significant improvement ... is unlikely," the report said. ]]> Sun, 19 Feb 2012 08:25:37 NZDT stolen.generation Commentary 5 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=salvo-report-unflattering-on-nz-social-policy http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/02/15/tintin-and-racism/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=tintin-and-racism
Conrad’s narrator, Marlow, describes the Africans as having “faces like grotesque masks,” as animal-like creatures who lap water like animals, with ugly and horrid faces, who howl and leap around, with buttocks wagging “to and fro like tails.”  Of one “savage” who has been trained to fire up a boiler, Marlow can’t resist remarking, “To look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat, walking on his hind legs.”  It is the animalistic images assigned to Africans that make Conrad—according to Chinua Achebe, his harshest critic—racist.  I concur.  He didn’t need to have Marlow use such racist terms.  And as Achebe has painstakingly documented, it is not excusable simply to respond that Conrad’s treatment of Africans in Heart of Darkness was no different than the treatment by other writers of the time, because there were enlightened artists who did not embrace racist images and stereotypes.

]]> Sun, 19 Feb 2012 08:25:35 NZDT Hecate Culture 5 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=tintin-and-racism--1 http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22389 Sun, 19 Feb 2012 08:25:26 NZDT Dharawal World 5 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=who-is-behind-wikileaks- http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?src=me&ref=general
Also linked to your Guest ID is demographic information like your age, whether you are married and have kids, which part of town you live in, how long it takes you to drive to the store, your estimated salary, whether you’ve moved recently, what credit cards you carry in your wallet and what Web sites you visit. Target can buy data about your ethnicity, job history, the magazines you read, if you’ve ever declared bankruptcy or got divorced, the year you bought (or lost) your house, where you went to college, what kinds of topics you talk about online, whether you prefer certain brands of coffee, paper towels, cereal or applesauce, your political leanings, reading habits, charitable giving and the number of cars you own. (In a statement, Target declined to identify what demographic information it collects or purchases.) All that information is meaningless, however, without someone to analyze and make sense of it. That’s where Andrew Pole and the dozens of other members of Target’s Guest Marketing Analytics department come in.

]]> Sun, 19 Feb 2012 05:21:17 NZDT Honest.John World 5 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=how-companies-learn-your-secrets http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/02/17/a-dickensian-watergate/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-dickensian-watergate
One example will suffice: the Saturday Night Massacre, October 20, 1973.  When Archibald Cox refused to accept summaries of the disputed tape recordings, Nixon ordered Elliot Richardson, the Attorney General, to fire special prosecutor Cox.  Richardson (according to Mallon) had apparently agreed but then quickly reneged, and resigned instead.  So did William D. Ruckelshaus, his first deputy.  The department’s number three man implemented the firing.  Mallon writes, “Then the rumors arrived: that the FBI had gone to the special prosecutor’s office on K Street—perhaps to seize files; perhaps to protect them.  Or the files [what Cox already had on Nixon] had already been hidden by the special prosecutor’s staff, who—rumor also had it—were rushing from their homes to the office.”

Richardson’s refusal to fire Cox and his resignation were all over the news that evening.  Those of us who worked in Washington knew that the city was rife with rumors.  Nixon was going to suspend the constitution.  Martial Law would be instigated—anything so that he could stay in office, as the wagons circled the White House.  The news of Cox’s firing spread like wild fire through a party my wife and I were attending in the city that Saturday night.  As we drove home hours later along Western Avenue (the street that separates the District of Columbia from Maryland) and approached Connecticut Avenue (which passes near the White House several miles further into the city), police cars blocked entry to the city on that major route.  Driving the rest of the way home, we were convinced that Nixon had, indeed, hijacked the constitution and the country was doomed. ]]> Sun, 19 Feb 2012 05:21:13 NZDT CommonGood Commentary 5 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=a-dickensian-watergate http://www.debka.com/article/21750/ Sun, 19 Feb 2012 05:21:11 NZDT John.Law Commentary 4 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=crisis-in-us-israel-relations-over-nuclear-talks-with-iran- http://www.johnpilger.com/articles/its-time-we-recognised-the-blair-governments-criminality Sun, 19 Feb 2012 05:21:08 NZDT quokka Commentary 4 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=pilger-blairs-criminality http://blogs.plos.org/neuroanthropology/2011/10/15/david-graeber-anthropologist-anarchist-financial-analyst/
I saw something very similar in camps of the Movimento Sem Terra (the MST or ‘Landless Movement’) in Brazil (if you’re interested, the English-language website for the Friends of the MST is here). Roadside shanty camps attracted former sharecroppers, poor farmers whose small plots were drowned out by hydroelectric projects, and other refugees from severe restructuring in agriculture toward large-scale corporate farming. Activists and religious leaders were helping these communities to set up their own governments, make collective decisions, and eventually occupy sprawling ranches that had been defrauded with generations of state collusion. The MST leveraged the land occupations to demand that the Brazilian government adhere to the country’s constitution, which called for agrarian reform, especially of large holdings that were the fruits of fraud.

I found these Brazilian communities is situations similar to those in Madagascar that Graeber observed: community-based groups, even cooperatives formes by people with very little education, developed greater and greater ability to run their own lives when the state was not around. They elected their own officials, held marathon community meetings in which every member voted (even children), and, when they eventually gained land, often became thriving, tight-knit communities, especially when the shared struggle had steeled their solidarity.

]]> Sat, 18 Feb 2012 06:39:41 NZDT Yordamis Culture 5 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=graeber-anthropologist-anarchist-financial-analyst http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/9085842/Gina-Rinehart-pens-universes-worst-poem.html
The poem, a sort of ode to mining titled "Our Future", has been engraved on a plaque fixed to a 30-ton iron ore boulder as part of a new outdoor artwork in the billionaire's home state of Western Australia. Ms Rinehart proposed that the boulder be installed as a monument to iron ore.
The poem, which consists of eight rhyming couplets, proclaims the benefits of the resources industry and lampoons the government.
But its aesthetic quality has come under question, with one critic describing it on Wikipedia as "the universe's worst poem, although many still dispute if it qualifies to be classified as poetry".

The globe is sadly groaning with debt, poverty and strife
And billions now are pleading to enjoy a better life
Their hope lies with resources buried deep within the earth
And the enterprise and capital which give each project worth
Is our future threatened with massive debts run up by political hacks
Who dig themselves out by unleashing rampant tax
The end result is sending Australian investment, growth and jobs offshore
This type of direction is harmful to our core
Some envious unthinking people have been conned
To think prosperity is created by waving a magic wand
Through such unfortunate ignorance, too much abuse is hurled
Against miners, workers and related industries who strive to build the world
Develop North Australia, embrace multiculturalism and welcome short term foreign workers to our shores
To benefit from the export of our minerals and ores
The world's poor need our resources: do not leave them to their fate
Our nation needs special economic zones and wiser government, before it is too late ]]> Sat, 18 Feb 2012 06:39:41 NZDT quokka Humour 5 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=rinehart-pens-universes-worst-poem http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175503/tomgram%3A_noam_chomsky%2C_imperial_hegemony_and_its_discontents/ Fri, 17 Feb 2012 10:43:36 NZDT CommonGood Commentary 5 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=chomsky-us-losing-the-world-part-2 http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/feb/15/uk-unemployment-high-economy-flatlines ..
Two-thirds of the increase in unemployment was accounted for by women, who continue to be hit hardest by the deterioration in the labour market. The number of women claiming unemployment benefits has hit 531,700 – driven partly by government reforms that have forced single mothers to return to the labour market. A record number of people were working part-time as they were unable to find full-time work. ]]> Fri, 17 Feb 2012 10:43:34 NZDT WildBill Business 7 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=uk-unemployment-17yr-high- http://www.pcworld.com/article/217550/google_comes_under_fire_for_secret_relationship_with_nsa.html
Federal agencies have also taken "insufficient" action in response to revelations last year that Google Street View cars were collecting data from open Wi-Fi connections they passed, Consumer Watchdog said in the letter.

"We believe Google has inappropriately benefited from close ties to the administration," the letter said. "Google is most consumers' gateway to the Internet. Nonetheless, it should not get special treatment and access because of a special relationship with the administration." ]]> Fri, 17 Feb 2012 10:43:33 NZDT Roger_X World 7 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=google-under-fire-for-secret-relationship-with-nsa http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/02/who-carried-out-the-terrorist-car-bombings-in-india-thailand-and-georgia.html
And put aside for a moment the following facts:

The CIA admits that it hired Iranians in the 1950′s to pose as Communists and stage bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its democratically-elected prime minister
American and Israeli officials admit that they have repeatedly carried out terrorism and then blamed it on Arabs (and see this)
Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski told the Senate that a terrorist act might be carried out in the U.S. and falsely blamed on Iran to justify war against that nation.
Daniel Ellsberg, the famous Pentagon Papers whistleblower, said “if there is another terror attack, “I believe the president will get what he wants”, which includes war with Iran
Robert David Steele – a 20-year Marine Corps infantry and intelligence officer, the second-ranking civilian in U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence, and former CIA clandestine services case officer – says that  elements within the U.S. government are trying to carry out a false flag operation and blame it on Iran
Former high-level CIA officer Michael Scheuer – who was the head of the CIA unit tasked with capturing Bin Laden – says that Israel or Saudi Arabia could be setting up Iran as a way to foment war
Scott Ritter, the former UN Weapons Inspector (an American) – who stated before the Iraq war started that there were no weapons of mass destruction – is now saying that he would not rule out staged government terror by the U.S. government to justify war against Iran
Ron Paul has warned of a “Gulf of Tonkin type incident” in Iran
Pulitzer-prize winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh says many ideas have been proposed for provoking a war, including building boats that look like Iranian boats, and then putting Navy Seals on them to “start a shoot-up” ..
]]> Fri, 17 Feb 2012 10:43:32 NZDT Diogenes World 5 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=whose-were-the-car-bombs-in-south-asia-