Tag Archives | Geopolitics

Teenager Beats Riddle That Baffled Issac Newton

By vulcan on May 27, 2012 in News 11

Not bad. How about showing Americans kids how dumb they are? Via the Herald Sun:

Shouryya Ray is the first person to work out how to calculate exactly the path of a projectile under gravity and subject to air resistance, The (London) Sunday Times reported.

The Indian-born teen said he solved the problem that had stumped mathematicians for centuries while working on a school project.

Shouryya won a research award for his efforts and has been labeled a genius by the German media, but he put it down to “curiosity and schoolboy naivety.”

“When it was explained to us that the problems had no solutions, I thought to myself, ‘well, there’s no harm in trying,’” he said. Shouryya’s family moved to Germany when he was 12 after his engineer father got a job at a technical college. He said his father instilled in him a “hunger for mathematics” and taught him calculus at the age of six.

… Read the rest

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U.S. Lets China Bypass Wall Street for Treasury Orders

By Join Or DIE on May 23, 2012 in News 0

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Via Reuters:

China can now bypass Wall Street when buying U.S. government debt and go straight to the U.S. Treasury, in what is the Treasury’s first-ever direct relationship with a foreign government.

The relationship means the People’s Bank of China buys U.S. debt using a different method than any other central bank in the world.

The other central banks, including the Bank of Japan, which has a large appetite for Treasuries, place orders for U.S. debt with major Wall Street banks designated by the government as primary dealers. Those dealers then bid on their behalf at Treasury auctions.

China, which holds $1.17 trillion in U.S. Treasuries, still buys some Treasuries through primary dealers, but since June 2011, that route hasn’t been necessary. The documents viewed by Reuters show the U.S. Treasury Department has given the People’s Bank of China a direct computer link to its auction system, which the Chinese first used to buy two-year notes in late June 2011.

… Read the rest

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Around The World, Obama’s Presidency A Disappointment

By imkaan on May 19, 2012 in News 30

Reports Don Melvin and Rod McGuirk on the Associated Press:

In Europe, where more than 200,000 people thronged a Berlin rally in 2008 to hear Barack Obama speak, there’s disappointment that he hasn’t kept his promise to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, and perceptions that he’s shunting blame for the financial crisis across the Atlantic.

In Mogadishu, a former teacher wishes he had sent more economic assistance and fewer armed drones to fix Somalia’s problems. And many in the Middle East wonder what became of Obama’s vow, in a landmark 2009 speech at the University of Cairo, to forge a closer relationship with the Muslim world.

In a world weary of war and economic crises, and concerned about global climate change, the consensus is that Obama has not lived up to the lofty expectations that surrounded his 2008 election and Nobel Peace Prize a year later. Many in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America were also taken aback by his support for gay marriage, a taboo subject among religious conservatives…

Read More: Associated Press… Read the rest

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Chicago Police Start Preemptive Arrests on Eve of NATO Summit

By Join Or DIE on May 18, 2012 in News 8

Anyone in the Windy City, please chime in. Via RT:

Authorities in Chicago are gearing up for a weekend of anti-NATO activity in the Windy City, but it’s already being reported that law enforcement there might be a little too eager to begin arrests. The home of known activists was raided Wednesday.

The National Lawyers Guild confirms that law enforcement agents broke down the door of a 6-unit apartment building in the Chicago, Illinois neighborhood of Bridgeport at around 11:30 p.m. on Wednesday. Once inside, they entered the apartment of known activists with guns drawn and then cuffed the residents.

For two hours, tenants were shackled and questioned by officers with the Organized Crime Division of the Chicago Police Department. The Chicago Tribune writes that police reports detailing the incident have been obtained by the newspaper and confirm that nine people were arrested in the raid for allegedly making or possessing Molotov cocktail explosives.

… Read the rest

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Dalai Lama Claims Chinese Agents Trained Tibetan Women To Kill Him

By imkaan on May 18, 2012 in News 2

Photo: Lucag (CC)

Reports Dean Nelson in the Telegraph:

The 76-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner, revealed he had been passed reports from inside Tibet warning that Chinese agents had trained Tibetan women for a mission to poison him while posing as devotees seeking his blessings.

The Tibetan Buddhist leader said he lives within a high security cordon in his temple palace grounds in Dharamsala, in the Himalayan foothills, on the advice of Indian security officials.

Despite being one of the world’s most widely revered spiritual leaders he has enemies in China and among some Buddhist sects.

His aides had not been able to confirm the reports, but they had highlighted his need for high security.

“We received some sort of information from Tibet,” he said. “Some Chinese agents training some Tibetans, especially women, you see, using poison – the hair poisoned, and the scarf poisoned – they were supposed to seek blessing from me, and my hand touch.”

… Read the rest

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So Then Who The Hell Are We?

By Good German on May 15, 2012 in News 8

Dan DeWalt writes at This Can’t Be Happening:

The latest PR catch phrase from business, administration, military, state and local officials after some atrocity or other is that whatever happened, it is certainly “not who we are,” a phrase appropriately initially uttered by the Vietnam War commander, Gen. William Westmoreland, with reference to the My Lai slaughter of 400 women, children and old men, all civilians, by a group of US soldiers.

Yet if all these abominations are not “who we are,” then why do our business, police and military and government institutions generate so many examples of obscene, horrific or criminal behavior?

If we examine the culture that guides our young men and women in battle, our public safety employees in their duties, or our business class in its pursuit of profit, it’s easy to see how shameful and reprehensible episodes such as these have become as routine as they have.

… Read the rest

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Will Multinational Corporations Eventually Own Everyone’s Land?

By SpaceNeedle on May 15, 2012 in News 16

Good question. Julian Whitcrosse writes at io9.com:

Hundreds of years ago, European colonists took possession of much of the surface of our planet through unsubtle means: murder, subjugation, and their special move, bringing horrific new diseases. Nowadays, the wealthy and powerful expand their domains less confrontationally, but the effects can still be pretty harmful. Interests in rich countries — mainly multinational corporations (MNCs) make deals with local governments to attain land for their own big-money projects, sometimes evicting locals from their traditional homes and farmland, and contributing to food insecurity. Over the past 10 years, almost 800,000 square miles of land has been bought or leased (eight times the size of Britain), mostly in Asia and Africa….

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Malaysian War Crimes Tribunal Finds Bush and Cheney Guilty

By Good German on May 15, 2012 in News 9

Oh, if only it were the Hague. Or better yet, the U.S. Supreme Court. I guess it’s a start, though. Via Common Dreams:

Former President George W Bush, his vice president, Dick Cheney, and six other members of his administration have been found guilty of war crimes by a tribunal in Malaysia.

Bush, Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and five of their legal advisers were tried in their absence and convicted on Saturday.

Victims of torture told a panel of five judges in Kuala Lumpur of their suffering at the hands of US soldiers and contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among the evidence, Briton Moazzam Begg, an ex-Guantanamo detainee, said he was beaten, put in a hood and left in solitary confinement. Iraqi woman Jameelah Abbas Hameedi said she was stripped and humiliated in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

Transcripts of the five-day trial will be sent to the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, the United Nations and the Security Council.

… Read the rest

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Is America Autistic?

By Good German on May 13, 2012 in News 28

An interesting article I discovered from Hug the Monkey:

Donna Williams, a self-described “mad, autistic artist”— as well as a teacher, author and consultant — wrote an article for American Chronicle that boldly questions whether our technology-oriented, individualistic society is creating more infants with reactive attachment disorder and autism.

She writes,

Is possible that we’re living in an age where some pregnant mothers being so busy with cerebral, passive interactions with technology and its related increase in time use that they don’t have the range of movements, emotional experience, that it’d be conceivable some don’t develop the same full prenatal bonding with their child that may have been more common before the ’80s and ’90s?

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Why Are So Many People Renouncing United States Citizenship?

By majestic on May 12, 2012 in News 37

There’s been a massive amount of fretting over the ethics of Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin’s renunciation of his U.S. citizenship (which the Brazilian native gained roughly 15 years ago).

Various scandalized headlines have mentioned that he’s just one of 1,800 other Americans to give up citizenship last year, up from 235 in 2008, while others have speculated that it’s a cynical move to avoid taxes resulting from a massive capital gain when Facebook shares become publicly traded. Saverin has been savaged in the media and on the social web, but in fact it turns out that this cannot be a tax-saving move. Any ideas as to why Saverin and the other ex-Americans gave up the benefits of Uncle Sam’s protections?

Tom Worstall explains why Saverin will actually owe more taxes in Forbes:

Eduardo Saverin, one of the founders and major shareholders in Facebook, has renounced his US citizenship just before the company’s IPO.

… Read the rest

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