Australia's lower house of parliament has narrowly passed a bill for a controversial carbon tax.
The legislation would force about 500 of the biggest polluters to pay for each tonne of carbon dioxide they emit.
The tax is central to the government's strategy to combat climate change, but the opposition says it will cause job losses and raise the cost of living.
Australia is the world's largest coal exporter and one of the biggest per capita greenhouse... (more)
Manufacture some terrorism, launch another war! Yay!
Iranians charged in U.S. over assassination plot
(Reuters) - The United States accused Iran on Tuesday of backing a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington, escalating tensions with Tehran and stirring up a hornet's nest in the Gulf, where Saudi Arabia and Iran have long jostled for power.
According to the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution, Americans are never to be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. The Constitution is not some aspirational statement of values, allowing exceptions when convenient, but rather, it is the law of the land. It is the basis of our Republic and our principal bulwark against tyranny.
Last week's assassination of two American citizens, Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, is an outrage and a crimin... (more)
Barack Obama is fighting wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Libya. He is spending more on the US military than any previous president. If he serves for eight years as president, he will spend over $8 trillion on defence, including the hidden costs of the war economy. Fifty per cent of all US tax dollars is spent o... (more)
In this episode we speak with Doug Casey of CaseyResearch.com
Topics include:
- The traditions of anarchism and economics
- How Doug started out with anarchism
- Treasurehunting
- Why most libertarians are poor as church mice
- If the empending bankruptcy of the US government is a good thing
- Doug and th... (more)
Subscribers to four of the UK's biggest internet service providers will have to "opt in" if they want to view sexually explicit websites, as part of government-sponsored curbs on online pornography.
The measures will be unveiled on Tuesday as David Cameron hosts No 10 meeting with the Mothers' Union, which earlier this year produced a raft of proposals to shield children from sexualised imagery.
The prime minister is expected to announce other moves in line with the... (more)
I have to say that I share most — if not all — the goals of the honest Left, which would be embodied in a constantly rising standard of living for the lowest economic classes. I often find myself watching Democracy Now for its antiwar, free-speech, and anti-death-penalty stances. But the big problem with the honest Left is their absolute and obstinate refusal to learn the most basic economic principles. The "Occupy Wall Street" moveme... (more)
With $20,000 at stake, the cause did indeed take on new urgency. Instead of just passing on news that Gupta needed help, people started bragging #IswabbedforAmit on Twitter. The money also made for a sexier news story. The website TechCrunch drove new waves of interest with an article headlined, “#IswabbedforAmit Offers Up 20K To Find A Bone Marrow Donor For Startup Founder Amit Gupta.”
There was only one problem. The offer was illegal.
Recently I wrote about how some people use the armed, compulsory powers of government to restrict the rights and economic activities of others as a means of protecting one’s own selfish economic interests, profits, etc. That includes the unions and minimum wage laws, and big corporations such as those among Big Pharma in their legal restrictions against generic and supplement makers.
Once again, the latest fire and brimstone sermon by Marc Faber is absolutely spot on, starting and ending with his "policy" recommendation for what the US needs: "I will tell you what the US needs. The US needs a Lee Kwan Yew who stands in front of the US and tells them, listen you lazy bugger, now you have to tighten your belts, you have to save more, work more for lower salaries and only through that will we get out of the current dilemma that essentially prevents the economy fr... (more)
The global authority over all .com domain names, VeriSign, is demanding the power to terminate websites deemed “abusive” when ordered to by government without a court order or any kind of oversight whatsoever.
“The company said today it wants to be able to enforce the “denial, cancellation or transfer of any registration” in any of a laundry list of scenarios where a domain is deemed to be “abusive,” reports the UK Regist... (more)
I'm curious if Thailand is purposely trying to kill off its rather lucrative tourism business. We've discussed in the past that Thailand has strict laws against "insulting" the king. These lèse majesté laws are used widely in Thailand to stop any sort of political criticism. They've been used to block entire sites including YouTube, and to arrest website owners for the comments on their site.
Lately, Thailand has been trying to use those laws against US ci... (more)
PHILADELPHIA - October 11, 2011 (WPVI) -- 30-year-old Charles Jacoby, a 10-year veteran of the Philadelphia Police Department, took an oath to protect and defend people from crime, but according to authorities, he was committing crimes himself.
[...]According to authorities, from in or about January through about April 5th, Jacoby devised a scheme in the 22nd police district to steal the debit and credit cards of people who had been placed under arrest on his watch.
The most accurate foreign-exchange forecasters say the dollar’s best quarterly rally since 2008 has no chance of continuing to year-end as a slow economy spurs the Federal Reserve to flood the world with more U.S. currency.
Led by JPMorgan Chase & Co., the five best strategists as measured by Bloomberg News in the six quarters through September see the currency averaging $1.34 per euro in the final three months of 2011, from $1.3387 on Sept. 30. They estimate it will average... (more)
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), whose shares have fallen 43 percent this year, may report its lowest quarterly profit since the 2008 financial crisis. Far from Wall Street, Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) is headed for record earnings.
Third-quarter U.S. bank earnings, which kick off with JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) on Oct. 13, will show that investment- banking businesses such as bond trading and merger advice declined, while retail operations like mortgage lending prospered, according to ... (more)
Back in February, we reported that an insurance company had sued the U.S. Department of Justice claiming it was stonewalling responsibility for an FBI agent wrecking a stolen Ferrari F50. Turns out the FBI can wreck your sports car — as long as the agents are on the clock.
U.S. Federal Judge Avern Cohn dismissed the lawsuit by Motors Insurance on Monday, ruling that wh... (more)
An innocent bystander decided to film some local police on a public sidewalk, the police respond with threats an intimidation.
Here's how the incident went down according to the videographer:
"UMass Lowell police respond to an incident on North Campus involving a fight between a group of students. While recording and monitoring the police ... (more)
