Flashback: An Interview With WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange

Forbes 11/29/2010

Admire him or revile him, WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange is the prophet of a coming age of involuntary transparency, the leader of an organization devoted to divulging the world’s secrets using technology unimagined a generation ago.

Over the last year his information insurgency has dumped 76,000 secret Afghan war documents and another trove of 392,000 files from the Iraq war into the public domain–the largest classified military security breaches in history.

Sunday, WikiLeaks made the first of 250,000 classified U.S. State Department cables public, offering an unprecedented view of how America’s top diplomats view enemies and friends alike…

Source: http://www.forbes.com

NSA officials consider Edward Snowden amnesty in return for documents

The NSA official in charge of assessing the alleged damage caused by Snowden’s leaks, Richard Ledgett, told CBS News an amnesty still remains controversial within the agency, which has spent the past six months defending itself against a global outcry and legislative and executive proposals to restrain its broad surveillance activities.

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The U.S. Recovery Has Been Spectacular*

We need a real recovery. That’s what Mitt Romney said during the campaign, and he was right. Five years since the start of the Great Recession, unemployment is still far too high. It’s not for a lack of optimism among policymakers. As Evan Soltas pointed out, the Federal Reserve keeps predicting that prosperity is just around the corner, only to find it’s not. Catchup growth is the new Godot.

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*Compared to almost every other rich country and almost every other financial crisis.

Poll: Worries about Syrian war on the rise

More and more Americans are concerned about the situation in civil-war ravaged Syria, according to a new national survey.

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The FACTS: End of the World 2012 phenomenon

Guatemalan Maya natives kneel in front of a temple at the Tikal archaeological site on December 20, 2012. The exquisite site of Mayan ruins began hosting winter solstice ceremonies on Thursday as the region’s indigenous people marked the end of an era.

The 2012 phenomenon comprises a range of eschatological beliefs according to which cataclysmic or transformative events will occur on 21 December 2012 .

This date is regarded as the end-date of a 5125-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar. Various astronomical alignments and numerological formulae have been proposed as pertaining to this date, though none has been accepted by mainstream scholarship.

A New Age interpretation of this transition is that the date marks the start of time in which Earth and its inhabitants may undergo a positive physical or spiritual transformation, and that 21 December 2012 may mark the beginning of a new era.

Others suggest that the date marks the end of the world or a similar catastrophe. Scenarios suggested for the end of the world include the arrival of the next solar maximum, an interaction between Earth and the black hole at the center of the galaxy, or Earth’s collision with a planet called Nibiru.

Scholars from various disciplines have dismissed the idea of such cataclysmic events occurring in 2012. Professional Mayanist scholars state that predictions of impending doom are not found in any of the extant classic Maya accounts, and that the idea that the Long Count calendar ends in 2012 misrepresents Maya history and culture, While astronomers have rejected the various proposed doomsday scenarios as pseudoscience,stating that they conflict with simple astronomical observations.

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Source: wikipedia

Bloomberg: The Fiscal Cliff Will Drive the U.S. Into Recession

House Speaker John Boehner says he was “flabbergasted” when Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner pitched the White House plan to save the nation from the “fiscal cliff.”

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6 Ways The Fiscal Cliff Could Affect You

Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke used the term “fiscal cliff,” it quickly became the newest Washington buzzphrase. As the deadline to avert the cliff nears, it has overtaken the European debt crisis as the most talked-about story in the financial media. The fiscal cliff refers to the enactment of a number of laws that would, if not changed before Jan. 1, 2013,

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Barack Obama wins election for second term as president

President Barack Obama handily defeated Gov. Mitt Romney and won himself a second term Tuesday after a bitter and historically expensive race that was primarily fought in just a handful of battleground states. Networks project that Obama beat Romney after nabbing the crucial state of Ohio.

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The Great Recession has forced nearly all Americans to think about money.

Here was Chas Kaufmann’s life before the Great Recession: $28,000 in restaurant tabs in a year, cruises, house parties with fireworks. His Mr. Gutter business was booming in the Poconos.

Now: “We mainly shop at Sam’s Club and portion out our meals. We spend $4 to $5 a night on eating.” He and his wife use space heaters in their elegant house and leave parts of it cold. The Hummer is gone; he drives a 2005 pickup. Tuesday, Kaufman said, he’s voting for Mitt Romney.

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Anonymous and WikiLeaks: Is it really a breakup?

Whistleblowing website WikiLeaks has come under fire from members of hacktivist group Anonymous, who lashed out against a paywall banner on its main page. But since the group is not a single entity and has no leader, who has the power to speak up?

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