Freedomshift

by Justin Raimondo , September 26, 2014 Print This | Share This Did Senator John McCain, a leading advocate of arming Syria’s Islamist revolutionaries, meet with members or allies of the Islamic State in al-Sham [the Levant] (ISIS) during his trip to Syria on May 27 of last year? Read more: here

The "robots are taking over the world" concept has been a staple of science fiction for generations. However, the reality of automated production lines and self-propelled disc vacuums has thus far proved much less intimidating. But the next generation of robots will likely be much more significant. And while we feel that financial markets remain highly distorted by excess liquidity, and that growth stocks always involve higher risk, it is undeniable that transformative innovations can present opportunities. Recent moves by Google ( GOOGL ) and Amazon ( AMZN ) highlight the wave in robotics. In 2013, Google purchased eight startups focused on robots, and this year it unveiled dramatic improvements to the driver-less car concept that it first introduced in 2012. Recently, Amazon made a big stir on "60 Minutes" by introducing an internet-controlled air drone delivery system. Although some dismissed it as a stunt, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos insisted that th...

Over the last two years, the U.S. has had a spike in expatriations. It isn’t exactly Ellis Island in reverse, but it’s more than a dribble. With global tax reporting and FATCA, the list of the individuals  who renounced is up. For 2013, there was a 221% increase, with  record numbers of Americans renouncing . The Treasury Department is required to publish a  quarterly list , but these numbers are under-stated, some say considerably. The presence or absence of tax motivation is no longer relevant, but that could change. After Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin  departed for Singapore, Senators  Chuck Schumer  and Bob Casey introduced a bill to double the exit tax to 30% for anyone leaving the U.S. for tax reasons. That hasn’t happened, but taxes are still a big issue for many. Read more: here

Several months ago, when Russia announced the much anticipated "Holy Grail" energy deal with China, some were disappointed that despite this symbolic agreement meant to break the petrodollar's stranglehold on the rest of the world, neither Russia nor China announced payment terms to be in anything but dollars. In doing so they admitted that while both nations are eager to move away from a US Dollar reserve currency, neither is yet able to provide an alternative. This changed in late June when first Gazprom's CFO announced the gas giant was ready to settle China contracts in Yuan or Rubles, and at the same time the People's Bank of China announced that its Assistant Governor Jin Qi and Russian central bank Deputy Chairman Dmitry Skobelkin held a meeting in which they discussed cooperating on project and trade financing using local currencies. The meeting discussed cooperation in bank card, insurance and financial supervision sectors. And yet, whil...

(NaturalNews) When drug companies are caught faking clinical trial data, no one is surprised anymore. When vaccine manufacturers spike their human trial samples with animal antibodies to make sure their vaccines appear to work, we all just figure that’s how they do business: lying, cheating, deceiving and violating the law. Now, in what might be the largest scientific fraud ever uncovered, NASA and the NOAA have been caught red-handed altering historical temperature data to produce a “climate change narrative” that defies reality. This finding, originally documented on the Real Science website , is detailed here. We now know that historical temperature data for the continental United States were deliberately altered by NASA and NOAA scientists in a politically-motivated attempt to rewrite history and claim global warming is causing U.S. temperatures to trend upward. The data actually show that we are in a cooling trend , not a warming trend (see charts below). This st...

Prosperity Requires Privacy Privacy is a prerequisite for a prosperous economy.    Even the White House admits : People must have confidence that data will travel to its destination without disruption. Assuring the free flow of information, the security and privacy of data, and the integrity of the interconnected networks themselves are all essential to American and global economic prosperity , security, and the promotion of universal rights. Here are four ways mass surveillance hurts our economy ... Read more: here